Sowing the seeds

Every day, 1,200 tons of human waste from D.C. residents is spread over rural farmlands in Maryland and Virginia.

The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority sterilizes 370 million gallons of wastewater daily and refines it into a fertilizer containing “biosolids,” or human waste.

WASA then pays companies such as Synagro Technologies and Recyc Systems to pick up the biosolids and ship them to area farmers for free.

“To me, it’s not that big of a deal, I don’t see any difference between it and commercial fertilizer,” said Jim Lewis, a farmer on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

For the past eight years, Mr. Lewis has asked Synagro employees to load and distribute tons of sewer sludge across his 60-acre farmland in Greensboro, Md.

But some residents living near the farms are fed up with the bad odor and risk of illness from biosolids, and they want it stopped.

“My main concern is my own children and their health,” said Jennifer England, a mother of five and the president of Citizens Against Toxic Sludge, a community group in Campbell County, Va., just southeast of Lynchburg.

“But this is something that everyone should be concerned about, primarily because food is being grown on it,” she said.

The process is regulated by regional health departments and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

“More than 45 percent of all biosolids in the U.S. are disposed of via land application, so it is a major option” for water-treatment plants, said Chris Hornback, a spokesman for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies.

Wastewater from the suburban counties of Maryland and Northern Virginia also is recycled into biosolids, by the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission and the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services, respectively.

Sewage authorities such as WASA downplay the dangers.

“The pathogen risk is similar to the risk you take when you are preparing raw chicken,” said Chris Peot, spokesman for the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority. “After you’ve handled it, you would want to wash your hands before touching anything else. Other than that, [the use of biosolids] is not a big question mark for me.”

Companies like Synagro also produce “class A” processed commercial fertilizer that is sold in nurseries and gardening centers.

In 1991, the EPA approved the farm use of biosolids because the practice is better for the environment than dumping sewage into lakes, streams and the ocean, a practice that ended with the passage of the Ocean Dumping Ban of 1988.

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