By GARY ADKINS
A graduate student at Sangamon State University in the Public Affairs Reporting Program, he is serving his M.A. internship with both Illinois Issues and the Alton Telegraph.
'Outstanding project'—but sludge stinks, neighbors say

Sludge-fertilized crops are safe to consume, researchers say—unless a continual application results in a dangerous accumulation of heavy metals

IN 1449 Thomas Brightfield invented the flush toilet, but over four centuries passed before Thomas Crapper perfected and popularized it. In the meantime people did what has always been done, what most of the world's population still does; they returned human wastes directly to the soil.

The ancient Greeks and early Chinese farmers utilized sewage as a valuable crop fertilizer. But that concept has fallen into disfavor in Western culture, especially in America, where human wastes are, in Norman Mailer's phrase, "the most distasteful and despised condition of being."

Many of the residents of Fulton County, Illinois, seem to confirm Mailer's belief. They are bitterly upset that Chicago sludge is being used in vast quantities to fertilize ravaged land in their county—strip-mined land. The aim of the project is not only to reclaim the land, but to relieve Chicago's disposal problem without polluting the environment.

The base of contention is whether the sludge—a biologically decomposed form of urban sewage—is offensively malodorous. Also at issue is whether the sludge has been properly spread by those in charge, the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago (MSD). Both questions can only be settled by the Pollution Control Board.

Suit against MSD
Last March 7, a $1 million suit was filed with the board by Attorney General William J. Scott, charging that MSD had fouled the air on 115 days last year. Scott's office drew up the charges on behalf of the state Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Simultaneously, EPA refused to reissue a permit to the Sanitary District for operation of its Fulton County project.

In explanation of the action, Scott told Illinois Issues that MSD misapplied the sludge by spraying it into the air, instead of directly down into the soil. "You don't have to be a civil engineer to see that that's wrong," he said, adding that the Sanitary District may also have blanketed the soil with sludge that had not been properly or fully treated.

However, Bart T. Lynam, the general superintendent of MSD, disagreed. "Our whole system is completely environmentally sound. We've spent millions of dollars to keep from polluting and to reclaim wasted land at the same time, but this is what we get for it," Lynam complained,

He pointed out that the project was named by the American Society of Civil Engineers as the most outstanding civil engineering project in the United States last year. "We won in competition with . . . construction of the world's tallest building, the Sears Tower," he said.

Lynam went so far as to say that he welcomed the suit "because we want to have the issue resolved by an independent board. We believe we have not polluted to the extent that they [EPA] alleged," he explained. Lynam claimed that EPA asked for the suit to placate the protests of only about 150 people.

Growing supply of sludge
Lynam is understandably concerned that any conflicts should be resolved. MSD has now spent over $15 million developing methods to use sludge as a fertilizer. Moreover, MSD is faced with the unpleasant but inescapable problem of what to do with a burgeoning supply of the rich muck, especially if most of it can no longer be recycled on Fulton County soil.

Each day the district processes nearly 1.5 billion gallons of sewage, and eventually extracts, through a 20-day filtration method, about 1,000 dry tons of sludge. This total comes from a popula-

234/Illinois Issues/August 1975

Presently MSD daily burns 200 tons of sludge, dries 200 tons for fertilizer, and barges 600 tons downstream to Liverpool on the Illinois River in Fulton County. At Liverpool an 11-mile pipeline slides the sludge to huge storage basins. From there, the goo glides by dredge and pipeline to high-pressure pivoting sprayers that travel through the grain fields.

The best of four methods
Landspreading may be the best solu- tion to a waste disposal problem that is already a continual headache for sanitary districts throughout the country. The Fulton County project is the largest and most significant undertaking of its kind, and is therefore being closely watched by many other cities.

There are only four viable methods of sludge disposal—landspreading, incineration, ocean dumping, and landfill. Theoretically, at least, none is as cheap, practical or ecologically sound as iandspreading.

Actually, the landspreading method includes both heat-dried fertilizer, and the newer wet kind. Heat-dried sludge was produced in immense amounts at MSD's Stickney plant until state air pollution standards were tightened in 1971. But as late as June 1970 the twin giant stacks of Stickney were the single greatest contributor to Chicago's air pollution. The Stickney plant is the largest of its kind in the world.

The start of the Fulton sludge program in 1971 allowed MSD to reduce Stickney's pollution, while lowering treatment cost from $80 a ton to $71 a ton. Experts say this expense could be dropped even further to $36 a ton when the district is able to pipe the sludge directly, instead of barging it.

Incineration is the most costly disposal method, estimated at $90 to $100 per dry ton, excluding the cost of pollution control devices needed to remove heavy metals from smoke emissions. Moreover, nearly 100,000 tons of fuel oil is required to burn only 1,000 tons of sludge, and ultimately 30-35 per cent of the total weight of burnt sludge is left as ash, which must also be disposed of. In addition, incineration destroys nitrogen and other soil nutrients in sludge, a decided energy waste since it takes 917 gallons of crude oil to produce one ton of inorganic nitrogen.

Ocean dumping is a poorer solution. Though shipping costs are prohibitive for Illinois, many coastal cities have found that ocean disposal not only pollutes valuable resources but drifts slowly back towards shore.

Using sludge as landfill does not take advantage of the fertilizer properties of the rich sludge, costs considerable amounts of money, and renders fill sites useless for up to 30 years.

Description of sludge
Since the weight of evidence seems to point toward farm application of sludge, it must be remembered that treated sludge is not the same as human waste or untreated urban wastes. Sludge differs from raw sewage in that the stabilization process it undergoes produces relatively clean water (called effluent), greatly reduces the bulk of splids, destroys most pathogenic or disease-causing organisms, eliminates most noxious odors, and abolishes housefly infestation.

Digested sludge looks like crude oil. It contains anywhere from 85 to 96 per cent water, and usually ranges from 2.5 to 4.0 pounds of solids per 100 pounds of water.

U of I sludge study research
For the past seven years the University of Illinois Department of Agronomy has conducted a study of sludge. According to Dr. Tom D. Hinesly, who headed the research, "sludge is an excellent, cheap and relatively odorless form of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilizer. There doesn't seem to be very much wrong with sludge; it seems to be highly beneficial if properly managed and applied at a reasonable rate" (see Table 1). Dr. Hinesly explained that when the amounts of nitrogen applied greatly exceed the capacity of plants to use it, steps must be taken to prevent runoff of nitrates in ground-water.

Heavy metals in sludge can also be a problem, either by accumulating to an amount that could reduce crop yields, or by being absorbed by plants in levels high enough to threaten human or animal health. The amount of heavy metals in sludge varies greatly from city to city, and even from one treatment

Table 1
Corn yield under different rates of irrigation with liquid sludge

Sludge						Total	5-year
applied	Average yield in bushels per acre					applied	average
each year	1968	1969	1970	1971	1972	in 4 years	yield
0* inches	66.3	142.8	88.2	96.6	142.6	0	107.3
'1/4 inch	96.2	149.0	119.3	103.7	137.4	10.2	121.1
1/2 inch	114.2	150.2	121.5	110.4	143.3	20.4	127.9
1 inch	111.9	150.6	137.6	125.6	140.6	40.8	133.3

*The no-slidge plot was unfertilized in 1968 but received 240 pounds nitrogen (N). 270 pounds phosphoric anhydride (P205), pounds potassium oxide (K2O) per acre in each of the following years.

Table 2
Amount (parts per million) of seven elements in soil in 1971 following applications of liquid digested sludge from 1968-1971, Elwood, Illinois

Inches of	Cadmium	Chromium	Copper	Lead	Mercury	Nickel	Zinc
sludge added	Total	Total	Total	Total	Total	Total	Total
0	2.2	58	38	62	0.09	46	144
10.2	6.0	86	44	78	0.17	60	220
20.4	10.2	122	68	88	0.31	60	326
40.8	17.0	172	104	120	0.55	56	520

Sources for Tables 1&2: T.D. Hinesly, Robert L. Jones and E. L. Ziegler, 1972, Effects on Corn by Applications of Heated Anaerobically Digested Sludge. Compost Science 26-30.

Table 3
Amount of seven heavy metals (parts per million) in corn leaves at tasseling and in grain following 3 years of liquid sludge application, Elwood, Illinois

		Cadmium		Chromium		Copper		Lead		Mercury		Nickel		Zinc
Liquid sludge added:		Leaf	Grain	Leaf	Grain	Leaf	Grain	Leaf	Gain	Leaf	Grain	Leaf	Grain	Leaf	Grain
inches      dry tons
per acre
0	0	3.3	0.30	4.1	0.28	8.9	5.2	7.1	0.025	0.027	0.005	2.8	2.28	58.0	88.8
6.4	18.7	3.0	0.60	3.9	0.35	9.0	6.3	7.4	0.025	0.018	0.004	1.3	3.03	85.0	93.0
12.9	37.4	5.3	0.79	4.9	0.34	10.2	5.2	7.3	0.035	0.030	0.004	2.6	2.18	137.8	127.0
25.8	74.9	11.6	1.03	4.5	0.38	8.7	5.6	6.3	0.028	0.038	0.004	4.3	3.08	212.0	152.3

Source: Sam as Table 1&2

August 1975 /Illinois Issues/235

Pollution Control Board called on to review Chicago Sanitary District's experiment using sludge to reclaim strip-mined land in Fulton County. Research study points to value of treated effluent as fertilizer

plant to another. The determining factors are the kind and number of industries and the quality of their wastes. Only biodegradable wastes are produced by some industries, while others release wastes with high heavy metal content. Greater restrictions involving increased metal recovery by factories could reduce this problem in the foreseeable future.

However, heavy metals might not present a severe problem, except in a few isolated cases. Agronomist Hinesly says mercury and lead are not a problem, because they are not absorbed much by plants (see Table 3). But cadmium and zinc are absorbed in the soil at dangerously increasing rates as sludge is more heavily applied (see Table 2).

Heavy metals limits unknown
In the Elwood (Will County) experiment, grain which had been fertilized by the heaviest amounts of sludge showed a cadmium level of over one part per million (ppm), yet grain not fed on sludge had a cadmium level of 3.3 ppm. Researchers are puzzled by this strange evidence and agree it needs further scrutiny. Meanwhile, they say, consuming sludge-grown crops is safe, at least until continuous sludge use leads to a dangerous accumulation of the heavy metals—if it ever does. Dr. Hinesly says no one knows what the saturation or danger levels of these heavy metals are: 'The maximum limit isn't known, though the Japanese have set 1 ppm as the maximum safe amount of cadmium in rice."

Another important factor to be taken into account in sludge application is the number of pathogens, or disease-causing germs allowed to be present in sludge. Storage is the best means of killing the viruses and other bacteria left after treatment. Twenty days of storage at normal temperatures is enough to eliminate 99.9 per cent of such germs.

Despite the several serious safety factors involved—nitrogen content, heavy metals, and bacteria—sludge is an excellent fertilizer. University of Illinois researchers recommend sludge limits be set according to the amount of nitrogen in -the sludge, and they set 200 to 240 pounds per acre as the yearly maximum for corn. They say if these nitrogen limits are observed, phosphorus will present no problem except in extremely phosphorus-deficient soils.

All tests reveal that sludge contains not only nitrogen, phosphorus; and potassium, but all the secondary and micro-nutrients required to prevent nutrient imbalance.

Evidence backs MSD project
With all this weight of evidence behind sludge application, much of which the MSD has helped pay for ($ 1.5 million at the U. of I., according to Lynam), it hardly seems likely that EPA will be allowed to hold back on reinsurance of MSD's permit.

Thus far, MSD has purchased 10,563 acres of land in Fulton County where 41,556 acres had been strip mined by coal companies through 1971, or nearly one acre for every person in the county. Each year another 2,000 acres are stripped.

The sludge has only been applied to about 1,000 acres so far, but it produced 95 bushels of corn per acre last year, which is above the statewide average yield of 83 bushels per acre.

Other economic advantages to the county from the project include employment of area farmers during harvesting and planting, jobs for laborers for construction, and payment of taxes on its land. Furthermore, MSD has done nothing on the project without county approval since the Fulton County Board agreed to the concept in 1970.

Control of water runoff
In addition, the project has an extremely complex engineering design. All water runoff is collected and monitored to control water quality. There are natural filtering systems composed of hedgerows and woods to clean groundwater before it enters streams. There is also a "fail safe" system composed of pollution monitoring equipment in streams, a group of reservoirs along streams, and a complex redistribution method.

James L. Halderson, an agricultural engineer who assisted on the project in its early stages, told the New York Times in May 1972, "What it all boils down to is that Fulton County has a depletion of organic resources and we had a surplus and the marriage was made."

But this is not to belittle the legitimate voice of those Fulton County people who are now calling for divorce. EPA has given enough credence to their complaints to bring about a suit and a refusal to reissue a license. Again the matter is now up to the Pollution Control Board.

EPA expects soon to adopt standards for land application of sludge in the state. It seems likely that tighter controls will be set for spreading methods on strip-mined land. 

236/Illinois Issues/August 1975