News
CNN Moneyline
HAZARDOUS HARVEST
Part 2 of 3
Denver sludge is stinky biz
June 26, 1997: 8:41 p.m. ET
Moneyline Special Report: EPA policy raises troubling questions
http://money.cnn.com/1997/06/26/busunu/hazard_two_pkg/
From Correspondent Bill Dorman
DEER TRAIL, Colo. (CNNfn) - Beneath the ground in a suburb of
Denver, lies some of the foulest toxic waste in the United States -- the
Lowry Landfill Superfund site.
On the other side of Denver lies the biggest sewage treatment plant
between the Mississippi River and the West Coast, and 60 miles to the
East, rolling fields of early season wheat, which will be harvested for
human consumption.
What links these three sites is the federal government's plan to take
ground water from the toxic dump, treat it at the Metro Plant sewage
treatment facility, and then spread it as fertilizer on the wheat crop.
"This is not a precedent-setting proposal. It is being done at Superfund
sites across the country. And provided it is implemented properly and in
compliance with all state and federal regulations, it will work and be safe
for both the public and the environment," said Marc Herman, of the
Environmental Protection Agency.
Richard Price, however, is not so sure. Price's cattle ranch shares a
five-mile border with those wheat fields. The Price family has been
ranching there for a century, nearly as long as Colorado has been a
state. Four generations of Prices weathered drought and depression.
The threat they see from industrial waste, and at least trace amounts of
radioactive elements, is something new.
"It's going to affect not only us, but a lot of people if it gets into our food
product, and particularly if it gets into our water supply," said Lylamae
Price.
Those fears are bringing together farmers, ranchers and
environmentalists.
"We are putting our food chain at risk, and we are going to be
assuming the liability in what we eat in our tuna fish sandwiches and our
peanut-butter and jelly that we spread for our kids in the morning and
put in their lunches," Professor Adrienne Anderson, of the University of
Colorado, said.
Anderson and the Prices are fighting a policy which is a point of pride
for the environmental protection agency. The agency considers the
policy a recycling success story, and Metro Sewage of Denver a prize
pupil.
Last year, the Metro Plant won a national award from the EPA for
"outstanding pre-treatment management" of sewage sludge.
Most of Denver's treated sludge winds up about sixty miles east of the
city, on farmland owned by Metro. All of the wheat is fertilized with
sludge, then harvested, and sold on the open market.
One obvious advantage Metro has in owning the farmland: Denver's
sewage plant has a guaranteed customer for its sludge.
Metro has no plans to specially treat the water from the Superfund site
at Lowry. The agency believes federal regulations on Superfund sites,
and sewage treatment, are sufficient.
"We've obviously extensively studied the waste materials proposed to
be discharged from Lowry, and we have years of experience
determining what's going to go into our biosolids. The effects will be
absolutely negligible. In fact, pretty much unmeasurably negligible,"
Stephen Pearlman, of the Metro Waste Water Reclamation, said.
Those words from Denver don't count for much in Deer Trail, Colo.,
where the Prices are fighting to protect the land and the water they've
guarded for more than 100 years, while also trying to convince the
people of Denver to join their fight.
"But how are you going to get 1.3 million users on your side, when they
live in the city, and aren't even aware of the land that is laying out here,
and the beauty of it, and the crops that are being grown. They don't
have a picture of it, and we live in it," said Lylamae Price.
"I guess what I'm looking at is, 40 years from now, are they going to
come back and say, 'well, we didn't have the technology, we didn't know
about those elements at the time, they were considered safe,'" said
John Price.
Across the country, more and more people are demanding a
re-evaluation of federal sludge policy, but so far the government shows
no interest in revisiting the issue. For the Price family and others in
Eastern Colorado, time is running out. The federal government's public
comment period on the Superfund to sludge proposal ends on Monday.
In part three of Moneyline's special report:
If food grown with sludge is safe, then why won't major U.S. food companies such
as Heinz and Del Monte buy it?