According to an official at Guelph defending the spreading program, cadmium toxicity through such
concentrations is not considered a fatal illness because cadmium poisons the kidneys, and kidney failure
does not cause death because we have kidney dialysis machines. No body count so no problem! She
claimed you have to balance the few cases of kidney failure caused annually by the sludge spreading,
against the convenience of disposing of city sewage by spreading it on farms. As Ottawa's MOH Dr.
Cushman put it, "even if every rural well in Ottawa was contaminated with sewage sludge and you all got
sick, that wouldn't constitute an epidemic because rural people are less than
5% of the City population." What a horrible excuse for government inaction!
Jim Poushinsky
chair, Ottawa Citizens Against Pollution by Sewage
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:28:53 -0500
From: "Maureen Reilly" <maureen.reilly@sympatico.ca>
Subject: Sludge Watch ==> Jim Poushinsky's open letter to the City of
Ottawa
To: Sludgewatch-l@list.web.net
Message-ID: <BAY113-F37D2DE3C99CB6124BF5945FD080@phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
March 12, 2008
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Councillor Wilkinson, Mayor O'Brien and Ottawa City Councillors,
The following is a critique of the City Staff position regarding the potential conflict between promoting local farmer's
markets as safe and Green food for Ottawa residents, while encouraging farmers to use the City's 45,000 tonnes of
annual sewage sludge as fertilizer for local foodland. Staff points are in blue or indicated with an > , and
my response is below.
There is, in the Provincial guidelines, a 12-15 month waiting period after using biosolids, before any small fruit or
vegetable can be harvested, to ensure that there are no pathogen's present. link to guidelines (see table 7):
http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/envision/gp/3425e.pdf
Thanks Derrick, for the web reference to the provincial sewage spreading Guidelines. The 12 to 15 month waiting
period gets us through a winter, which takes a severe toll on bacterial pathogens, but viral pathogens are
able to form crystals which survive freezing. For example polio viruses are referred to in the Ottawa U Study entitled
"The efficiency of the anaerobic digestion process in reducing the pathogen content of treated sludge or biosolids" by
C. Charet, R. Sharma, S. Springthorpe, & S. Sattar - September 1995" and can survive many years in the
environment. Likewise BSE prions are not harmed by waiting periods and persist indefinitely. The scrapie prions from
diseased sheep accidently released into Ottawa's sewers from a government testing lab over a 5 month period wound
up being spread on farmland above the aquifer that I draw well water from around Edwards, southeast of old Ottawa.
Also, while bacterial pathogens can be killed off with freezing and composting, warm summer temperatures can cause
an explosive regrowth. And while there is a year waiting period to grow vegetables, tree fruits can be harvested 3
months after spreading, animals can be pastured on it two months after spreading sewage, and hay taken off after only
3 weeks of waiting. No expert or official or scientist has ever been able to show a scientific basis for believing these
measures are protective of human and animal health, and factual evidence is mounting that they are not. If you
can produce scientific facts to back up your belief that the Guidelines "ensure that there are no pathogens present" I'd
like to see it.
Everything I've seen in 8 years of investigating this indicates the Spreading Guidelines don't work. I sat on the EA
Assessment Public Advisory Committee that did the 5 year Review of the initial spreading of sewage on Ottawa farms,
the Review that City Staff are now claiming to be following in their recommendations to Council. But somehow the
overwhelming opposition of the public to building storage sites for sewage has been erased from official awareness,
and such sites are now the key central point of today's sewage disposal planning - how did that happen?
Likewise the burial of sewage in engineered landfills was given equal rating for City consideration by the public with
spreading it on farmland, yet City officials have never evaluated landfilling and subsequent recovery of biogas energy
from waste as as an option, even though concerned people have asked for this repeatedly since the original Review,
and despite the apparent savings of 1 million dollars or more annually that would ensue.
Finally there has been no indication whatsoever that the City is investigating the use of a plasma torch like the one
being demonstrated at Trail Road to reduce the 100,000 potentially harmful chemicals from bacteria, viruses, prions,
and parasites in sewage, - to inert black glass. Ottawa's cake sewage is likely ideal to feed into the Trail Road Plasma
Torch in a mixture with garbage, yet the City seems to be passing up the opportunity to use this hi-tech plasma furnace
to eliminate both solid and sewage wastes at the same time. If this is a bureaucratic turf war problem, then change the
structure of the sewage and solid waste departments to enable such a joint experiment. That's the sort of
management flexibility that enables progress to happen.
One of the benefits of shopping at a farmer's market is that the people selling the produce know how it was grown. If
someone has a concern such as this, they can ask the grower before purchasing.
Most city people wouldn't ask because they do not know that the pathogenic and toxic wastes flushed down Ottawa's
sewers from homes and industry are being promoted by the City of Ottawa as a free fertilizer for growing every
crop except tobacco. This has been a best-kept secret since 1995. It is a tabou topic that the news media will not
cover, just as child sexual abuse and wife abuse were covered up and officially didn't exist in decades past.
How can we discuss a topic that is a repulsive 4 letter word for an act that isn't polite to talk about?
The City itself takes great care to keep rural residents who discover and object to what's going on from being heard.
The last time the Planning Committee considered staff recommendations in a public meeting, they
kept us waiting for 9 hours, by which point most of those who wanted to speak had to leave, and the Councillors
present could no longer listen and were paying more attention to a hockey game. After that meeting we
were dropped from the list of public organizations to be notified about future meetings considering the topic, and only
recently realized this and supposedly are now back on the official list.
It's clear from the sewage spreading industry's own manual that the public will not tolerate the growing of their food in
sewage sludge, and the continuation of this practice depends on keeping this secret from widespread public
awareness. In this regard the City of Ottawa has done an exemplary job. The original study of pathogens in the sewage
commissioned by Regional Government (referred to previously) was withheld from the Biosolids Committee studying
the matter. City Councillors were told "all pathogens are killed in the sewage plant" so unanimously approved the
initial program. While serving on the EA Assessment Public Advisory Committee, the chief scientist in
charge of the Technical Committee told me the public need not worry "because all pathogens are killed in
the sewage treatment plant". He was stunned when I produced the Ottawa U study and quoted the high
pathogen loadings including 1.5 million e-coli and 6 billion coliforms per 1/2 cup (100ml) sample, and all
the other pathogens including viruses and parasites that survive the digester treatment process.
Likewise the director of a private lab recommended by government that I took water samples to for analysis tried to tell
me there was no point analyzing them because everybody knew that all the pathogens in sewage were killed in the
treatment plant. He was surprised that we did indeed find pathogens in the tile drains under a field being spread
with Ottawa's sewage. The loading tripled from 2 e-coli to 6, but the City officials saw that as insignificant because a
count from 1 to 9 e-coli only counts as 1 by their scientific methodology. However they had to admit that a
neighbouring farmer was correct in complaining that the City's conformity to the spreading Guidelines failed to prevent
a pipe they didn't notice from leaking sewage into the municipal ditch, which flowed into a creek just upstream from
where he watered cattle.
This is not surprising, as every spread we have investigated has been in violation of the Guidelines, and the MOE and
City Health doesn't respond until it's way too late to prove anything, as happened to the North Gower family sickened
and forced to temporarily close their business due to the fumes from City sludge stored on an adjacent farm.
Clearly if people in Ottawa knew what rural people have discovered about the contamination and health problems and
risks arising from spreading sewage on farmlands, there would be a quick end to the spreading program. Do we
have to wait until there is a body count like at Walkerton? Do we have to fill City Hall to the ceiling with studies
conclusively proving the health risks, as Dr. Cushman pointed out was required before action to stop
smoking?
Or do people have to start picketing food stores and farmers markets to make people aware of the problem? It would
be so much simpler if the City just stopped spreading sewage and landfilled it at Trail Road and/or LaFleche while
investigating the plasma torch as a final solution. It would be so much simpler if we the people didn't have to fight City
Hall to have our sewage disposed of in a safe way where it isn't harming our health and the environment and
contaminating the food chain. That would be a win-win for everybody. How do we get City Staff to consider this? They
seem to be right out of public control on the matter of spreading sewage in rural Ottawa.
Regardless of this waiting period, I do not know of anyone producing fruits or vegetables for human consumption in
the Ottawa area that are using biosolids at all.
There was a case awhile back about carrots on the Quebec side that caused health problems following the application
of wastes there. It is permitted to do this and its free, so why wouldn't farmers use it? Carrots are an interesting crop
because they concentrate cadmium 5 fold. So carrots can have 5 times the permissible level of cadmium in sewage
sludge.
According to an official at Guelph defending the spreading program, cadmium toxicity through such concentrations is
not considered a fatal illness because cadmium poisons the kidneys, and kidney failure does not cause death because
we have kidney dialysis machines. No body count so no problem! She claimed you have to balance the few cases
of kidney failure caused annually by the sludge spreading, against the convenience of disposing of city sewage by
spreading it on farms. As Ottawa's MOH Dr. Cushman put it, "even if every rural well in Ottawa was contaminated with
sewage sludge and you all got sick, that wouldn't constitute an epidemic because rural people are less than
5% of the City population." What a horrible excuse for government inaction!
This reminds me of another University of Guelph professor I met at a Parliamentary Committee Hearing about whether
or not to label genetically modified foods. I asked him what the main crops were that had been genetically modified in
the Ottawa area. He said "50% of the corn and 15% of the soybeans". I said that corn was the primary crop being
fertilized with sewage sludge. "A double whammy!" the Committee Chairwoman exclaimed. The professor laughed in
delight - "so you see, you'll never be able to tell if problems are caused by the genetic modification or by the sludge!!!"
So much for academic neutrality. The Committee was ordered by the mulltinational corporations NOT to require
labelling, despite polls showing 90% of Canadians wanted such labelling. The people lost, there is no labelling. A sad
day for Canadian sovereignty.
In any case I remain optimistic that Ottawa can change in the best interests of all the people. I would like to see this
happen with a minimum of unpleasantness, meaning the fewer people who have to think about what's happening with
sewage the better. So why doesn't the City take protective measures by burying the sewage biosolids instead of
spreading them on farmland? I can't think of anyone who would object to that, so why isn't it happening? Why do we
all have to worry out here in the country about where the sewage storage and sewage trucks will be going, and
whose field is going to be spread next?
This is the opposite of progress, this is the destruction of the rural environment, and the contamination of our best
farmland for generations into the future. Why are City staff, the Mayor, and most Councillors promoting this nightmare,
why aren't you advocating a safe alternative? You won't put it on the Experimental Farm or in the City flower beds
and Parks, but you'll put it on a field next to rural communities and hospitals and schools and senior care centres
without a second thought. This is offensive and wrong.
There are numerous certification criteria for Certified Organic in Canada alone, let alone in other parts of the world.
While in North America, Biosolids use is not permited under any organic certification, I am not as certain that organic
produce from less developped countries would follow the same standards.
There has been a persistent and growing demand from the sewage spreading lobby to have sewage certified as
organic in North America. The fact that dried sewage is bagged in mixture with soils sold for home gardens at
large chain stores like Canadian Tire without any requirement to label it as an ingredient because mixed soils are
classified as 'products" means many people are using it in their gardens and potted plants unknowingly. It would be
wonderful if Ottawa stopped engaging in such unsavoury practices - case in point, what happens to all that
sewage sent to Quebec at great expense to be made into compost which still contains all the chemical contaminants
and is perfect for the regrowth of pathogens - does it remain as "Mount Ottawa" or does it get spread on farmland, or
mixed and bagged as home fertilizer? The whole matter is shrouded in official secrecy, eh?
I have stopped buying bagged organic salads from California since learning that sewage water is now being used to
irrigate these crops, which explains the cases of food poisoning in spinach and lettuce that adsorb pathogenic bacteria
inside the plant through the roots where it can't be washed off. I do agree about organic produce from Mexico
being suspect, I avoid it as well.
I believe our sewage disposal policies need to be based on scientific research to determine the facts, and on rational
use of those facts to decide the best course of action for protecting human and animal health and the ecosystem of
our planet. The sooner City Hall takes this approach to dealing with our sewage wastes, the better for everybody. I'm
available to discuss this matter further, and have been waiting to do so for the past 8 years.
I am not aware of any research being done in the City of Ottawa, however there has been a significant amount of
research into this topic by the province and the University of Guelph amoung others. I think that Kemptville College
has done some field research on the topic as well. I have CC"d Dixon Weir and David McCartney, perhaps they can add
some more information if they are aware of other research being done.
City employee Erik Apedaile and myself jointly conducted field research on the last site spread by the City of Ottawa
before the 2 year moratorium. As I indicated earlier, the e-coli levels were elevated in the tile drains and surface
ditches, but the City did not consider this significant. However we did find obvious leakage of sewage contaminated
water off the field into a ditch which drained into a creek. Remedial action included damming the roadside ditch and
excavating a huge ditch to reverse the leakage so it flowed the opposite direction into a boundary ditch that drains into
the North Castor River. I'm not surprised the City didn't publish this fiasco, as it gives the lie to the mantra that
"no problems have ever occurred when the fields are spread according to the Provincial Guidelines". Those Guidelines
were followed to the letter with OCAPS watching and participating in the study. They didn't protect the surface waters
from sewage contamination. That's not news to rural peple, as we have been living with the chemical off-gases
and contaminated run-off for years now, we know the program leaks.
You might inquire about the tile drain problem too - you see OMAFRA's own research shows sewage toxins penetrate
24 inches into the soil. Yet the stuff is being spread primarily on tile drained farmland, in which the tile drains rise to a
depth of 16 inches (plough depth) below the surface. In spite of the obvious potential for contamination, no study
has ever been done to see if tile drain effluent from sewage spread fields is contaminating the public ditches and
watercourses. We pointed this out 5 or 6 years ago during Ottawa's EA Assessment to the Premier , to OMAFRA, to
MOE, to DOH, and to the City of Ottawa. It would be nice to know how far along this "urgent matter" has progressed
towards actually being studied?
Dr. Cushman in the course of his winter of research into the health and safety of sewage sludge only found one peer
reviewed research study of farm families in the States, which found no change in health as a result of sewage
spreading. Since then 2 peer reviewed studies by independent reseachers have found evidence of widespread health
problems in rural populations living within 1 km of spreading operations, health problems not shared with those outside
this area. Yet the City staff still insist Dr. Cushman's earlier conclusion based on a single study that spreading
sewage does not cause health problems is correct, and ignore the subsequent research that it is not. This is not
scientific decision making! Willfull ignorance is no excuse for actions that result in harm, as the tainted blood scandal
proved. We have to do better, by acting before there is widespread evidence of harm, in accordance with the
Precautionary Principle. That's what people expect of those we entrust with our health and safety, and with the care of
our environment.
Don't spread City sewage this Spring. Put it in an approved landfill while the City investigates safe alternatives like
energy from waste biogas production, or rendering it all harmless in a plasma torch. End this 10 year pollution
nightmare for Ottawa's rural folk, before it involves our city neighbours too.
Sincerely,
Jim Poushinsky
chair, Ottawa Citizens Against Pollution by Sewage
tel. 613-821-2409