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By Monty Tayloe
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
At their upcoming September 6 session, the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors will plunge back into an old controversy, long flushed away: Sludge.
A sludge hauling company named Recyc Systems has informed the county that they are currently applying to the Virginia Department of Health for a permit to fertilize farmland in Rappahannock County with sludge, a process the supervisors banned 13 years ago. Now, changes to Virginia law have made that ban illegal, and the BOS will have to decide how to address the problem.
Sometimes referred to as biosolids, sludge is the solid matter that remains after wastewater has been treated. When the treatment process is done with it, sludge is generally either burned or treated to kill pathogens and hauled away to be , used as a fertilizer on farmland.
Sludge is a cheap and effective fertilizer, but remains somewhat controversial because it can contain heavy metals and other contaminants unaffected by the treatment process, because as runoff it can pollute water ecosystems, and because it can smell. Virginia regulates these concerns through an extensive state permitting process, but opposition to sludge applied to farmland remains active.
In 1993 and 1994, the BOS and the county was submerged in a debate about the use of sludge on farmland in Rappahannock County. The county had a longstanding moratorium on sludge used on farmland in the county, and the supervisors held several public hearings on the possibility of permanent ban.
The supervisors heard testimony from DEQ experts, private farmers, and representatives of Bio-Grow, a sludge hauling company which transported and spread sludge from the Blue Plains treatment plant in Maryland on the fields of willing farmers. Bio-Grow has since changed its name to Recyc Systems, and is the author of the application prompting this month’s agenda item. After the series of hearings, the supervisors voted to institute a ban on sludge use in Rappahannock County. This ban was followed by a lawsuit from four county farmers and Bio-Grow, challenging the legality of the ban. Rappahannock County won that lawsuit and the ban on the use of sludge on farmland in Rappahannock has remained on the books ever since.
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