ABOUT SEWAGE AND PPF’S RECORD ON DIMINISHING SEWAGE IMPACTS
As far back as the 1980s, Dr. Eloise Kailin, President of Protect the Peninsula’s Future (PPF), began pressuring Sequim City WA to stop piping sewage effluent into Sequim Bay and installing a tertiary wastewater treatment facility. After a 17-year legal battle with the City,
the latter agreed to upgrade to tertiary treatment, but compromised on effluent emissions. Half the effluent would be piped in to the Bay and half would be used for on-land purposes.
In 2013, PPF and the Olympic Environmental Council (OEC) discovered the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) applied for a Clallam County permit to release sewage effluent on a recently purchased 5-acre property. For years, WA State Department of Ecology permitted these emissions from the JST casino, right on top of a water table and near a creek emptying into East Sequim Bay where shellfish operations were conducted. The earlier emissions were more than Ecology permitted. New emissions from the recently purchased 5-acre site would be permitted. While losing at the County Hearings Examiner level, it was clear we would win on appeal at the court level, so the JST pulled its county application. In place, they asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)for the permit and received approval. When Dr. Kailin learned of this, she was successful in having the BIA reverse its decision when they saw the facts of the case.
Next, Dr. Kailin told the JST Chair, Ron Allen, that PPF intended to sue him unless he sent his sewage effluent to Sequim City’s wastewater treatment plant. He agreed and built six miles of pipe from the Blyn reservation to the Sequim City wastewater plant. But the sewage story doesn’t end here.
WHAT IS SEWAGE SLUDGE?
Sewage sludge (euphemistically named “biosolids” by its promoters) is a toxic soup of whatever goes down the drain and ends in a sewage treatment plant. The waste is residential, industrial, medical, government and business. It can be a mixture of over 380,000 chemicals, most unregulated, and an array of pathogens. It is estimated that another 2000 chemicals come on line annually. Within the treatment plant, chemicals can synergistically create new chemicals. This has been understood for decades. In the past years, once the “forever chemicals”, PFASs (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a diverse group of thousands of chemicals used in hundreds of types of products) were brought to light, they have been found in sewage wastes. Spread on land, they have contaminated soils, groundwater and potable water. These have sickened and killed farm animals, wildlife and humans. Their tight carbon-fluoride bonds make it nigh impossible to break, hence get rid of. They have been found in pratically every surface water and drinking water sample take. EPA has only regulated 6 PFAS as of 2024..
When federal legislation ended the dumping of sewage in water bodies, in 1990 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided the solids could be a soil amendment/fertilzier and land applied since the waste contained heavy metals, phorphorus and nitrogen. EPA then named the waste a “beneficial use.” It allowed each U.S. state to adopt it and write its own rules. Top U.S. EPA scientists opposed this. They were overruled and transferred to other jobs.1
Over the decades, scientsts from universities, government agencies and non profits have shown this to be an “unbeneficial use”, and communities are starting to sue EPA for allowing their soils and waters to be polluted by this sewage.
Case in point, In 2003, WA State Ecology conducted a screening analysis for 24 pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the effluent of two tertiary wastewater treatment plants and nearby wells and creeks in the Sequim-Dungeness area of northwest Washington, a few years after the Sequim City teritary wastewater treatment plant went online,2, 3 Sixteen compounds were detected in one or both effluents: Acetaminophen, Caffeine, Carbamazepine, Cimetidine, Codeine, Cotinine, Diltiazem, Hydrocodone, Ketoprofen, Metformin, Nicotine, Paraxanthine, Salbutamol, Sulfamethoxazole, Trimethoprim, and Estrone.
WA State Department of Ecology’s sewage sludge permits are renewed every 5 years. The last permit was on June 2022. Nisqually Delta Association appealed it to the Polllution Control Hearings Board. This Board reversed Ecology’s decision ruling that PFAS, PBDE and microplastics must be accounted for. Thus, Ecology’s 2022 permit was voided. Operators could continue under their old permit, but new slduge-spreading applications would be on hold until the biosolid permit language was updated to include the three contaminants.
Post-treatment sludge disposal options are pretty much landfilling, land spreading and open incineration. Newer technoligies such as higher termperature treatment of the solids are used.These add-ons to treatment plants could diminish borh the levels of contamination and amount of leftover digestate. There are other methods being trialed and some for ridding specific contaminants like PFAS.
The post-treatment water substance, effluent, is a disposal problem, as well. It is a highly contminated source. In WA State, an estimated 60% of Puget Sound is polluted from effluent emissions and stormwater runoff of the sewage. Some states are pushing it off on consumers as “reclaimed” potable water. Some states allow it for uses like watering plants and fields. WA State does not allow reclaiming effluent for potable uses. Microbrewers around the country are reclaiming the effluent as a free liquid source. An array of plastics and strings have been found in the brews tested.
TO DO
- Remove the state classification for sewage wastes as “beneficial use.”
- End landspreading of sewage sludge.
- Encourage municipalities to adopt technologies that minimize the contaminants.
- Truth In Labeling for commerical compost ingredients.
REFERNCES
The Sierra Club Wastewater Residual Grassroots Network Team’s website and the PFAS-containing commerical compost study are good sources for learning more.
https://www.sierraclub.org/grassroots-network/wastewater-residuals/resources
https://www.sierraclub.org/sludge-garden-toxic-pfas-home-fertilizers-made-sewage-sludge
- Science for Sale. David L. Lewis. 2014.
- https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/publications/documents/0403051.pdf
Results of a Screening Analysis for Pharmaceuticals in Wastewater Treatment
Plant Effluents, Wells, and Creeks in the Sequim-Dungeness Area
Industrial and Municipal Sludge. 2019 : 155–180.
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