Oh, yuck! Supervisors will consider new rules regulating land application of sewage sludge at July meeting
By James P. Gannon
Rappahannock County’s Board of Supervisors soon will take up the unsavory and sometimes controversial subject of regulating the use of sludge, the sewage-plant byproduct used as farm fertilizer, which for years has been banned in the county.
Rappahannock still has a ban on sludge in place, but because Virginia court rulings have struck down such bans, the county is looking to replace it with a new law limiting, regulating and monitoring the land application and storage of what the sludge industry likes to call “biosolids.”
A draft ordinance–the products of months of study, negotiation and drafting by an advisory committee appointed by the supervisors–will be on the agenda at the board’s Monday, July 2, evening session, at 7 p.m. in the county court house. If the supervisors approve it, the new ordinance would replace the current ban with a strict set of standards, regulations and record-keeping requirements that would impose new burdens on landowners who want to use sludge as fertilizer as well as on sludge providers and haulers.
“I think we have done the best we can” in drafting the ordinance, Commonwealth’s Attorney Peter Luke, told The Rappahannock Voice. Luke and County Administrator John McCarthy represented the local government on the drafting committee, which also included representatives of local environmental groups and the sludge industry. “Probably nobody on the committee is 100% satisfied,” Luke commented, but he feels the draft ordinance is a reasonable compromise and breaks some new ground in finding ways to regulate the use of sludge.
Many health and environmental authorities consider sludge a dangerous and unhealthy product. The draft ordinance, in its language on “findings,” states that the Board of Supervisors “finds that improper spreading, placement, disposal or management of Biosolids without appropriate regulation, notice, monitoring and enforcement may result in adverse effects to the general health, safety and welfare of the inhabitants of the county and to agricultural lands, water supplies, wildlife, livestock, natural resources and the environment.”
The draft ordinance would regulate where, when and how sewage biosolids are spread or stored on land in Rappahannock County.
Among its provisions are these: Sludge may be applied only on lands zoned “agricultural;” the application may be done only between one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset; sludge may not be spread on any floodplain, or on any land that is flooded, saturated or snow-covered; no sludge may be applied to land with a slope steeper than 15%; sludge may not be applied when it is raining or snowing or when such precipitation is imminent.
The proposed law would keep sludge application away from county streams and rivers. “A 100-foot-wide vegetative buffer shall be maintained between the site of any land application and any stream, river or other body of water which flows into the Chesapeake Bay,” the draft states. It would be the landowner’s responsibility to maintain that buffer.
In order to protect the health of persons susceptible to adverse reaction from inhaling airborne particles, and to minimize complaints, the ordinance states that “no Biosolids shall be applied or stored within 400 yards of any school, playground, church, public park, day-care center, potable water supply well, wetland, residential facility for the elderly or infirm, or public or private gathering of a large number of people.”
The ordinance also includes a number of provisions to alert the public to the use of sludge. All trucks used to transport biosolids into Rappahannock County would be required to bear the name and address of the hauler and its telephone number. Signs would be posted at the site of the application of the sludge, and the County would be required to publish in The Rappahannock News a public notice containing information on when and where sludge is to be applied, at least two weeks before any spreading.
Anyone proposing to apply sludge to land in the county will be required to file for a permit, submitting to the county a map of the parcels to be sludged, the slopes of the land, any adjacent features such as a school, park , playground, etc., that would trigger a buffer requirement; the names and addresses of the property owners, neighbors, tax-map numbers; and other details.
Moreover, in an effort to keep a permanent register of all lands in the county on which sludge has been applied, the County Administrator would keep records of all parcels so treated, and he would provide this information to the Commissioner of Revenue who will incorporate the sludge records with the real-estate tax assessment records on that property.
These records, which would be open to the public, would allow a prospective purchaser of a property to discover if the land had ever been treated with sludge. “It is a kind of Caveat Emptor approach,” said Luke, “to let the citizen beware of the risk they might be getting into if they buy that property.”
Furthermore, any person applying to rezone or subdivide a property, or apply for a special use permit or special exception, would have to disclose whether any part of the property has had sludge applied to it or stored there; the county could take that fact into account in deciding on the rezoning or application.
To enforce the law, the county will need a Land Monitor to oversee the use of sludge, perform testing, check on the application of biosolids and the storage and trucks hauling the material. “The ordinance rises or falls on the Land Monitor,” Luke said. “We are going to have to get a monitor; we may have to join some other jurisdiction in hiring one or hire a contract firm to do it.”
This would involve some costs, yet unknown, to the county, but Luke said that the county can apply for at least partial reimbursement of those costs from the state-administered Virginia Sludge Management Fund, which is funded with fees paid by the industry.
Violation of the proposed ordinance would be a Class 1 misdemeanor, and each day of violation would be a separate offense, subject to fines.
-- James P. Gannon
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