ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 16, 1997 TAG: 9701160022
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
The Pulaski County Planning Commission can't decide whether a plan to spread industrial wastes on county farmlands would be a boon to agriculture or a bane to the environment.
So the commission voted Tuesday night to postpone a decision on whether to allow S&ME Inc. of Greensboro, N.C., to put sludge from two Burlington Industries dye ponds on 10 tracts, pending further information.
Commission member Basil Scott wanted Burlington to provide a more detailed analysis on what the sludge contains, using its own records of what chemicals went into the dye ponds near Newbern years ago. Bruce Fariss seconded his motion to table the special-use permit request until that information is furnished. The motion passed unanimously.
Ted LeJeune, Burlington's environmental manager, said the company had not used dyes linked with cancer-causing chemicals in the 20 years he has worked there. "I'm not aware of any chemicals being used in any of our dyes that are carcinogenic," he said.
Al Smith, one of the farmers who would be getting the sludge to fertilize and improve his farmland, said he had done the same thing with wastes from the Peppers Ferry Wastewater Treatment Authority and other places with good results.
Other properties that would receive the sludge belong to Doug Cullip, Robert D. Williams, Sherry Fagg, Larry Gilmore, Ken Bowling and Wilma Dobbins, in the Cloyd and Massie districts.
Smith said one of his tracts slated for sludge has his well on it, and that he would not allow the application if he had contamination concerns. "I think this is a good environmental way, rather than putting all this in a landfill, to use it as a fertilizer," he said.
Some neighbors disagreed. "I'm an organic chemist. I don't like to have organics applied uphill from me," said Christine Hermann, an associate professor at Radford University.
Ernst Kastning, another Radford faculty member, said the county's many sinkholes could bring sludge underground where porous limestone caves could carry it anywhere.
"We have the greatest concentration of sinkholes in this state, with the exception perhaps of Scott County," Kastning said.
"I don't think sludge should be applied to karst ranges anywhere. We're not dealing with a single isolated sinkhole. We're dealing with an entire terrain," he said. "It enters perhaps at a higher rate where there are sinkholes, but it goes in everywhere."
Hermann cited concerns about the presence of certain chemicals which, in large quantities, have been linked with cancer in laboratory rats and mice. Stan Atwood, a toxicologist with a company hired by Burlington, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is re-evaluating those carcinogenic standards because of indications that they do not affect humans and other animals in that way.
"We're making a controlled application of the material to the farmland," said Bob Branch of S&ME, with fewer questionable chemicals than are found in everyday fertilizers. "Are you also going to regulate the application of commercial fertilizers?" he asked.
"We've tested for all that we have been asked to test for," said Burlington's LeJeune. "No one else in the country is doing more than this."
He said industrial sludge of this kind has been applied to farmlands for some 10 years. "I don't know of any bad experiences or wells contaminated or crops damaged," he said.
Burlington ceased operations at its Pulaski County plant years ago. The property has since been acquired by the town of Dublin as an industrial park, and a site for the future Dublin Town Center to include a new town hall nearing completion. But Burlington must remove the residue from its two dye ponds before closure is officially complete.
LeJeune said applying the pond sludge to improve farmland is a good use of the material, and saves the cost and wasted space of burying it in a landfill. He said a description of the sludge as 95 percent water and 5 percent dead bug bodies is not inaccurate.
But the commission wants a more detailed analysis of what that sludge contains before acting. Even if a special-use permit is approved in Pulaski County, the application must also be approved by the state Department of Environmental Quality which would monitor it through unannounced inspections.
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