Airport officials liked what they saw and began accepting a dark substance called a biosolid from Blue Plains. Five months later, grass started to sprout. A year later, it was thigh-high.
“It was unbelievable,” Wallis said.
That transformation a decade ago is a legend at Blue Plains, the first thing officials from the plant mentioned recently while promoting theirbiosolid fertilizer. That’s a fancy scientific marketing name that masks what the biosolids truly are — sludge made primarily from human waste.
Probably the world’s original fertilizer, this cleaned and treated version of what was long known as “night soil” may well loom large in the future, too.
Seven million tons of the sludge is produced annually in this country, and transforming it into biosolids is an effective way to get rid of it, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Blue Plains, for instance, for years has squeezed water out of sludge, added lime to it and dried it. This partially treated Class B biosolid is then trucked free of charge to farms, most of them in Virginia, where the fertilizer is used with substantial restrictions. The yearly cost to the facility of getting rid of the Class B solids is $10 million.
But the economics of Blue Plains biosoil could change soon, now that the facility plans to spend $400 million to upgrade its product to Class A biosolids. These are deemed safe enough to put in your mouth — though it’s not encouraged — and would carry few restrictions.
And like Milorganite, a Class A biosolid produced by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District on a smaller scale, the Blue Plains Class A solids could eventually be sold.
The plans, however, have met resistance.
Opponents say no class of biosolid can be viewed as safe. In areas where it’s been spread, residents have complained of foul odors that last for weeks, queasiness and problems with their lungs. One man said a substance spread on a neighboring farm gave him a life-threatening illness.
“Now they’ve got this great product, but it still has the potential to contain chemicals,” said Chris Nidel, a lawyer who represented residents in Surry County, Va., who said foul-smelling Class B biosolids made them sick.
The debate over biosolids is yet another example of how difficult it can be to go green — efforts to be environmentally forward-thinking can be quickly viewed as a negative development to others. Windmills in Spain kill birds by the thousands, bird lovers say. Solar panel installations in the Mojave desert wrongly forced the removal of endangered turtles, wildlife defenders say.
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