Wastewater Agencies Want Relaxed Bans On Sludge In Maryland

Maryland agriculture officials said early this month that they are looking to relax a four-year-old regulation aimed at reducing farm runoff pollution into the Chesapeake Bay after farmers and some municipal sewage agencies complained about the costs of complying.

The regulation, which took effect July 1, affects mainly dairy farmers and municipal wastewater agencies that generate treated sewage sludge, according to the Bay Journal.

The rule requires farms and sewage facilities to build or expand storage facilities to hold their manure or sludge through winter until it can be applied in spring. Many of the state’s dairy farms already have done so, but some have complained to the department that they could not meet the deadline.

Though adopted in 2012, the effective date of the regulation was delayed, giving farmers and wastewater treatment agencies time to expand winter storage facilities. Small farms and sewage facilities were given even longer, until 2020.

State agriculture officials said they intend to keep the 2020 deadline for small farms and sewage facilities, the Bay Journal reported. However, for the larger operations that are unable to stop spreading this winter, officials have said that they would ease the rule and simply require them to comply as soon as possible.

Officials added that they’re considering adding one new precaution against nutrient pollution which would require a 100-foot setback during spreading from streams and drainage ditches.

Dwight Dotterer, chief of Maryland Department of Agriculture’s (MDA) nutrient management program, said it made sense to give farmers more time to spread manure in late fall. He also said it seemed fairer to treat farmers on both sides of the Bay the same.

According to the Bay Journal, Dotterer said MDA wants to drop the requirement for incorporating manure or sludge because it conflicts with the no-till farming practices that the state has encouraged and that many farmers now use. As for the emergency spreading prohibition, Dotterer said, the department “just feels like that’s a mistake. I am not quite sure how we can do that, not allow any emergency spreading.”

The nutrient management advisory panel includes farmers, industry representatives, and state legislators with many farms in their districts. The committee also heard from representatives of the biosolids industry, who believe that they should not have been included in the regulations. Biosolids are highly treated, they argued, and represent a much smaller amount of the waste spread on farm fields in Maryland than manure.

When properly treated, the U.S. EPA considers land application of sewage sludge to be an “environmentally acceptable way” of dealing with it.

“We are not here asking to be exempt,” said Pamela Kasemeyer, an attorney for Synagro, a large biosolids company that takes care of treated sewage sludge from many municipal wastewater treatment plants, “but I think there are substantial differences between biosolids and manure management.”

For more about sludge processing visit Water Online’s Sludge And Biosolids Processing Solutions Center.