 The Toledo Blade
July 16, 2000 REPUBLICANS in Congress opposed to more EPA regulations on clean water ought talk to their colleagues in the Maumee River basin and those of other streams that supply drinking water. Nearly every year, their constituents upstream of Toledo must turn off their taps to avoid ingesting nitrates and other noxious farm run-off chemicals. So polluted are our inland waterways, by known and unknown sources, that we are told to eat but one fish a month from some of them. A new report from the National Academy of Sciences estimates that 60,000 babies born each year face learning disabilities and neurological impairment because their moms ate mercury-tainted fish. Another major study has found most cancers are caused by environmental and behavioral factors, like chemical pollution and unhealthy life habits. Thus today's GOP ought to be guarded in screaming "dirty tricks" at the administration, whose EPA put a lid on pollution flowing indirectly into some 20,000 already-dirty streams into which fertilizer, animal waste, and weed killers seep. They're mad at the President, who delayed signing a revenue bill, which had a GOP rider barring the EPA from spending to promulgate new clean water rules - until after this new rule was promulgated. They should get over it, and bring a savvier, narrower, and more relevant focus to the debate. There are real issues to discuss. First, this rule is limited to runoff in 20,000 "dirty" streams. What about the clean ones? Also, the EPA has been languid in zapping known pollution sources, the largest of which are the factory farms - like Buckeye Egg in Ohio - that nationally, experts say, produce more than a billion tons of manure a year, compared with 40 million tons for humans. Ohio's Republican attorney general, Betty Montgomery, has shown some grit in attempting to clean up Buckeye Egg. So how on earth does the EPA expect states to oversee indirect pollution sources from sources likely hard to identify? The situation is further complicated by the Centers for Disease Control. In a new report, CDC is critical of EPA standards on sewer sludge used as fertilizer. There are two standards of sludge, Class A, in which all pathogens are killed via a pasteurization or sterilization process; and Class B, in which only 90 per cent are killed. The Class A standards are 2,000 times more stringent than those for Class B, says Pat Nicholson of N-Viro, Inc., which cleans up, Class A-style, some 40,000 tons of Toledo sewer sludge each year for use as fertilizer. The distinction was less critical before no-till farming, he says, when sludge was worked into the soil instead of left atop it. The EPA's sludge standards have not kept abreast of agricultural practice. Contaminated sludge, spread or stored above ground, produces disease risk, asserts EPA microbiologist David Lewis, who is suing the agency, he claims for trying to fire him for saying so. We all share EPA director Carol Browner's goal of fishable, drinkable waters. But no one in politics nears the environmental table with clean hands. Remember that in the heat of the presidential campaign, when verbal run-off becomes as fouled as our dirty streams. Back to Ohio state page
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