Sludgewatch member Maureen Reilly says she is shocked by the latest posting on the provincial government’s Environmental Registry (EBR) regarding the spreading of non-agricultural source materials (NASM) on agricultural lands.

“This is a horrible proposal, posted as usual in the middle of summer vacation, and for a shockingly short period of 30 days,” Reilly said.

She claims that even though sludge-spreading companies like Terratec, the company that takes waste from the Cobourg wastewater facility, have racked up over $600,000 in fines and more than 43 convictions, the province proposes to say that sewage sludge, paper sludge, and similar wastes will no longer require a Ministry of Environment waste approval certificate of approval. It will be managed like a nutrient, like manure.

“This change in regulations, if adopted, will strip away the enforceability, public accountability, transparency, and environmental safety provisions that are currently required by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment,” Reilly said.

If a sludge truck takes sludge to a landfill or an energy plant or an incinerator, it needs a licensed waste permit hauler plus permit to dispose. If the same sludge heads to a farm field, none of these are required, she said.

NASM includes materials like leaf and yard waste, fruit and vegetable peels, food processing waste, pulp and paper biosolids, sewage biosolids and any other material that is not from an agricultural source that is intended for application to agricultural land as a nutrient, says Northumberland-Quinte West MPP Lou Rinaldi.

According to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, the proposal would manage non-agricultural source material on agricultural land as a beneficial nutrient. the government also says it would streamline the regulatory process by removing overlapping approvals, provide notification to the local district office of the MOE prior to the land application, and ensure environmental protection by including all agricultural land where NASM is applied in Ontario, as opposed to just those farms that are already required to have a nutrient management strategy.

Approvals would also be required under the Nutrient Management Act, 2002 for the application on agricultural land of materials with higher metal or pathogen concentrations that are still within acceptable levels (e. g. sewage biosolids and pulp and paper biosolids).

The proposed regulatory framework is not a “one-size fits all” approach to managing NASM. Materials destined for land application would have to follow strict rules and standards set out in the regulation. Materials that do not meet the beneficial quality standards for use as a nutrient would be prohibited from being land applied as a nutrient on agricultural land, states the EBR posting.

MOE has been approving the land application of biosolids and other NASM for over 30 years with no objective evidence of health or environmental impacts when requirements were followed, MPP Rinaldi says.

A public meeting is scheduled for July 9 in Newcastle.