| Sentinel Staff Writer
June 29, 2009
The foul waters of Lake Okeechobee, the failing health
of the Everglades and even sick dolphins along
the South Florida coast might seem like troubles so distant they could hardly
be the Orlando area's responsibility.
Yet a Florida law — which environmentalists say is being thwarted by state
officials — says otherwise, banning a decades-old practice set in motion when a
toilet is flushed or a kitchen sink is drained in Central Florida.
Treatment of that watery waste produces sludge, which local sewage utilities at
least partly disinfect and dispose of as fertilizer. A lot of that fertilizer
winds up on cattle ranches and citrus groves south of Orlando, where rain
runoff and flooding can release chemicals that poison the wetlands and
waterways from here to Florida Bay.
The Florida Legislature passed a law two years ago that environmental activists
took as a victory that calls for an end to spreading of sludge within a vast
area that drains into Osceola County's large lakes and then south to the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee,
the Everglades and the coastal estuaries of South Florida.
Now those environmentalists are accusing state officials
of sidestepping the law, even as the Everglades watershed gets sicker by the
day.
"There's a continued buildup of a pollutant that's wreaking havoc with the
ecosystem," said Eric Draper, Audubon of Florida's policy director in Tallahassee. "It's going to be extremely expensive to clean up."
Done right, applying treated sewage sludge to cropland spares Florida's
environment from great harm.
Through the 1970s, poorly treated effluent was discharged directly into rivers
and lakes. Then, treatment plants began to improve at using bacteria to digest
raw sewage — a process that cleans up the wastewater. But in doing so, a single
plant produces many tons a day of excess bacteria, a mudlike byproduct known as
sludge.
Where sewage once turned the state's waters putrid, including Central Florida's
Little Wekiva River, it is now rendered into
something useful for farmers and ranchers.
But the spreading of sludge backfires at sites prone to flooding. When that
occurs, nitrogen and phosphorus compounds are flushed into nearby watery
environments, causing a buildup of harmful algae and rotting muck.
By 2005, then-Gov. Jeb Bush and state lawmakers wanted to
expand Florida's ongoing efforts to restore the Everglades to include
tributaries and headwaters between Lake Okeechobee and Orlando. Within that
region is a mosaic of low-lying and soggy agricultural lands often used for
sludge spreading.
A key part of that expanded restoration effort was the 2007 law, which stated
that officials "may not authorize the disposal of domestic wastewater
residuals" within the ecosystem. Environmentalists cheered then but say
now that they see little evidence that the state's environmental agency is
complying.
"The Department of Environmental Protection has figured out how not to
stop it," said Paul Gray, Audubon of Florida's Okeechobee science
coordinator.
Audubon officials have probed DEP's data and found
"sloppy" records that don't provide a clear understanding of how much
sludge is spread at any given site. But from the figures available, the group
has assembled a report sharply critical of DEP for doing little to stop the
spreading of sludge within the Everglades watershed.
According to Gray, farms and ranches are getting several times more sludge than
their crops or pasture grass requires. Those sites, in effect, have become
dumping grounds, he said.
The report also accuses DEP of wrongly exempting a particular type of sludge
from the state law. The type of fertilizer in question is more highly
sterilized, dried into pellets and often bagged for sale. Just how the 2007 law
applies to that form of sludge is disputed.
Charles Lee, Audubon's Maitland-based director of advocacy,
said lawmakers thought they were exempting packages of refined sludge that
would be sold in stores for use on residential lawns. Instead, he said, the more
refined sludge is hauled in large trucks to the Everglades watershed for
commercial dispersal, with DEP's approval.
The overall result is that far more fertilizer pollution flows south to Lake
Okeechobee, the Everglades and coastal waters than the aquatic plants, fish and
wildlife in those environments can tolerate, Audubon officials say.
DEP's Tallahassee-based coordinator for sludge disposal, Maurice Barker, says
his agency is doing what it can to enforce the law.
"Did we have authority to go in there and stop everybody on Dec. 31, 2007?
That's not what the legislation says," Barker said. "It says after
that date we can no longer authorize land application."
Barker said that, by 2012, the practice of spreading sludge will have "hit
a wall" — in other words, by then existing permits will have lapsed. But
that won't end the use of the more refined sludge, he acknowledged.
He also acknowledged that his agency's records don't provide a complete picture
of sludge spreading in the watershed. But he said much is still unknown about
the environmental consequences of sludge spreading, which is why the law is a
good idea.
"You're really talking about very incremental, or maybe almost hardly
measurable, impacts in like a one-year, two-year or three-year study," he
said.
Many
sewage-plant operators already want to move beyond the costs and environmental
concerns associated with spreading sludge. The city of Sanford recently started
up a machine that subjects its sludge to high temperatures, which reduces its
volume and extracts energy.
Now, the city of Orlando is assembling somewhat similar machinery at its Iron
Bridge Water Pollution Control Facility near the University of Central
Florida. It will use extreme heat and pressure to reduce the sludge to an
amount that can be affordably dumped in a landfill. The system is also designed
to extract more than enough energy from the sludge to power itself. Sludge, the
city has learned, is as potent an energy source as coal.
Orlando Public Works Director Alan Oyler said his department had increasing
difficulty finding suitable areas for spreading sludge. Rapid development has
planted subdivisions on many of the region's high and dry parcels, leaving only
wetter sites for disposal, he said.
The project's team leader, David Sloan, thinks sludge trucks should
never venture near sensitive environments.
"This industry needs to evolve to a higher level," Sloan said.
Kevin Spear can be reached at kspear@orlandosentinel.com
or 407-420-5062.