news story / By Japhet Weeks

Not on my land!

Steve McHaney of Winzler & Kelly, the firm that authored Rio Dell’s environmental impact report, certainly thinks so. “I’m personally more concerned about our food supply,” he said last Friday. “But biosolids put on pastureland get people very excited.” Besides, he added, “Biosolids are mostly organic material.”

Excluding, of course, the cocktail of pharmaceuticals they may contain, plus arsenic, lead, mercury and seven other metals the EPA regulates, not including the hundreds of other chemicals they don’t. Caroline Snyder, president of Citizens for Sludge-Free Land, and an adamant critic of sewage sludge — re-branded as “biosolids” in the early 1990s to make it more palatable to the public — said last week that the trouble with sludge is that it’s so unpredictable: What people pour down their drain isn’t regulated well enough. “We have to make it clear that this is not a long-term solution for agriculture,” she said.

Despite the proposal’s controversy, Rio Dell city officials say they’ve found a neighborhood landowner willing to work with them.

Rio Dell’s mayor, Bud Leonard, said Monday that the city has reached an oral agreement with Robert Mozzetti, whose property on Metropolitan Road lies nearest the city. But the Potters and their neighbors aren’t out of the woods. Mozzetti, who could not be reached for comment, hasn’t yet signed a contract with the city. Plus, it’s difficult to say anything for certain about the future of the project, according to Hale: “It’s so complicated, it’s hard to speculate,” he said.

Regardless of whose property is eventually used by Rio Dell, the Potters still worry that the city — with its less-than-pristine record of sewage management — will put the entire area’s ground water supplies at risk, as well as potentially endanger the health of residents there by irrigating the fields with treated effluent.

Last Saturday, the weather was overcast as the Potters walked past a swathe of certified-organic pastureland. Roland Potter pointed out that high summer winds — Rio Dell proposes irrigating annually between May and October — might spread effluent beyond the prescribed area.

Also, the application of biosolids proposed for five acres of land would preclude that spot from being certified organic, and may affect groundwater supplies and local wildlife, the Potters worry. Moreover, the Metropolitan area is located smack in the middle of a 100-year flood plain — one more reason why the Potters don’t want potentially toxic substances on or near their fields.

“As a neighborhood,” Potter said, “we don’t have any confidence whatsoever.”

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