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SEATTLE TIMES - When you're mayor of a town the size of Quincy,
Wash., you hear just about everything. So it was only natural
that Patty Martin would catch some farmers in her Central Washington
hamlet wondering aloud why their wheat yields were lousy, their
corn crops thin, their cows sickly. Some blamed the weather.
Some blamed themselves. But only after Mayor Martin led them
in weeks of investigation did they identify a possible new culprit:
fertilizer. They don't have proof that the stuff they put on
their land to feed it actually was killing it. But they discovered
What's happening in Washington is happening around the United
States. The use of industrial Recycling said to have benefitsAny material that has fertilizing qualities can be labeled and used as a fertilizer, even if it contains dangerous chemicals and heavy metals. The wastes come from iron, zinc and aluminum smelting, mining, cement kilns, the burning of medical and municipal wastes, wood-product slurries and a variety of other heavy industries. Federal and state governments encourage the practice in the
name of recycling and, in fact, it The problem is that the "beneficial materials" in
industrial waste, such as nitrogen and magnesium to help crops
grow, often are accompanied by dangerous heavy metals such as
cadmium and lead. "Nowhere in the country has a law that
says if certain levels of heavy metals are exceeded, it can't
be a fertilizer," Kashani said. "That would be nice
to have." Instead, officials rely on fertilizer producers
to document that their products are safe, and never check back
for toxic components. There is not even a requirement that toxics
be listed on ingredient labels. The Times also found that: -- One major producer, Monsanto, has stopped recycling waste
into fertilizer on its own because "Is somebody going to sue Monsanto because we allowed it to be made as a fertilizer?" -- Among the substances found in some recycled fertilizers are cadmium, lead, arsenic, radionuclides and dioxins, at levels some scientists say may pose a threat to human health. Although the health effects are widely disputed, there is undisputed evidence the substances enter plant roots. Just as there are no conclusive data to prove a danger, there are none to prove the safety of the practice. In other nations, including Canada, that lack of certainty has led to strict regulation. There, the approach is to limit toxic wastes in fertilizer until the practice is proven safe. Here, the approach is to allow it until it's proven unsafe. Although experts disagree as to whether these fertilizers are a health threat, most say further study is needed. Yet, little is under way. Few farmers, and probably even fewer consumers, know about the practice. "This is a definite problem," said Richard Loeppert, a soil scientist at Texas A&M University and author of several published papers on toxic elements in fertilizers. "The public needs to know." Some remember the Alar scarePatty Martin is not a popular politician in parts of Grant County these days. Since she began raising the alarm about the use of toxic waste as fertilizer, she has been threatened with a lawsuit by a local farmer, been verbally attacked in town meetings and seen the City Council - led by a son-in-law of the local manager of the Cenex fertilizer company - pressure her to shut up or quit. Many farmers in and around Quincy, a town of 4,030, say they're
doing very well, thank "We had a woman starting that one, too, and a lot of
people got hurt by it," Bill Weber, an apple and potato
farmer, said at one council meeting, bringing nods and laughter.
"We don't see a problem," said Greg Richardson, Quincy-based
president of the Potato Growers of Washington and a staunch defender
of recycling wastes into fertilizer. Richardson wrote Martin
a letter telling her to make "a statement of your trust
in the appropriate government agencies and their ability to deal
with State environmental, agriculture and health officials have
looked at the situation in Quincy. The environmental and agriculture
officials, who encourage recycling waste into fertilizer, say
that as far as they can tell, there's no danger to crops or people.
But some admit they wish they knew more. Kashani wants standards
for heavy metals in fertilizer. Absent that, he said, he has
to apply a general standard that recycled products cannot "pose
a threat to public health or the environment." Regulators
in California have been studying the issue for years and still
cannot say what constitutes a safe level for lead, cadmium and
arsenic in fertilizer. Mayor Martin's husband works for a potato
processor, and when she feels under the harshest attack, he tells
her she's doing the right thing. "I just have the unfortunate
distinction of having stumbled across this question and asking
questions Trouble was brewed in pondHow Martin and her supporters stumbled
upon the discovery of the recycling of toxic waste into fertilizer
begins at a man-made, concrete pond across the street from Quincy
High School. The pond, 36 feet wide, 54 feet long and 5 feet
deep, was built in 1986 and used by Cenex to rinse fertilizer
from farm equipment. State investigators later found that the
company also illegally used the pond to dump pesticides. Cenex
closed the pond in 1990. By then, it contained about 38,000 gallons
of toxic goo, with heavy metals, suspected carcinogens, even So Cenex decided to save money by spreading it on a rented plot of cornfield and let nature take its course. The land would act as a natural filter for the hazardous wastes. Cenex struck a deal with lessee farmer Larry Schaapman. He was paid more than $10,000 to let Cenex put the material, which the company claimed had fertilizer value, on his 100 acres. It killed the land. The corn crop failed there in 1990, even though Schaapman and Cenex applied extra water to try to wash the toxics through the soil. Hardly anything grew there the next year, either. The land belonged to Dennis DeYoung, whose family had farmed it since the early 1950s before he leased it to Schaapman. Since the land was poisoned, DeYoung couldn't make his payments, and the company that financed him foreclosed on a $100,000 debt. DeYoung also owed Cenex money for fertilizer and seed. Soon after, Cenex bought the land from the financing company. "They run a farmer out of business, then they get his land," DeYoung said. "Now isn't that something." DeYoung sued Cenex for damages for ruining the soil, lost in summary judgment but won a reversal in the State Court of Appeals earlier this year. He's preparing for a new trial. He also managed to stir up an investigation by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pesticide use. In a plea bargain, Cenex and its manager were given one year of probation for illegal disposal of a pesticide in the "product" spread on DeYoung's land. The company never had to explain how the heavy metals - enough cadmium, beryllium and chromium to qualify as a Superfund site - got into the rinse pond in town. That's where Martin and her supporters come in. Farmers began
comparing notesTom Witte is a 53-year-old farmer with 200 acres
and about 100 cows a few miles east of Quincy. His father purchased
the farm in 1956. Witte had a disastrous year in 1991. His red
spring wheat, silage corn and grain corn all yielded about one-third
the normal levels. "You always blame yourself, you know,"
Witte said. "You always think you screwed up. But then it
wasn't just the crops. Then I started having all these weird
problems with the cows." Six of his cows got sick and died.
The Witte reached in the tank and scooped about two pounds of
dust, rust and residue from the bottom. He sent the material
to Brookside Farms Laboratory in Ohio, which found levels of
arsenic, Martin, Witte, DeYoung and others began researching fertilizer
manufacturing. In their reading, they discovered that, as a result
of landfill costs and the stringent environmental laws of the
1970s, a lot of heavy industries were recycling and marketing
their hazardous waste as fertilizer. In their With the recycling, Alcoa saved at least $17 million in disposal
costs, according to company documents, and many farmers used
the products with apparent success. But one Oregon farmer who
used it saw his red-clover crop mysteriously wilt. In 1993, he
hired James Vomocil, an Oregon State University soils expert,
to test his fields and fertilizers. Vomocil said L-Bar's sales
flier was But a 1994 fax from L-Bar owner Frank Melfi indicates otherwise.
It says Cenex had already bought the L-Bar product and was considering
buying 30,000 tons that year in "some sort of mutual marketing
or venture relationship." Although that deal never happened,
Melfi says now that he At the time, his corn, beans and hay were going bad and he
didn't know why. And the more he and others read about what went
into recycled fertilizers, the more they began to worry about
possible health effects. Martin encouraged Witte and DeYoung
to submit hair samples to a Chicago laboratory that tests for
heavy metals in human tissues. The lab, Doctor's Data Inc., found
high levels
"There's no enforcement. Nobody is watching the companies.
Nobody can tell me what's really Agriculture Director Jim Jesernig wrote back, agreeing there
were problems and promising to Frustrated with the lack of action by public officials, Martin
contacted The Times, asking the newspaper to develop this information.
Potential for danger unclearSo what to make of Mayor Martin and
her crusaders? Are they, as Richardson of the Potato Growers
of Washington insists, unnecessarily "opening up an ugly
can of worms"? All that's clear is that the potential for
danger is unclear. Some scientists and public officials say the
benefits of recycling waste outweigh the possible Mayor Martin and friends are raising good questions, Cook
says. "Let's put it this way: We're well into the use of
these materials before these questions are even asked, and that
doesn't seem to me to be a good sign that we've been very rigorous
in our science on this." Meanwhile, Quincy farmers such
as Witte, DeYoung and Duke Giraud want some action. Giraud lost
his family's onion business because of poor yields, and he suffers
from respiratory problems. He figures he unknowingly spread recycled-waste
fertilizer on his fields. It might be too late for him, he says,
but he wants government agencies to look out for the welfare
of other farmers. "They have to start testing fertilizer
for what they don't say is in there," Giraud says, "because
they have no problem letting them add who-knows-what." Let
us know what you think. E-mail Duff Wilson at dwil-new@seatimes.com
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