OHIO – TOLEDO – N-VIRO CLASS A SEWAGE SLUDGE – FECAL COLIFORM IN SAMPLE: “it's the smell. "It's like
putting your head in a septic tank,'' the Swanton Township woman said. "It's like ammonia, fish, dead rats. It makes
your throat burn and makes your eyes water."
OHIO TOLEDO Article published Friday, April 27, 2007 N-VIRO SOIL = CLASS A SEWAGE SLUDGE -- Health
board orders sludge runoff near Toledo Express Airport tested By JENNI LAIDMAN BLADE SCIENCE
WRITER Excerpts:
For Sandy Komisarek, it's the smell. "It's like putting your head in a septic tank,'' the Swanton Township
woman said. "It's like ammonia, fish, dead rats. It makes your throat burn and makes your eyes water."
But for the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department, the problem at the Seaway Sand & Stone operation near Toledo
Express Airport is far more serious than the smell of 19,000 tons of a product made from treated sewage.
The health board voted yesterday to insist the owners of the defunct gravel pit take steps to assure that its mine
reclamation efforts won't contaminate the area's wells with fecal matter.
The health department's decision requires the company to create a retention pond as a temporary holding site for
potentially contaminated runoff. The company also must engage an independent laboratory to test runoff
water for fecal coliform - an indicator of fecal contamination.
If Gerken Companies of Napoleon, which owns Seaway Sand & Stone, fails to take those steps, the board said it will
take legal action. But the company said the health department is exaggerating the possibility of risk. The health
department tested the sludge product called N-Viro Soil and made by N-Viro International Corp. of Toledo. It found no
fecal coliform in one sample and very low levels of the bacteria in the other two, said Jim Scheub, Gerken's regulatory
compliance manager.
N-Viro Soil is considered essentially pure by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the product is virtually
unregulated. But the situation in Swanton Township is one regulators could never have
anticipated, said Alan Ruffell, director of environmental health for the health department.
No one ever planned for N-Viro Soil to sit right beside a pit that leads to the region's aquifer, nor did anyone
anticipate the soil would be used to restore land that drains directly into a water supply, he said.
So while N-Viro Soil meets requirements for land application, "it's not going to be in compliance with that fecal
coliform,'' Mr. Ruffell said. "We can't have fecal coliform in our drinking water."
He said the township is frustrated by the lack of assurance from the EPA about the safety of N-Viro Soil. "We've asked
them to tell us this absolutely can't hurt anybody. The EPA is being a little vague on that,''
Mr. Warkentin said.