Ban on spreading biosolids needs to be enforced now

To The Daily Sun,

EPA unable to access the impact of hundreds of unregulated pollutants in land applied Biosolids on human health and the environment. Office of the inspector general report No -19-P-002 dated Nov. 15, 2018.

Oh, REALLY! If this does not worry you, it should!

In the 66-page report, the EPA identified 352 pollutants in biosolids, but cannot consider these pollutants for further regulation due to the lack of data and risk assessment. So let us keep dumping and spreading until we pollute the land and groundwater! 

Guess what, Gilmanton has continued to be a dumping ground even after we voted to ban this hazardous material in 2017. We, the voters, were told that its use is a grandfathered use. You cannot grandfather spreading hazardous waste. This following quote is N.H. case law: “A use of land, which at the time a restriction on the use went into effect, was established (or vested), and has not been discontinued or abandoned, can continue indefinitely, unless it includes an activity which is a nuisance or harmful to the public health and welfare.”

Last year, 2018, 2,129 tons of sludge was dumped and spread in Gilmanton. Let me put this into perspective for you: That is about 2,129 one-ton dump trucks coming to your neighborhood and dumping hazardous waste. Waste from as far away as Mechanicsville and Troy, New York. Reference a public notice in The Laconia Daily Sun dated 2/13/19. The population of Rensselair sewer district in Troy, New York, was 159,429 as of 2010 census. There is lots of room for pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, PFOAs, and chemicals that the EPA cannot regulate without more data in this sludge.

Forget how great our elementary school is,  think of the future health risk to your children and grandchildren. Your child goes to a neighbor to play, and next door to a field spread with sludge the previous fall. Those lumps in the field are not cow manure, that is sludge. Your child has a reaction, and you go to the doctor who isn’t going to say it was sludge. He will not know. Years from now the groundwater is contaminated, like Merrimack. Too late!

The ban on spreading biosolids is a zoning ordinance in Gilmanton, just like our aquifer protection is in our zoning ordinance. It needs to be enforced now! Write your selectmen, organize and stop this now before it is too late.

Sandra Guarino

Gilmanton