Fort Worth’s ‘sewage sludge’ raises a stink in the country
It is a picturesque day in the country — the sun is out and the temperature is in the upper 60s as Luanne Langley drives down a bumpy dirt road lined with pastures and homes in Hill County.
But when she rolls down her window, instead of breathing in fresh, cool air, she gets a whiff of something that smells like rotting flesh. Flies swarm into her pickup, and she rolls the window up before more can get in.
“This is not right. I should be able to enjoy my home and my property without this smell,” she said.
The odor is from what the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality calls “sewage sludge,” which is being used as fertilizer on nearby farms.
The sludge — or what Fort Worth calls “biosolids” — comes from every single home, business and manufacturer in the city at the rate of about 90 tons a day. The sewage is treated daily at the Village Creek Water Reclamation Facility to rid it of disease-causing germs.
It is then handed over to Renda Environmental, the city’s contractor, which has a waiting list of eager farmers who want the sludge for the wealth of nutrients it returns to the soil.
The city has recycled sludge this way for more than two decades, but the population in these rural farming communities has skyrocketed in recent years, which means there are more nonfarmers to complain.
Johnson County, where Langley and her husband moved in 2011, had a population of 45,768 in 1970. By the 2010 Census, it had risen to 150,934, a jump of 230 percent.
“Urban sprawl is our biggest challenge,” said Todd Kimbrell Jr., a fifth-generation farmer in Ellis and Hill counties. “Farmland disappears by the day to urban development. We have been farming this ground for generations and we get a subdivision in the middle of our operation and we are supposed to change our operation to suit that subdivision?”
Being ‘good neighbors’
The sludge is cheaper — and better — than commercial fertilizers, Kimbrell said.
“We can’t buy commercial fertilizer, or for that matter any kind of fertilizer, to match the benefits we get from the biosolids, with the organic matter and nutrients,” Kimbrell said. “There is a lot better yield of the crop, a lot more water-holding capacity, and it improves soil health. And what I have learned is the soil health is the biggest benefit.”
And the whole community benefits, not just farmers, he said.
“The more yield, the more revenue the farmers have, and the more revenue we spend in town. The more yield, the more labor it takes. More crop yield creates more jobs. It is just a chain reaction that people are blind to. Agriculture is one of the top two industries in the country. It is just a big deal.”
The sludge “is such a good resource with a bad smell,” he said. “If people can put up with the temporary smell, the benefits are endless.”
Kimbrell, who has had the product applied right up to his house, said he would get it every year if he could. But because of the waiting list, it is typically applied once every two years.
Langley isn’t against recycling the sludge on farmland, but she said something must be done about the smell. And until then, it shouldn’t be used, she said.
Langley said she has canceled parties at her home because of the smell, has gagged on it going to feed her horses and has had trouble sleeping because of it.
“They just aren’t being good neighbors,” Langley said of the city.
She isn’t alone in thinking that.
In May 2013, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality received a petition from Ellis County to prohibit the land application of sludge within 3 miles of a city limit in a county with a population of 140,000 or more that is next to a county with a population of 2 million to 4 million.
In response, the commission launched a study of the odors and the biosolids process and created new rules for applying sludge that took effect in October. They include requiring odor control plans from certain municipalities — Fort Worth among them — keeping the product at least 750 feet from homes and creating a new biosolid rating that takes odor into account.
Officials also sent logs to residents so they could keep track of which days and times they smelled the odors and how offensive they were.
Langley fills out her form almost daily.
Also in response to complaints, Vanassa Joseph, spokeswoman for the Trinity River Authority, said the agency started taking biosolids to local landfills in October to be “good neighbors.”
“The agricultural areas benefited from using the biosolids for many years, but some of those areas experienced urban growth,” she said. “It is a beneficial product and we certainly agree with that.”
But to avoid areas with urban sprawl, Joseph said, the agency would have to haul the product even farther, and that wasn’t feasible. She said officials hope to start recycling the sludge again with improving technology.
The city’s plan
Buster Fichera, assistant director of the Fort Worth Water Department, said taking biosolids to landfills is not a good option. The landfills will just fill up more quickly, and the material is a perfectly safe — even desired — resource for farmers, he said.
“We are doing the right thing with this stuff, and we recognize that we need to be more neighborly and we are going to try to do that,” Fichera said.
“It is all about quality of life. We don’t want to impact anyone’s quality of life. We recognize that has been happening, and we are taking steps to alleviate that, with the understanding that everyone has to realize — the odors will not go to zero, because all fertilizers have an odor.”
The smell of biosolids has gotten worse in the last few years, Fichera said, at least partly because of water conservation: The less water going down the pipes with the waste, the more concentrated the waste is.
A second reason for the worsening smell is that the product has less iron now. That could be because a manufacturer in the city stopped using iron in its processes or stopped manufacturing altogether.
Fichera’s goal is to use marketable fertilizers as a base line for odor, but it will take time and money to get there.
Fichera has launched a short-term plan to alleviate the odor — at a capital cost of $6.5 million and an annual budget impact of $3 million.
It includes adding more chemicals, like iron, to bond with the sulfide molecule, which is causing the nasty smell. He hopes to implement that process in the next month.
The long-term costs are even more eye-popping — $38 million in capital improvements through 2018 and an additional $57 million through 2025. That includes improving how biosolids are processed, such as drying them to lessen the smell and making them easier to transport.
That impact on residents will be a 4 to 6 percent cumulative increase in rates, above current projections, through 2025.
Councilman W.B. “Zim” Zimmerman, who toured Wise County application sites about a year ago, said Fort Worth needs to fix the odor problem as soon as possible.
“Something is going on and we need to get to the bottom of it and make sure we figure out what is wrong and fix it,” Zimmerman said.
Complaints against Renda
On her way to get dog food two weeks ago, Langley came across Renda Environmental trucks hauling biosolids and decided to follow them.
She saw the trucks track biosolids onto the road, which she said was just irresponsible. She showed pictures of the waste on the county road to the Fort Worth City Council last week.
In an interview, Zimmerman said: “That is just sloppy work. That ought to be able to be taken care of right away.
“Definitely there has got to be accountability. To say that it is a contractor is a poor excuse for me. The contract ought to specify the way in which the performance of the contract is done, and it ought to have penalties in there if it is not done correctly.”
But Ben Davis, the company’s environmental program manager, said Renda cleans up the roads at the end of every workday, as required by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
He said tracking is a problem on “any construction job.”
“They come up and see tracking, but they don’t take the time to come back and take a picture of when we cleaned it up,” Davis said.
The city also had complaints last week that Renda applied the product in the rain. But both Davis and Fichera said the company stopped the application as soon as the rain started, as required by the commission.
Twelve complaints from residents have been filed with the commission against Renda’s sludge program, ranging from the odor to concerns about runoff. And the company has been mailed four notices of violations and six notices of enforcement from the commission for nuisance odors, road tracking and improper storage.
Most of those violations were resolved. But two odor enforcements and two enforcements for failure to obtain authorization before construction of storage sites are pending.
The company has not had to pay any fines, and the city has never been issued a violation.
Despite worries from some residents that the land application of sludge is unhealthful, it is approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and is practiced in all 50 states and in most of the developed world.
Still, Langley said, she just wants to enjoy her home without worrying about the constant smell, and the city should make sure Renda follows all rules set by the state environmental commission.
“Just because I live in the country does not mean this is OK,” she said.
This story was originally published November 9, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Fort Worth’s ‘sewage sludge’ raises a stink in the country."