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  4. Industry Worries about EPA Plan to Define Biosolids as Solid Waste

Industry Worries about EPA Plan to Define Biosolids as Solid Waste

Date: September 21, 2009

Source: News Room

Wastewater utilities are concerned that EPA is moving closer to classifying biosolids as a solid waste which would make it significantly more expensive to treat and dispose of them. Classification as a solid waste would simultaneously subject biosolid incinerators to strict air toxics requirements and complicate water act rules governing land-application of the waste. It is estimated that 17 to 20 percent of biosolids are incinerated, usually in areas where it cannot be land applied. Currently, biosolid incinerators are regulated under section 112(k) of the air act, a less stringent approach, rather than section 129, which requires EPA to regulate a defined list of air pollutants, including both air toxics and criteria pollutants. Lately, the EPA has had to reconsider its stance as a result of long-running litigation in the U.S. Court of Appeals that eventually resulted in a 2007 ruling in Natural Resources Defense Council v. EPA vacating the agency's air toxics rule governing Commercial and Industrial Solid Waste Incineration Units. EPA said earlier this year that because the court also struck down a separate rule governing boilers that burn solid waste, the agency would work to clarify its definition of what non-hazardous secondary materials constitute "solid waste."

The National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), representing publicly owned treatment works (POTWs), sent a recent letter to EPA arguing that "Defining solid waste to include sewage sludge will create enormous uncertainty regarding the recycling and disposal programs that fully operate in compliance with [Clean Water Act rules allowing land disposal of sewage sludge] that are protective of human health and the environment." NACWA argues that because Congress incorporated the water act definition of POTW into section 112, they intended that biosolids be regulated under that section and for the two statutes to work in tandem.

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