Sq*'2\?D\O To Angie Cathrie Clerk to make a presentation about the - - PDF document

1:00 p.m. Norm Gurr re Chemicals in sewage Going into the Lake and Land and Alternate Solutions to Consider (I.E.) Page 25 of 171

To Angie Cathrie Clerk

Sq*'2\?D\O

lf~

~1:~:lcouncil

to make a presentation about the chemicals in sewage going into the lake and land and alternate solutions to consider in my concern over the environment and the destruction occurring in our lake, lands and rivers

1:00 p.m. Norm Gurr re Chemicals in sewage Going into the Lake and Land and Alternate Solutions to Consider (I.E.) Page 26 of 171

'OC-~iOlithjimIJito~nt:tJDrmlU-I'UJeIfD~!r

01'-" U ~ears

service before amalgamation who has,:-spent money and taken the time to write this with nothing to gain but ¢he environment. -

ASK What happens to the mass C1L.chemicals

that enter Central Sewage Plants?

A PLEA TO STOP -

think

GET THE FACTS - DO RESEARCH

• BEFORE YOU RUSH INTO A CENTRAL SEWAGE SYSTEM THAT

SCIENTISTS ARE PROVING VERY WRONG· ENVIRONMENTALLY, IN DESTROYING OUR LANDS, THE LAKE AN,D OUR RIVERS. PLEASE TAKE THE TIME BY AT LEAST EXAMINE THIS PRESENTATION AND MY SOURCES FIRST. THERE IS NO RUSH.

And I add = not to say 'budget breaking' of our municipalities and residents when there are other non polluting and far better and far cheaper alternatives even beyond septic tanks. Then there is the huge future savings caused by no wages and energy and upkeep through not operating THE EXTRA water and sewage plants.

I have no interest in selling any project as a 79 year old retired school principal

from Toronto. • nor in South Bruce or Sauble. My only interest is my huge concern about what we have done to the world's environment and especially Lake Huron whose fish have been destroyed by the sewage outflows from central sewage plant [albeit by other causes such as

• verfishing, invasion of foreign species - etc.] in my life span. The Ontario

government in its out of date policies will say all is ok. Its answer to sludge,

1:00 p.m. Norm Gurr re Chemicals in sewage Going into the Lake and Land and Alternate Solutions to Consider (I.E.) Page 27 of 171

<which is only part of the problem, is building a plant in Grey to process sludge. It . another tax burden, Please check my research yourselves.

I CAN GIVE YOU WEB SITES TO CHECK IT OUT INCLUDING Boston

University School of Public Health - Cornell University- a number of CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES and USA scientists: USA government organilations such as The USA Geology Survey, European governments and studies.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

• In 1989, New York City had a major problem with sewage sludge

which was being dumped in the ocean. The sludge was too contaminated with toxic pollutants and had created a huge zone depleted of marine life. Thus Congress had banned ocean and lake dumping because it was destroying the ocean environment.

What no one understands is tha.t we are doing the same thing with our central sewage plants.

In the past, all that was flushed was just human feces. There is a major change in the past century. CHEMICALS.

I ask you, ''Where do all of

the 5,000 modern chemicals over which we have no control - that we flush and dump down our toilets and drains go? CHECK IT OUR = NO SEWAGE PLANT REMOVES THEM. Yes

they kill germs but= Chenicals either end up in the outflow or in sewage sludge that is dumped on farmer's fields and thus into our food and into our water tables and rivers and lakes.

1:00 p.m. Norm Gurr re Chemicals in sewage Going into the Lake and Land and Alternate Solutions to Consider (I.E.) Page 28 of 171

\

As part of a study, = There is a great deal of research information I can share with you from the world's top scientists, and government agencies in the USA, Canada, and Europe that reflect a growing concern and need to eliminate central sewage plants. They show clearly how flven small amounts of these chemicals are destroying fish and all marine life. IT TAKES ONLY ONE PART PER BILLION of women's birth control pills of which 80% is 'peed' and other estrogen like chemicals in soaps etc, to change mail fish into females. =

• extinction. There are uncounted other chemicals that harm
• r destroy in what are called ENDOCRINE DISRUPTORS.

These with the nerve system operate our bodies and all life.

PROOF Before the1970's one could catch

,large creels of perch - bass -pickerel - pike- muskies - cat fish etc. in the Saugeen River and surrounding lake as the photos of our family show. The year they opened the Southampton sewage plant the fish

• disappeared. There are no fish caught in the Saugeen or

surrounding lake now except for the stocked salmon that are in deep water or migrate to attempt to spawn. There is

1:00 p.m. Norm Gurr re Chemicals in sewage Going into the Lake and Land and Alternate Solutions to Consider (I.E.) Page 29 of 171

,almost no life on which the LARGE fish feed like minnows - and carides [small shrimp] insects in the silt,s etc

• I have material that shows that today most of the bloaters

and ale wives that large fish seed on are almost extinct it:' Lake Huron. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ LOOK UP THE BETTER SOLUTIONS; There are many kinds of so called· dry toilets that are combined with grey water [clothes human washing]. Surprisingly they smell less - and are cleaner- more attractive cheaper to buy and operate as I show over central

• plants. - And they are environmentally non polluting of the

environment THE BRONX ZOO with one million visitors and highly used washrooms use them. There is no sewage leaving the zoo or even the washrooms into a central system in New York. Also

• MANY TOWNS AND COUNTIES IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
• SIMON FRAZER UNIVERSITY -
• OFFICE TOWERS AND STORES
• PEGGY'S COVE-
• MAJOR USA PARKS
• NON GAS STATION REST STATIONS ON THE 401 IN

ONTARIO.

• MUSKOKA AND HALIBURTON

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1:00 p.m. Norm Gurr re Chemicals in sewage Going into the Lake and Land and Alternate Solutions to Consider (I.E.) Page 30 of 171

,THE BASIC LAW AFFECTING THE ONTARIO MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT IS THAT IF THERE IS DOUBT - THE ENVIRONMENT COMES FIRST.

I can give you its documents like 'Developing a Consultation

Plan.' As well as the above MOE laws that are ignored.

.

THE TOWN OF SOUTH BRUCE CAN BE AN ONTARIO LEADER IN GETTING RID OF THESE PLANTS. There should be money and support available. The following comes from the Boston University School of

public health written by Abby Rockefeller the multi billionaire who devoted her life to ending central sewage plants. IT HAS BEEN ADOPTED BY THE UNITED NATIONS AS PART

OF ITS POLICY TO SAVE THE EARTH'S WATERS

i

,

1:00 p.m. Norm Gurr re Chemicals in sewage Going into the Lake and Land and Alternate Solutions to Consider (I.E.) Page 31 of 171

H0MB

Wl!I!KLY

MUSINGS PROJECTS

T'r.cKNOUlGY 1'1100'08 UORARY

I.INKS WAYS YOU CANIIELP CONTACT US

Sewage Treatment Plants vs. the Environment

Abby Rockefeller

• 1. Conventional wastewater treatment systems (both
• n-site septic systems and centralized collection and

treatment) are not designed to produce usable end-

• products. Failure to solve the overall problem of

pollution caused by the waste materials received by these systems is, thus, a function of their design.

• 2. Spending any resources-':money,

time, energy, materials--on the extension of central treatment, either

• f the sewer lines and hook-ups or of

the level of treatment, should be understood to be nothing more than a waste of all those resources. The time, money, and energy should be spent' instead in developing an understanding of what solving the problems now caused by these "wastes" really means and in developing a long-range plan (necessarily educational as well as technical) to accomplish this.

• 3. Pollution prevention, reuse of industrial chemicals,

sewage reduction, and water conservation should be

• maximized. Only thorough source separation can make

instead of "wastes" products that are environmentally benign: organic products that are life-compatible; heavy metals and toxic organic and inorganic materials that are containable and reusable within the industries from which they come. It is by the same means also--by the conversion of "waste" materials to usable products at the point of generation--that both the immense

economic and environmental costs of central treatment can be avoided.

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To Sewer or Not to Sewer Given that sewage--and sewerage--is a present fact, the question is what to do now? There are two courses before us. The Path Not to Take We can continue directing all the effluent from a given sewered community to a central point where a treatment plant (as advanced as we can afford) attempts to separate Cas completely as possible given the unpredictable ingredients of sewage) the water from everything else that is in the sewage. However, leaving aside for a moment the immense energy and economic costs of this option, there is the enormous though little publicized problem of the production of sludge. Simply put, the more advanced the treatment of the sewage, the more sludge will be produced, and the worse--the more unusable and dangerous--it will be. The "better" the treatment, (Le., the more successful the separation) the greater the range of incompatible materials that will have been concentrated in this highly entropic sticky black goo.

Because what goes down drains can never, either in quantity or in kind, be predicted, what may be found in " sewage sludge is inherently

• unpredictable. (This has been

demonstrated to be true even in the case of strict industrial source separation.) There is, therefore, no such thing as

safe "disposal" of sludge. If landfilled, it will contaminate the groundwater. If incinerated, it will cause serious air

• pollution. When dumped in the ocean (amazingly

permitted by EPA until 1989), it will cause--and has caused--great harm to marine ecology. And "land application," the latest disposal tactic, may be the most insidiously dangerous of all. Proclaiming sewage sludge to be a "fertilizer" and spreading it on farm land is, since the ban on ocean dumping, the cheapest means of disposal. This practice will certainly cause--sooner or later--contamination of agricultural soils by the countless non point-source (e.g., from unfocussed origins such as road run-off) and point-source (e.g., from industries whose discharge pipes are evident) toxic chemicals which have entered the sewage and come out in the sludge. And there is, therefore, the certainty--sooner or later--of toxic effects

• n crops as well as on the consumers of these crops.

Beyond this there is the catastrophic damage that will

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"

also certainly be done to other life forms as these persistent toxics move up the food chain. It is also a highly effective way of "laundering" toxic wastes: there will be no discovery of the dumpers of industrial toxic wastes; the polluters of the Love Canals or the Woburns will go unpunished when their wastes are hidden in farm land, in crops, and in us. In short, sludge, the

product of the central treatment of sewage is a ha~rdous waste and must be recognized and treated as such.

An Interim Plan of Action The other direction to take, the one proposed here, has two parts.

First, in the thousands of communities around the country with groundwater polluting septic systems--just don't

• sewer. Instead, use Clean Water Act

funds to install on-site remediation technologies, of which there are a number already on the market that are technologically superior to the septi~ system in their ability to accomplish pollution prevention or abatement. The advantages of this sewer avoidance program are great: a) pollution problems can first be dealt with locally--where they really exist, and where they are worst; b) the capital as well as the maintenance costs are always much less for on-site systems than for central sewering and treatment; c) most importantly, the problem of water pollution becomes solvable instead of merely movable; d) and, finally, development of communities is not bound to the rigid grid of sewer lines. Second, in those cities and towns already sewered, implement a back-

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• ff-the-sewer program. That is, begin

the process of intercepting--and recovering for recycling--the resources (the constituents of what we call "waste") as close to the source as

• possible. This does not mean shutting

down existing central treatment facilities now: rather, it means the implementation of a legislative mandate to fund the use of existing technologies that can accomplish separation, recovery, and recycling, at the source. The objective of this approach is gradually to reduce the range and quantity of materials entering the sewage stream in order to decrease by degrees the burden on central treatment facilities and, thereby, the volume of sludge produced.

The implementation of such a program will, by its nature, be slow; but it can be started now on the conceptual, investigative, and legislative levels. Here are some key parts to this approach:

• 1. Do not extend any sewer lines to

presently unsewered dwellings, institutions, or commercial facilities. Local pollution of groundwater is not,

• verall, more environmentally

destructive than the massive relocation of pollution caused by central treatment outfalls of partially treated effluent or the dumping, burning, and land application of sewage sludge. We must remember that, when we agree to pay for sewering and upgrading the level of central treatment, though we may have improved the quality of a local body of

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water, the environment somewhere will still pay a heavy price--in direct proportion to the amount of pollution from which we have saved the water that we undertook to protect. We will have paid only to move the problem. Money now allocated for the extension

• f sewer lines should instead be saved

for implementation of systematic source reduction, source separation, and low-entropy resource recovery technologies.

• 2. Upgrade the level of treatment in those plants in

which immediate pro-tection of the recipient body of water is deemed, after real consideration of the implications, worth the economic cost and the environmental damage to be incurred by the increased creation of sludge.

• 3. Immediately implement a program of industrial point-

source separation. Because adequate data concerr'ling industrial processes are readily available, it is easy to apply specific source separation techniques to industrial

• wastes. It is, correspondingly, relatively easy for

regulatory agencies to monitor industrial discharges. The problem is political: mustering the political will to

• blige each industry to pay for collection systems and

processing systems for all the chemicals used or produced by it which are deemed toxic or otherwise harmful to the environment.

• 4. Institute a ban on the use in consumer goods of

substances that are toxic or otherwise damaging to the

• environment. Such legislation should include manda-

tory reuse of toxic materials which don't themselves constitute part of consumer products, but are used in industrial processes.

• 5. Prohibit the use of garbage grinders. It is as irrational

to use water to transport food wastes as it is to use water to transport human excreta or industrial wastes. Water should be used only for drinking and for washing.

• 6. Beginning at the periphery of sewered communities

whose central treatment facilities are already

• verloaded, install composting systems designed to

convert to humus--on-site---organic toilet "wastes" and food residues from kitchens. This would intercept the great bulk of organic "waste" materials at their source, preventing them from ever entering the sewage stream.

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Crucial to this element of the "back-off-the-sewer" plan is recognition that the products of the on-site composting toilet can--and should--be treated as useful, recyclable resources.

• 7. Remembering that centralized treatment of sewage

creates the worst land-use conditions, start the necessary legislative work to develop environmentally sound land-use planning policies. This means also putting an end to the use of the pollution caused by septic systems as the

.. Q~

facto method of controlling development in unsewered areas. Conclusion Central collection and "treatment" of sewage can never solve the problem of water pollution. It will only create ever more complex pollution problems to solve. Sludge, the product of the latest bad technocratic choice in a long sequence of bad technocratic choices, will, if permitted to be passed off as a "fertilizer," ineVitably have disastrous effects both on the agricultural soils to which it is applied and on the ecosystems connected to those soils. Biologically-based on-site pollution- prevention and recycling technologies are available now and should be a federally funded choice for the communities of this nation. Effecting such a sewer avoidance program will require the addition of an " amendment to the Reauthorization Bill of the Clean Water Act.

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· THE SOLUTION

• People say "Yuck
• How gross." DRY TOILETS!! But with modern technology they

kill all germs and remove the chemicals. The best system of killing chemicals is with plants and small organisms that have done this since the earth was formed from

• volcanoes. These are now destroying the Oil in the Gulf
• f

Mexico.

• WE HAVE INVENTED COMPUTERS - CELL PHONES - GONE TO THE

MOON - AND SO INVENTING A DRY TOILET IS CHILD'S PLAY. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PRESENT TOILETS AND DRY ONES IS NO WATER TANK THEY ARE MODERN AND EVEN MORE ATTRACTIVE. AS THE FOLLOWING SHOWS.

• There are many manufacturers with different systems. Obviously Third World

countries need different kinds.

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Central sewage plants make no sense. The United Nations opposes them. It says

it

costs $60,000 per household to BUILD THE PIPING and remove a little bit of sewage from each location to amass it and dump it into the environment. This requires huge amounts of water AT DRINKABLE QUALITY. Most water is flushed. The sewage plants and water plants require huge amounts of energy and wages, and repairs and upkeep. THINK ABOUT THE SAVINGS WITHOUT THIS NEED. People say "Yuck - How gross." DRY TOILETS!! But with modern technology they kill all germs and remove the chemicals. The best system of killing chemicals is with plants and small organisms that have done this since the earth was formed from volcanoes. These are now destroying the Oil in the Gulf of Mexico. WE HAVE INVENTED COMPUTERS - CELL PHONES - GONE TO THE MOON - AND SO INVENTING A DRY TOILET IS CHILD'S PLAY. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PRESENT TOILETS AND DRY ONES IS NO WATER TANK THEY ARE MODERN AND EVEN MORE ATTRACTIVE. AS THE FOLLOWING SHOWS. There are many manufacturers with different systems

1:00 p.m. Norm Gurr re Chemicals in sewage Going into the Lake and Land and Alternate Solutions to Consider (I.E.) Page 38 of 171

California etc.

Page 2 of3

What is the Rush? Doss a proper study == INVOLVING THE RATE PAYERS FOR POLITICAL

REASONS AGAINST DUMB OFFICIALS AND GOVERNMENTS. Get in experts information - i.e. The United States Geological Service - professors I can give you that are experts - the manager of the Windsor sewage plant - The leaders in San Francisco - Oakland LOOK UP THE ALTERNATIVES I HAVE STARTED TO EXPLAIN WITH COSTS = EFFECTIVENESS etc. Come up with a low cost far ecological better plan for Sauble and challenge the authorities