Heavy metals.
Pharmaceuticals.
PFAS.
Those are some of the ingredients found in “biosolids” used as fertilizer and something Middleburgh Joint Planning Board chair Fred Risse wants to see a moratorium on.
Mr. Risse said he was considering using the biosolids—sewage sludge—as fertilizer on his farmland.
It’s considerably cheaper than commercial fertilizer--$10/a ton--and Earthlife, the company he was working with—supplies the spreader.
“But talking to people…I want more science,” he said, and he’d like to see the Board of Supervisors consider a 90-day moratorium like the one Albany County has imposed over public health fears there.
Joe Durma, who lives in Wright, said he has experience with neighbors spreading it there as well as over the county line in Berne and Knox.
“What’s in it will about curl your hair,” he said, “and it’s being spread right over the watershed.
“This product contaminates milk, chicken, eggs…”
Mr. Durma said he’s concerned about himself, but also about his neighbors and their wells; they live on karast, he said. “The water runs through it. Right to the aquifer.
“I’ve been accused of having a vendetta against my neighbor [who’s spreading biosolids], but I’m very concerned. There are two big piles right now, getting rained on, and draining into a ditch.”
Mr. Risse said it was a pile of biosolids that caught fire four or five years ago outside Schoharie, burning for days and sickening firefighters.
Albany County declared the moratorium on spreading biosolids in January, asking its Department of Health to study the issue.
The Town of Thurston, in Steuben County, had problems with contamination from the spreading of the sewage sludge and banned the practice in 2023; advocates have asked that county to do the same.
Casella Waste, which operates a landspreading facility in Thurston, sued the town over the ban in 2024, but that lawsuit was subsequently dropped.
Middleburgh Supervisor John Youmans said he’ll take the issue to supervisors and the Ag Committee.