Protecting Beneficial Use - Current Legal Issues Regarding Land Application

摘要

Land application of biosolids is many things - a valuable recycling process, an important fertilizer and soil conditioner, a critical municipal service and a highly regulated business carried out in public. From the business perspective, land application - whether compost, Class A or Class B - faces inherent challenges of performing a complex service with little room for error and financial pressures to reduce costs to municipalities. Added to these operational problems are political, regulatory and legal uncertainties that can topple even the best business model. From the legal perspective, defending land application faces the daunting prospect of the American tort system that allows protracted lawsuits on the flimsiest of grounds, and vast police powers that embolden local governments to regulate farm practices despite few facts or expertise. Fortunately, leaders in the biosolids industry have fought for many years to protect land application from these attacks and have built a foundation of sound operational practices and legal victories that have allowed land application to continue to be a valuable foundation of wastewater treatment in America. This paper summarizes and analyzes the latest developments in biosolids law to provide wastewater and residuals professionals current information to guide decisions on risk, liability, management, planning, community outreach, and government relations, including ordinances, legislation and lawsuits.