The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should utilize the expertise of academic scientists, such as the Cornell researchers who studied EPA's rules for land application of sewage sludge, and not try to discredit them, Cornell Waste Management Institute Director Ellen Z. Harrison told congressmen in her March 22 testimony to the House Committee on Science.
Sewage sludge is the semisolid, nutrient-rich final product of municipal sewage-treatment facilities. Sometimes regarded as waste (and dumped in landfills or incinerated) or, alternately, as crop fertilizer (and spread on land), sewage sludge may contain heavy metals and other toxins that are concentrated by the treatment process.
Those toxins are addressed in EPA Rule 503, which sets nationwide standards for land application of sewage sludge, and in a 1997 report by Cornell scientists, titled "The Case for Caution."
That report (by Harrison, a geologist, and by soil scientists Murray B. McBride and David R. Bouldin) suggested that one national standard cannot account for state-by-state differences in soils and geological condiditions. They said the 503 rule does not adequately regulate some sludge-borne toxins that can harm plants -- and the humans and other animals that consume them or are exposed to sludge contaminants directly or through groundwater.
The Cornell report did not sit well with some EPA policy-makers, who shared their grievances with the Cornell administration, and also allegedly tried to besmirch the scientific reputations of the report's authors.
Asked by Committee Chairman F. James Sensebrenner Jr. (R-Wisc.) to address the federal agency's "openness to scientific discourse" and the EPA's "reaction to researchers raising questions about the process of land application of biosolids," Harrison told congressmen a tale of two institutions. She said the Cornell administration was supportive of the researchers' academic freedom, even in the face of implied threats that criticizing the EPA could imperil other faculty members' support from that agency. But some EPA officials did not want to hear contrary scientific opinions, Harrison said.
"We have been unsuccessful in working with EPA to address the scientific issues raised by our work," Harrison said in her prepared testimony. "Instead, EPA attempted to discredit our science and ignore the issues we have raised. Their responses have mischaracterized our research and have suggested that we used methods that are not appropriate to answering the scientific questions we seek to address."
Harrison's testimony for the Washington, D.C., hearing was delivered remotely, from the distance-learning facility in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, after a March 2 hearing was cancelled, as was a similar session scheduled last fall.
"When EPA copied the president of Cornell on correspondence to New York state government critical of our work, we were confident that academic freedom and integrity would protect us from any recriminations at the university, which they did," the Waste Management Institute director said. "Rather than trading allegations or attempting to discredit scientific research, we need to move forward to ensuring that needed research is carried out in an objective manner.
"Ignoring research and scientists with opposing scientific viewpoints is not the way to develop sound policy," Harrison testified. "Perhaps it is time to try to depolarize the situation and to work together to identify and conduct the needed investigations."
Since the committee testimony, Harrison and six Cornell colleagues have submitted formal comments to the EPA regarding dioxin standards for land-applied sewage sludges. The original "Case for Caution" report as well as the dioxin comments and Harrison's testimony to the committee can be found at the web site: http://www.cfe.cornell.edu/wmi/Sludge.html.
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