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Action Alert: Add Your Voice! Call for a WA Sewage Sludge Moratorium Today

Author(s): 
Chrys Ostrander

PMCW LogoSend your message to the Governor and Ecology Department Director - No more sewage sludge on Agricultural land!
Use this link:

https://tinyurl.com/WA-sludge-moratorium

Residents who live in an area near Davenport, Washington called Mill Canyon feel threatened by proposals to spread municipal sewage sludge on nearly 900 acres of nearby agricultural land uphill from where they live, garden and farm. The area in question includes their natural watershed. Local citizens are alarmed and are organizing to prevent a permit application to dump the sludge from being approved. Not only do they demand that the permit application to apply sewage sludge in their “back yard” be denied, they are also demanding that Washington State Department of Ecology Director Maia Bellon and Washington State Governor Jay Inslee immediately impose a state-wide emergency moratorium on approving all pending permits for land application of sewage sludge until a thorough review of the science is completed and the findings incorporated into re-worked regulations pertaining to sewage sludge disposal and land application in the state.

At a press Conference Sept. 6, 2017 at the Dept. of Ecology building in Spokane, WA, Protect Mill Canyon Watershed launched a grassroots letter-writing campaign they hope will generate hundreds of email messages to Washington State Department of Ecology Director Maia Bellon and Washington State Governor Jay Inslee requesting that Ecology deny an application to spread sewage sludge in the Mill Canyon watershed and called for a moratorium on any further “biosolids” permit approvals in the state until a thorough review of the science is completed and the findings incorporated into re-worked regulations pertaining to sewage sludge disposal and land application in Washington.

Join the Call for a Sewage Sludge Moratorium in WA today

At the press conference, Tom Soeldner, representing the Sierra Club's Upper Columbia River Group, read a statement from the group. "The executive committee of the Upper Columbia River Group has gone on record in support of Mill Canyon residents in their opposition to the granting by the Washington State Department of Ecology of a permit to land apply sewage sludge in the Mill Canyon region. Carolyn Leon, group chair, said 'It's understandable that residents of Mill Canyon feel threatened by this proposal to spread sewage sludge and thereby release pollutant contaminants in an area which includes their natural watershed. We support their efforts to halt the sewage sludge project,'" Soeldner said.

Edition: 
Action Alert September, 2017