The narrative of biosolids ought to focus on the results of its use, not on the nature of the biosolids itself. When biosolids is used to add organic matter and nutrients to disturbed lands, such as mine sites, the result is habitat restoration, carbon sequestration and watershed improvements. These are results that align with urgent issues of climate change and ecological deterioration. These are powerful results, but we seldom draw the public’s attention to them.
I facetiously say my morning doom scrolling is a search for hope and good news, when mostly it is about covid, politics and the debt ceiling. But one recent morning, the scrolling was not about these themes, but instead about mass extinction, specifically a report on the dual effect of rising temperatures and nutrient flows on toxic microbial blooms. The article in my ScienceDaily feed (I highly recommend this for science nerds) was Animals Died in ‘Toxic Soup’ During Earth’s Worst Mass Extinction, a Warning for Today. The authors are quoted saying “The end-Permian is one of the best places to look for parallels with what’s happening now.” A science article about a parallel between mass extinction and today’s climate is not likely one that yields hope and good news.
I have long been fascinated by the end-Cretaceous asteroid strike that killed off all dinosaurs except for some flying ones (Asteroid impact, not volcanism, caused the end-Cretaceous dinosaur extinction). But oddly this is a “sort-of” good news story, as the asteroid collision paved the way for mammals, and hence humans. The End-Permian was a far more horrible extinction event for life on Earth 252 million years ago. This event resulted in about 95% extinction of species. This international team of researchers of End-Permian “has identified a new cause of extinction during extreme warming events: toxic microbial blooms.” Good news is hard to find in that mass-extinction story.
I have been tracking toxic microbial blooms for several years, having noticed that federal and state governments were issuing the Lake Erie Harmful Algal Bloom Forecast. That is when I learned about blue-green algae (not an alga, but instead a cyanobacteria) and that microcystin released by this class of harmful algae bloom (HAB) was potentially lethal to pets and people in contact with infested waters. Biosolids became wrapped in this issue because phosphorus can ignite blooms (Mitigating harmful cyanobacterial blooms: strategies for control of nitrogen and phosphorus loads), farming practices allow phosphorus release (Lake Erie, phosphorus, and microcystin: Is it really the farmer’s fault?), and biosolids is a super source of phosphorus for crops (Mineralization and mobilization of biosolids phosphorus in soil: A concise review and Classification and Assessment Models of First Year Biosolids Phosphorus Bioavailability). We biosolids advocates do not want extinction of life on Earth to occur because biosolids-borne phosphorus ignites toxic algae blooms.
Thanks to the occasionally optimistic nature my doom scrolling, I believe I can now make the argument that biosolids will help save humanity from extinction, and the answer is in using biosolids for land restoration.
I have been following the flurry of document releases by the International Panel on Climate Change. On 6 August 2021, the IPCC released the nearly 4,000 page Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, with its much more manageable 47 page Summary for Policy Makers. More recently, on 17 September 2021, the UN Secretariat issued its report Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement Synthesis report. This is a global survey of individual national contributions to reducing GHG releases; The United States of America Nationally Determined Contribution was released April of this year.
This “NDC” synthesis report was unsettling for its failure to show adequate contributions by nations to deal with the climate threats set forth in the Physical Science Basis. This failure was reported by the Washington Post article As climate pledges fall short, U.N. predicts globe could warm by catastrophic 2.7 degrees Celsius. Independent NGOs also responded to the failure of the NDCs to show an adequate response to the urgent threat. One of these critical reports is from a European consultancy, RethinkX, with a report titled Rethinking Climate Change.
The critique of the NDCs underscored the role of carbon sequestration as a “contribution” for mitigating climate change. My attention jumped to the RethinkX call for ecological restoration as a key “rethink.” The World Wildlife Fund has a website, A New World is Coming, #NDCsWeWant, where it offers its report NDCs – A Force For Nature. The WWF introduces the concept of NbS, or Nature-based Solutions, in restoring degraded landscapes as a key strategy. We biosolids managers could very well argue for a role of biosolids in both the WWF and the RethinkX solutions.
I have been for long an advocate of biosolids use for restoring degraded landscapes. Philadelphia embraced reclamation with biosolids in the earliest years of its recycling program, when ocean dispersal was ended in 1980 in response to national policy and international compact. Back in 2003, I wrote a report Twenty-Five Years of Mine Reclamation with Biosolids in Pennsylvania. I chronicled 4,000 acres of reclamation up to that time, and more than 10 years of biosolids application to mine lands continued after that date. Some thirty years ago, an extraordinary project was the hauling by rail of biosolids mixed with compost to a project in southwestern Virginia. This is a large research site, the Powell River Project in Wise County, Virginia, directed for many years now by Dr. Lee Daniels. In the mid-2000s, the Philadelphia Water Department contracted for the application of biosolids to completed anthracite mines in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, and that project evolved into one using Deep Row Entrenchment (“DRE”) and installation of hybrid poplar plantations. DRE is a technology that has been heavily researched by the University of Maryland, and its extension service has developed a publication on DRE available for download. The leading researcher on this work , Dr. Jonathan Kays, has a three-session webinar in October 2021 discussing this technology for biosolids use: Deep Row Entrenchment of Biosolids Using Hybrid Poplar. The Philadelphia DRE project was documented in a 2007 WEF biosolids conference paper “Demonstrating Deep Row Placement of Biosolids in Coal Mine Reclamation.” The mine reclamation projects in Pennsylvania have also evolved over time to show their larger economic and ecological value. MABA member American Green, an affiliate of Reading Anthracite, undertakes Coal Mining & Land Reclamation in eastern Pennsylvania, and one of its restored sites is a Pure Bred Angus and Goat Farm.
Land restoration would seem to be the brightest opportunity for biosolids recycling. Yet, its adoption is limited in the mid-Atlantic. Regulators seem to resist restoration technologies. Our projects are large scale, unlike customary agricultural practices, and are not protected from public complaint by “right-to-farm” policies. Application rates are high, giving rise to risks of pollutant or nutrient releases, real or imagined. The calculus of regulatory approval does not count the benefits of restoring watershed productivity, sequestering carbon, and mitigating acid drainage.
We need to build a new approach to gaining support for biosolids use in land restoration. We need a new “narrative” that focuses on the results of biosolids use, not the biosolids itself. This point was driven home by John Lavery at the September 2021 Northwest Biosolids’ BioFest. His presentation, “Visionary restoration narratives – tools that solve bigger problems than our own,” focused on the compelling “narrative” of three SYLVIS environmental’s land restoration projects: OK Ranch Rangeland Fertilization, City of Calgary Willow Biomass Crop, and Paintearth Mine Biomass Reclamation. For each project, results valued by the property owner and the community are held out as the story line in the narrative. Biosolids is just a tool. Land improvement, habitat restoration and carbon sequestration are the messages, with an additional shout-out to the value of jobs and economy.
Lavery tells us we need to gain the understanding and support of the larger community, and that is where the NDCs come into play. The two most desperate issues facing humanity today are ecological deterioration and climate change. Our opportunity, our duty in fact, is to emphatically connect our biosolids work to the inspirational work already underway within these two environmental domains. We can offer our own special, unique tools and experience to these large issues, and for that we need to align with others.
In the domain of ecological restoration, we could align with the Ellen Macarthur Foundation. This is the leading advocacy group for the principle of the circular economy. This September the foundation offered a program, now available on YouTube, How the circular economy can help to tackle biodiversity loss. Its publication The Nature Imperative introduces “regenerative production,” in which the circular economy produces outcomes of “healthy and stable soils, improved local biodiversity, improved air and water quality, and higher levels of carbon sequestration.” To my ear, this sounds like SYLVIS environmental’s projects and Virginia Tech’s Powell River Project.
In the domain of climate change, we could align with Project Drawdown. This project was organized around the work of sustainability guru Paul Hawken, described in his book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. One of the major categories of “drawdown” is Land Sinks: “Where ecosystems have been degraded, restoration can help them recuperate form and function, including absorbing and storing more carbon over time.” Two Land Sink project examples outlined on his website are Perennial Biomass Production (“offers a productive and carbon-sequestering use of degraded lands, farm borders, riparian edges, and other spaces”) and Tree Plantations on Degraded Land (“they can restore soil, sequester carbon, and produce wood resources in a more sustainable way”). This organization has spawned Drawdown Labs, a consortium of “visionary” partners that, in Climate Solutions at Work, proclaims “…in this most all-encompassing challenge in human history, every job must be a climate job.” Why cannot all the stakeholders in our biosolids professional community be partners in this concept that our jobs are “climate jobs?” By this definition, John Lavery and Lee Daniels have “climate jobs,” and so do I.
Joining our work with the work of thousands of other people committed to land and climate issues could transform the “narrative” of biosolids, which is too often negative, to one of hope and health. It is our job to make that connection. A survey released in September (Young people’s voices on climate anxiety, government betrayal and moral injury: a global phenomenon) found “over half of those surveyed said they thought humanity was doomed.” We need to hold out to children, college students and young professionals our narratives that speak to tangible actions, actions of the kind we deploy with land reclamation. Our narratives can convey a vision of restored lands and carbon sinks that counterbalances the abyss that our young people otherwise see in the deterioration of climate and ecological systems. The survey authors asserted “nations must respond to protect the mental health of children and young people by engaging in ethical, collective, policy-based action against climate change.” We in the biosolids business are poised perfectly to be part of that protective governmental response. But to do so, we need to re-imagine ourselves with “climate jobs” in “regenerative production.” Biosolids restores land, which is darn good, but what is more awesome is that biosolids restores health and hope.