I was working in and around the wastewater treatment business — specifically a metro clean-water agency’s land application program — when the industry debate began in earnest about finding a new name for what we then called, simply, “sludge.”
The discussion went on for years in WEF circles (then called the Water Pollution Control Federation) before the term “biosolids” won acceptance. I’ve never cared for that name. I don’t find it much more attractive than its predecessor, if at all, and it has the feel of a euphemism, of being evasive by not quite calling a spade a spade.
Be that as it may, the term “biosolids” is here to stay. And meanwhile, land application and other beneficial use programs still run into skepticism, if not outright opposition. Treatment plant operators today know the sensitivity and with very few exceptions understand the need to involve (not “educate”) local citizens in beneficial use.
That to me is the reason behind whatever progress we’ve seen. Because, call the material what you want, it is what it is. And to a large extent (at least in my perception) the concern comes from people who don’t really know what it is — and more importantly, what it isn’t.
A change has happened
I recently read a newspaper story about a controversy over biosolids in which the reporter pointedly emphasized that the material was, in fact, a four-letter word that starts with C. He wasn’t being malicious. He just didn’t know.
The reality is that biosolids are, in a meaningful way, as different from raw waste as fireplace ashes are from firewood. It has been through a process (biological, not chemical) that has significantly changed its character. It may come from C, but it isn’t C anymore. And the better people understand that, the more accepting they are likely to be.
There is no way to terminate the mental connection between the material’s source and its digested final state. No matter what people know, some still may prefer not to see biosolids applied on farmland just across their back fence. But they may be less inclined to object to recycling initiatives in general, on principle, if they know the material isn’t C.
Perhaps the best proof of that premise is how easily people seem to accept composted biosolids. Composting adds a processing step that takes the material even further from what it was. Practitioners of composting, like Brian Romeiser, subject of this month’s “In My Words” interview, swear by the process for its ability to create a product that people will not only tolerate but, in his experience, fight over.
What about the science?
It’s great to tell people about all the macro and micronutrients in biosolids, how it adds organic matter, how it helps enhance soil structure and increases soil water-holding capacity, and how it is superior in all these ways to chemical fertilizer. But those arguments will only get you so far if people still think you’re doing the equivalent of emptying a big chamber pot on the farm fields.
Look at the definitions of biosolids we find in industry literature. Here is one from the National Biosolids Partnership: “Biosolids are the nutrient-rich organic product of wastewater treatment. A beneficial resource, biosolids contain essential plant nutrient and organic matter and are recycled as a fertilizer and soil amendment.”
Nice, but of course, much of the same could be said for C. The definition goes on: “Wastewater treatment processes are taken right out of nature’s recipe book. In streams and lakes, natural aeration helps to purify the water while micro-organisms break down solids. Wastewater treatment uses the same idea: The liquid portion is treated and returned to streams, lakes or oceans, and the solids are further processed into stable organic material, called biosolids.”
That’s much better, but it still doesn’t make a clear, definitive statement that biosolids are something very different from the thing out of which they’re made. We need (again, in my humble opinion) a way to make a bright-line separation.
Maybe we need to use a word like “transformed.” Or maybe we need analogies on the order of firewood and ashes. Or maybe, in the right setting, we should come right out and say that it’s not C — it’s something else completely.
Bring people into the loop, let them know the true nature of the material, use processes that make it less objectionable (like pelletizing, drying and composting), and you have the ingredients of a highly successful beneficial use program.
Add a little empathy
Beyond all this lies the final key to winning acceptance for a beneficial reuse program: Treating concerns people raise with respect. If you want to alienate neighbors, try dismissing their concerns as misplaced, exaggerated or crazy.
One good public communicator I knew liked to use something he called the “feel, felt, found” technique. He would often respond to a concern, if he could do so honestly, by saying, “I can understand how you feel. In fact, there was a time I felt that way myself. But as I looked more closely, here’s what I found.”
Used appropriately, that technique creates empathy, which is essential to winning trust. As the old saying goes, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” And if they know biosolids both for what it is and what it isn’t, so much the better.
