My first job in community relations was helping a metropolitan clean-water agency win public acceptance for its biosolids (then called sewage sludge) land application program. This was in 1984, around the time the U.S. EPA first made it a policy to promote the beneficial use of biosolids.
At the time, clean-water agencies didn’t necessarily grasp how important it was, in a land application program, to make sure the public understood the practice. So in the neck of the woods where I was working, rural townships, one after another, were passing ordinances to prohibit land application.
To make a long story short, the
