Bill Truesdell said:

> Turns out the one thing that works the best for a soil supplement, as 
> found by the EPA,  is sewage sludge. When Maine's Organic group tried 
> to get it approved, it was shot down by the hobby growers. It should be 
> welcomed as it completes the loop for human activity. Commercial growers 
> use it. So one would think that they would have the healthier produce. 
> (The "heavy metal" problem was solved long ago.)

This has only marginal relation to beekeeping, but if beekeepers are
not stewards of the environment with a specific economic interest in
protecting the environment, then who will be?

The funny thing about this "sludge" is that is always seem to come from
out of state.  This made a few of us in Bedford County, VA somewhat 
suspicious, so we took some samples, and had them analyzed, both in my 
private lab and by two different commercial labs.

What we found was about what we expected, that the sludge had NOT been
treated as everyone had been assured it would be, and that things like
"heavy metals" were not just easy to detect, but well above the levels
that would be prudently applied to a hayfield intended for feeding milk
cows and beef cattle.

The County filed suit, but the problem here was that the state legislature
had been bought and paid for, making regulations that prevented local 
governments from objecting to anything other than spreading of this sludge
near running water.  Further, the "out of state" origin of the sludge meant
that "interstate commerce" was involved, limiting the state's ability to
object to this "commerce".

Even a cursory investigation of these companies finds the sort of characters
one expects to find in a gangster movie, and it should be obvious that
profits
can be higher if some (or all) of that expensive processing is skipped for
some (or all) of the sludge loaded onto tanker trucks and shipped "somewhere
else".  They expect that rural folks won't have HPLC-MS gear, and won't
suspect
that they might be (gasp!) cutting corners.

Spreading manure is common in rural areas, but the odor alone is much more
powerful when sludge is spread.  If downwind, one's eyes water, one gags
uncontrollably, and a complete change of clothes and several showers are
required to get the smell off you.  The stuff smells evil.

I understand that the technology exists and the standards are drafted to
make
sludge an acceptable way to fertilize a field IN THEORY, one that saves the 
farmer some serious money.  

The basic problem here is that theory and practice are the same in theory,
but
not in practice.

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