Spreading Municipal Biosolids on Agricultural Soils – A Sustainable Waste Management Strategy or Threat to Our Streams and Lakes?

[Para. 1 of Summary]

In major urban centres like Toronto, wastewater treatment plants not only purify and recycle water, each day they must also contend with ever-growing lagoons of domestic sewage and septic sludge. One common method of handling this so-called black water is to transform it into biosolids – organic, stabilized material, that’s been treated to meet pollutant and pathogen requirements – and then ship it out of the city for land application and surface disposal.