The Hochul Administration’s new plan to recycle 85 percent of the state’s entire solid waste stream by 2050 relies on spreading more — much more — municipal sewage sludge on fields as a crop fertilizer.
That would abruptly reverse a decade-long trend away from sludge spreading in New York, as concerns about pollutants in sludge have been growing nationwide. Maine banned the practice last year after it identified 56 farms contaminated with PFAS ‘forever chemicals.’
But the draft 2023 New York State Solid Waste Management Plan proposes to boost the rate of recycling (field spreading) of all sewage sludge it generates from 22 percent in 2018 to 57 percent in 2050.
“It’s insane. We really need to do something quickly on this,” said Tracy Frisch of the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation is accepting public comments on its draft waste plan through May 15.
The plan assumes the state’s total waste generation will hold steady at the 2018 level of 42.2 million tons, but it calls for the recycling rate to climb from 44 percent that year to 85 percent by 2050.
The waste steam includes all types of wastes except those defined as hazardous.
The plan is based on data from 2018, when municipal solid waste accounted for 45 percent of the state total and construction and demolition waste made up another 46 percent. Non-hazardous industrial wastes were 5 percent, while biosolids — the residual solids or semi-solids left from wastewater treatment at sewage plants, or sludge — made up the remaining 4 percent.
The plan projects a particularly sharp increase in the recycling rate of municipal solid waste. The 19 percent rate in 2018 is scheduled to rise to 85 percent in 2050, largely do to legislative actions and local waste initiatives.
Biosolids would play a less prominent, though still significant, role in achieving the state’s overall recycling target.
DEC said it supports the “beneficial use” of…
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