Trivia: Milorganite fertilizer

[GigaBuist]

Sorry, but I have to share. We sell the stuff, they've got "organic" all over the signs, but it cracks me up because I know where it comes from.

Don't get me wrong, it's good stuff, I'm going to hit my garden with some next year, it's been around for damned near a century, and it works as a good fertilizer for the lawn or anything that needs some nitrogen, but I wonder how many people know what it is.

The name is a composite of Milwaukee Organic Nitrogen.  That's innocent enough.

What's so special about Milwaukee?  Is there some special natural resource there?  No. We take the human poop sludge from their sewer treatment system and bake it into little granular chunks.  Yep, that's people poop in that bag.  That's why it works as a deer repellent.  Apparently deer don't like people poop.  Then again, who does?

The gardener in me realizes it's good sh*t.

The capitalist in me chuckles over people buying sacks of human sh*t.

The political side of me laughs because people vote for sacks of human sh*t all the time, but they'd recoil in horror if they outright knew they just bought a literal sack of human sh*t.

[zxcvbob]

I don't care about the poop part if it's treated properly, what about the heavy metals content?  A little (very little) is OK, but that's not something you want building up in your soil from repeated applications.

[Monkeyleg]

It's special because of all of the beer, sausage and cheese that Milwaukee folks consume. Much richer evan than cow manure. When it comes to sh**, Milwaukee folks are really full of it.

[AJ Dual]

It's special because of all of the beer, sausage and cheese that Milwaukee folks consume. Much richer evan than cow manure. When it comes to sh**, Milwaukee folks are really full of it.

And when I lived in a loft warehouse apartment on the north edge of the Walker's Point neighborhood, right on one of the canals, about 1000 yards from the plant, you could smell all the old meat and cheese in the Milorganite.

Fun times. 

[hshields]

Public sewers are the EPA favored disposal site for toxic industrial wastes.   Industrial pretreatment has fallen by the wayside in pursuit of jobs over the environment.




  In 2007, tons of  Milwaukee sewage sludge "Milorganite" had to be scraped off 30 public parks and disposed in EPA licensed hazardous waste landfill because of toxic levels of carcinogenic PCBs (polychloride biphenyl ethers).  In 2008 and 2009 Milwaukee had more problems with ligh levels of PCBs in their sludge biosolids.

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/4284

 

In 2010, high levels of toxic lead (1100 parts per million) in the Milwaukee sludge biosolids spread on Kenosha, Wisconsin,  farm fields greatly exceeded the EPA limit of 300 ppm in Class A EQ sludge biosolids.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/85012452.html



Sewage sludge Milorganite is a dangerous "fertilizer" which should not be used on home gardens or public parks and playgrounds where children and pets are exposed.
Class A sewage sludge biosolids has caused many incidents of illness:









Helane Shields, Alton, NH      

[Monkeyleg]

Welcome to APS, hshields. I'm sure we'd all feel more comfortable with your first post if it didn't include a link to your website, so I took the liberty of removing it for now. We can always add it back later after you've posted a few times.

[AJ Dual]

I wonder how many other gun boards I could put "Milorganite" into, and have "Helane" suddenly show up and do a drive-by. 

Although, I won't debate the info presented. Yeah, it made the news here, and it's no surprise, everything else related to the Milwaukee sewer system is chock full of graft, sadness, and fail.

From the MMSD being formed to rip off the burbs to avoid having "poor" Milwaukee pay for separating it's ancient combined rain and sanitary sewer lines, to the idiots in the burbs who rolled over for it, to the deep tunnel project that cost billions (and was the rationale for sharing costs) and simply doesn't work, dumping millions of gallons of untreated sewage into Lake Michigan every significant thunderstorm.

But the state DNR and fed.gov EPA never seem to have any interest in making things hard and stringent for a big liberal city government. Only private businesses. Weird huh?

[Monkeyleg]

AJ, I don't know if you remember Banner Lumber on 5th and Becher, but it was probably the best lumber yard in the city. MMSD needed to dig up his back lot. He tried to get along with the greatly reduced space, but eventually had to go out of business.

I wonder if they really had to dig in that particular spot, given the run-down neighborhood it was in.

[Harold Tuttle]

When Michelle Obama created an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn earlier this year, the move was greeted with positive headlines and excitement among the food advocacy community. Here, we thought, was a First Lady who understood the importance of locally grown, whole and organic foods in her family's diet.

Unfortunately, something happened on the way to the realization of the First Lady's good intentions. Recently the National Park Service discovered that the White House lawn, where the garden was planted, contains highly elevated levels of lead -- 93 parts per million. It's enough lead for anyone planning to have children pick vegetables in that garden or eat produce from it to reconsider their plans: lead is highly toxic to children's developing organs and brain functions -- however, it's below the 400 ppm the EPA suggests is a threat to human health.

What caused this alarming contamination of the White House lawn? Some news outlets speculated that residue from lead paint might have caused the toxicity. However an article running on Mother Jones online has a more probable explanation. During the 1990s, the Clintons agreed to have the South Lawn of the White House "fertilized" with ComPRO, a commercially available "compost made from a nearby wastewater plant's solid effluent, a.k.a. sewage sludge."

So, the White House lawn became a highly visible example of a little-known, widely conducted practice, "land application." This means disposing of sewage sludge by spraying it over public lands, including parks, and also on an untold number of acres of farmland where our food is grown. Sadly, it's completely legal under current, grossly inadequate EPA rules.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kimbrell/the-obama-organic-family_b_224398.html