1. Quote from email from Laura Orlando 7/17/03: 

"Response to those who say landfilling is too expensive: Sludge should go in appropriately designed landfills. The "management" of sludge is a 11.6 billion dollar per yr industry with 4 - 5 % growth (according to Synagro's own annual report). Synagro, the largest "residuals management company" in the US, has $2 billion in contracts for sludge management. They would not like to lose these contracts to the landfill companies.

Rob Hale, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, says in his latest article on sludge in the peer-reviewed journal, "New Solutions," that, "Landfilling of sludge has been portrayed as a was the of disposal capacity and valuable real estate. While the number of landfills has decreased from 8,000 to 2,300 from 1988 to 1999, total capacity has remained relatively constant. If all of US sludge was landfilled, it would constitute only about 5 percent of the total dry weight of solid waste disposed in that manner." 

2. Quotes from Ellen Harrison email 7/17/03: 

"I know that here in Ithaca sludge has been land applied and they switched to landfill because it was less expensive." 

3. Quotes from 7/17/03 email from Dr. Caroline G Snyder: 

"Several cost comparison studies , including a recent one done for the VT town of Randolph, indicate that putting dewatered sludges into landfills is the least expensive method of disposal." 

4. Part A is a quote from a report Jim Poushinski MSW, Chair, Ottawa Citizens Against Pollution by Sewage submitted to the Ottawa City Council on 9/21/04. 

Part B below is a quote from a 4/11/05 letter from Jim Poushinski to Dr. Caroline G Snyder. 

Part A is a quote from a report Jim Poushinski MSW, Chair, Ottawa Citizens Against Pollution by Sewage submitted to the Ottawa City Council on 9/21/04. Part B below is a quote from a 4/11/05 letter from Jim Poushinski to Dr. Caroline G Snyder.

Part A) This brings the landfilling cost per tonne to $17 (operating cost) + $22 (expansion surcharge) + $5 (trucking fee) = $44, or an annual cost of $44 X 42,500 tonnes = $1,870,000. Subtracting this from the $3,000,000 composting cost for present disposal results in a net savings to be gained by landfilling sewage at Trail Road of $1,130,000 annually. (Letter #1)

Part B) The fact that City staff will not comment on the 1 million dollars to be saved if the sludge is landfilled makes nonsense of the claim the resumption of spreading is about saving money. In fact the taxpayers of Ottawa are paying an additional 1 million dollars per year to keep the sludge out of their approved landfill and instead spread it on farmland, with all the problems that is causing rural people and the risk to health from contamination of the food chain, and they are being kept ignorant of this fact by the City administration in concert with the mainstream media. (Letter #2)

5. Ken de la Bastide's article in the 9/24/05 Herald Bulletin in Indiana quotes Connie Smith, a public information officer for Anderson, Indiana. "Smith said a study last year showed there is very little cost difference between landfilling the biosolids and applying the biosolids to farm fields, considering the heavy machinery and labor costs."