The Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ Water Protection Program will host a meeting Friday to publicly discuss permitting land application of industrial wastewater and wastewater treatment residuals.
This meeting pertains to a piece of legislation orchestrated to regulate animal waste basin companies such as Denali Water Solutions. Attendees will get to learn more about the specific parameters the DNR is adding to the more general restrictions, including in the “Sludge Bill.”
Denali operated two waste lagoons in southwest Missouri, in McDonald County and in Macon County, which could hold between 10 million and 15 million gallons of waste.
In July, Gov. Mike Parson signed House Bills 2134 and 1956 to place restrictions on water disposal companies such as Denali. Due to an emergency clause on the bill, the restrictions went into effect immediately and “effectively shut down” Denali’s operations in Missouri.
Rep. Ed Lewis of District 6, which covers Randolph and Macon counties, sponsored the bill along with Rep. Dirk Deaton of District 159, which includes McDonald and Newton counties.
“It wasn’t just for Denali — it would be for any company that was trying to take multiple wastewater streams and putting them in one basin at that large size, an open basin, they were going to have to be regulated,” Lewis said. “We put the regulations in, and because of those regulations, the company is probably not going to try to meet those.”
The bill is tailored specifically to companies with “comb-angled” wastewater mixing where there are multiple sources of waste, in order to not apply to municipal wastewater or centralized animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which already have their own regulations.
Denali’s waste basins were filled with “sludge” from animal and food processing plants, wash-down rinse water and grease trap waste — creating a smell that bothered nearby residents.
“What we were doing was going after this unregulated space that had been carved out by a company, using a loophole that was existent in current statute at the time,” Lewis said. “We wanted to close that loophole and make sure that everyone was abiding by rules that were reasonable and provided a secure environment for the farmers and for the people that lived around these basins and where the material is being land-applied.”
The legislation signed in July included requirements like having the basins be at least 3,500 feet away from “occupied dwellings.” The representatives tried to mirror pre-existing legislation, such as CAFOs needing to be 3,000 feet away from homes and to be away from the edge of the property. They added the additional 500 feet to ensure that basins wouldn’t be right at the edge, like the CAFO requirement.
“It was really mirrored after the CAFO restrictions because ‘Why re-create the wheel that’s already in place?’ (We made) sure it’s the same type of regulations,” Lewis said. “We didn’t go beyond those, this was just tailored for those industries that weren’t falling into any of those previously defined categories.”
Lewis said that in McDonald County, some houses were so close to the basin that residents could “throw a rock from the front yard” into it. He said this legislation was “very popular” with his constituents, as well as highly bipartisan, as it received a two-thirds vote to earn an emergency clause.
“I was pleasantly surprised that we were able to, in one session, actually pass a stand-alone bill,” Lewis said. “That doesn’t happen very often. I think there were only 17 non-budget bills that passed last (session) and two of them that were stand-alone bills.”
Since July, the DNR has been working on more specific parameters with regards to amount of testing, exact phosphorus levels and other more scientific requirements. Even before the legislation was passed, the DNR had stepped in this spring to shut down Denali when it over-applied the wastewater to farmland and contaminated the water supply.
“Nobody can just dump stuff that’s going to end up getting in the waterways,” Lewis said. “That was actually how DNR was able to shut down their operations before our bill went into place. But then what our bill has done is made it a permanent ceasing of this type of operation, unless they want to follow the rules. And I don’t really think, in this case, that this company is interested in particularly following the rules.”
Lewis said there are still questions on land application, particularly about phosphorus chemicals with high fluorine content that are hard to break down in the environment. He said he’s been asked to file bills to expand the regulations but is apprehensive of getting ahead of Environmental Protection Agency studies and creating something that is “too restrictive.”
“We don’t want to shut down all of these type of operations if they’re doing a good job and there’s a service they’re providing to the community and they’re getting rid of waste from these basins — but we want that to occur safely,” Lewis said. “It is a balancing act.”
Though there could still be more questions raised at the DNR meeting Friday morning. Lewis said sees the legislation as having solved a problem for Missourians.
“I think sometimes we don’t see government that actually works and responds to its constituents, and here’s an example where it did,” Lewis said. “The government actually did what the constituents wanted and hopefully solved a problem and didn’t create a new one.”