ONE OF the themes of the Water Environment Federation's 14th Annual Residuals and Biosolids Management Conference, to be held in Boston in late February, is understanding and communicating risks attendant with biosolids management. We will be asking ourselves, "how do we communicate that the risks of using biosolids are very low?"
But here is the real risk! We are at risk of losing our programs and increasing costs of our programs because of our failure to communicate the benefits of biosolids.
Most of us have witnessed personally the consequences of not gaining public support for biosolids recycling. We have spent countless hours "jumping through hoops," preparing for presentations, putting together public information material, just to see it ridiculed by people who have taken the "truth" off the Internet. We ask: "If not land application, do you really prefer incinerators and landfills instead?" We hear in reply: "That's your business to figure out," and we are stymied in taking action and moving forward.
We have seen how easily fear is raised in people's minds when opponents use terms like "heavy metals" and "pathogens," and we have experienced first hand our powerlessness to earn the public's confidence when we present facts to the contrary. We have seen the boards or officials of public agencies become stalled in their decisions to take cost-effective, environmentally sound actions for the fear of a media lashing.
We appreciate the frustration of farmers who see a nutrient source upon which they rely become suddenly unavailable, a key tool for economic survival taken from them. We share the rejection that farmers feel when their livelihood is threatened by the complaints of former urbanites who are now their neighbors, because we experience the same feeling of rejection when we are accused of being stream and land polluters.
A PLAYFUL SOLUTION
Not one who likes to end on a negative note, I want to suggest a solution: Be Playful with Your Biosolids. "Playful?" Is Toffey really this nutty? That goes without saying. By "playful," I would suggest holding biosolids "beauty" competitions for the best looking/smelling biosolids, having biosolids field days with balloon rides, hiring a PR firm to advertise biosolids benefits, having a "name your community's biosolids" competition, holding a "best yield with biosolids" competition among farmers, hiring urban rappers to do a biosolids rap, commissioning a biosolids computer action game (I am working on this, so don't steal any of my ideas). We could be playful with our biosolids stories - our success stories, our "horror and humor" stories, and our wild boasting to the media about our good work.
All of these are designed to allow the public, our customers, to develop a positive association with biosolids before they hear something (or smell something) wrong about it. Does it not sound reasonable that people who "already know that biosolids are okay" because of your lighthearted, human interest, "playful" items in the media, are less likely to pay attention to a "bad biosolids" story than those people who know nothing about biosolids and are hearing about biosolids for the first time when the story is negative?
The web sites listed below are just a start of what is available to you for background information on some of the "risk" issues. Start with Desmond Morris's site. Morris discusses "totemic taboos" and "deep-seated human fear of being poisoned." In reaction to the diet of "anxiety-makers," Morris tells of his mother, on her death bed at the age of 99, asking for a gin and tonic to be fed through a straw and saying, "if you've got to go, you might as well go with a swing."
As things are going today, we have done a great job with the science, we have great regulations, we have great new management tools and great new equipment. But we are losing the battle for the public hearts. We ought not miss out on the opportunity to "go with a swing" by being playful with our biosolids.
The web sites: Bill Desmond Morris - http://www. sirc.org/articles/ desmond.html; FirstScience.Com http://www. firsts cience. com; junkscience.com - http://www.junk science.com/; American Council for Science and Health - http://www. acsh.org/; Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy: Toxic Chemicals and Risk Assessment - http://www.pacificresearch.org/issues/enviro/99eindex/ toxic.html; WSU Agrichemical and Environmental News - http://www 2.tricity.wsu.edu/aenews/; First Science.Com - http://www.first science.com.
[Author Affiliation]
Bill Toffey is biosolids utilization manager with the Philadelphia Water Department.
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