The two huge cylindrical tanks at the City of Lebanon Waste Water Treatment Plant hold up to 3.2 million gallons of some of the most unpleasant residential and industrial waste one would care to imagine. A network of pipes runs between the two tanks in a central maintenance area, one leading to a faucet and basin. James B. Fraytic, plant superintendent, turns the faucet on a recent morning and a black smelly goo pours out. Part of his job is monitoring the sludge to see if it contains unexpected materials. Much of the water is separated, chemically cleaned, and piped to the nearby Quittapahilla Creek.
Some treatment plants opt to get rid of sludge via an expensive drying and landfilling process.
At Lebanon, sludge undergoes a name change, to biosolids, and becomes a fertilizer filled with nitrogen and phosphates crops need. It also contains chemicals and heavy metals that opponents of biosolids say are dangerous. The sludge is pumped out of holding tanks, where it has stewed for at least 40 days, and into large tanker trucks that transport it to farms. There, it is loaded into a sludge spreader and injected into the soil. Farms can use up to 10,000 gallons per acre, depending on the crop.