Deer Trail, Colorado farmers have doubts about Denver's plan to cycle liquid waste from the Lowry Landfill, one of the worst Superfund sites in the country, through its sewage treatment facility, combine it with sewage sludge and apply it to a 50,000 acre wheat farm owned by the government. A public comment period ended June 30. Stoller Chemical of Charleston sent 3000 tons of cadmium and lead-loaded waste for fertilizer to Bangladesh and Australia in 1992. The fertilizer, in the meantime, had been spread on rice fields in Bangladesh before it was recalled. In Australia it had been used on pastures and by market gardeners.
Similar investigations are ongoing in Missouri, New York and Texas.
By attaching a fertilizer factory to the Nucor steel mill in Nebraska, Alabama-based Frit Industries avoided having to get a federal permit to use some of its toxic byproducts. The black waste comes from a pollution-control device in the steel mill's chimney. It is rich in zinc, a plant nutrient. It is also rich in lead and cadmium. The dust is a federal hazardous waste unless it is turned into fertilizer.