Warkworth couple taking biosolids battle to court

Wendy and William Deavitt are taking their battle against biosolids into the courtroom.

They have filed a lawsuit in Canada's Superior Civil Court against the Town of Cobourg and Terry and Sandra Greenly, of Warkworth, claiming a total of $650,000 in damages for the physical suffering and financial loss they say were the result of the application of waste sludge from Cobourg's sewage treatment plant to farm fields adjacent to their former hobby farm near Warkworth.

None of the allegations have been proven in court, but are contained in a statement of claim filed with the civil court.

The couple put the property up for sale two years ago, after living for more than a year with a variety of illnesses they maintain were caused by the application of biosolids on the fields around their home.

The term biosolids is a euphemism for waste sludge, a byproduct of the human waste treatment process. It is often distributed to farmers, who use it to fertilize their fields. However, the Deavitts and other opponents of the process say the application of human waste sludge to agricultural lands is a danger to human health because the substance still retains heavy metals and a range of other toxins created by a 21st century industrial environment.

The Deavitts walked away from what they called their "dream property" at the beginning of October out of fear that more waste sludge would be applied in surrounding fields.

Since putting the property on the market, they had reduced the price by $60,000, with no success. Potential buyers did express interest, but backed away when they learned that waste sludge had been applied nearby, Deavitt told Sun Media a few days before she and her family left the property and moved to Campbellford. The 7.8-acre hobby farm is now on the market under power of sale for $214,000, but remains unsold.

The family's encounter with biosolids began in 2006 when Wendy Deavitt, her husband and family began experiencing fatigue, respiritory distress, kidney dysfunction, urinary tract infections and diarrhea after waste sludge was applied to the fields surrounding their property. Other couples, including Dianne and Wayne Cooke and Linda and Wayne Donaldson, also fell ill, as did Deavitt's animals. At first, every one of the animals in her barn developed coughs, runny noses and conjunctivitis. A two-month-old colt went into respiratory distress and her mare began having irregular heat cycles. The mare also developed swollen lymph nodes. Deavitt said all the symptoms disappeared after she moved the animals to another property. And blood tests taken by Toronto toxicologist Dr. Anne Mildon showed that Deavitt's own blood had elevated levels of chromium, potassium and sodium.

Now the Deavitts are claiming $250,000 in general damages and $450,000 in special damages. The couple's statement of claim, filed by the Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic in Ottawa, states that as a result of the spreading of sewage sludge on the Greenly fields, some of which landed on their own property, "the Deavitts have suffered material discomfort to their persons, loss of enjoyment of the normal use and enjoyment of their property, damage to their health and to the health of their family, anxiety and stress, damage to the health of their animals and catastrophic diminution in the value of their property."

Wendy Deavitt said this week she is hopeful the lawsuit will emerge as a "precedent-setting" case that will discourage farmers from using municipal waste sludge as fertilizer on their fields. "We have to make more farmers aware they are leaving themselves open to a lawsuit," she said.

And municipalities must be convinced that they should take measures other than land application to dispose of the biosolid waste from their municipal sewage treatment plants, Deavitt said, pointing out that there are cutting edge technologies available to dispose of waste sludge, including high-tech incineration and a process called plasma-assisted sludge oxidization. "We've got to get our municipal leaders on line here," she said.

Deavitt said municipalities that already incinerate their biosolids and don't want to see sludge from outside their borders spread on their lands should take heart from a recent decision in Quebec, where a Superior Court judge ruled that the Municipality of Elgin, 95 kilometres southwest of Montreal, has the right to pass a bylaw banning the transportation, storage and spreading of sludge within its territory.

Attempts to contact the defendants were unsuccessful by press time.