Decatur, Tenn.-Meigs County is at odds with a local farmer over 40 tons of biosolids stockpiled for use as fertilizer, which is banned as commercial waste by a county planning and zoning ordinance in existence since the late 1980s or early 1990s. Mayor Ken Jones, who presides over a heavily agricultural area, told Green Markets that the county is looking for a legal solution but isn’t requiring the farmer to remove biosolids already spread and tilled into the ground, as reported in the local press. “I think it would be unreasonable for the farmer to have to clean up what has already been spread on a plowed field,” Jones offered. “It’s the 40 tons that are stored in a storehouse that we want him to depose of.” He said an agreement has been reached with Synagro Technologies and the Knoxville Utilities Board, which operates the sewage treatment plant only 70 miles away, to stop hauling in and spreading biosolids until things are resolved with Meigs County. “We have our county attorney looking into the possibilities of what we can do as a county to get Mr. Stewart to clean up and remove what he’s got on his farm, which is considered in Meigs County as commercial waste,” the mayor stated. He added that there have been meetings with the utility board and Synagro, “but I don’t think we will get anything resolved until it gets inside a courtroom.” He said that “in my opinion the county will probably end up taking the farmer to court.” Jones, whose office received a citizen’s complaint last winter about the Stewart farm, said there haven’t been any other problems with biosolids since a similar issue was raised in the late 1980s. That led to the county adopting the regulation prohibiting any property from being used for the disposal of commercial waste, Jones noted.
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain