Two Georgia Dairy Farmers Spread Free Sewage Sludge Fertilizer And...

A clip from our 1+ hour interview with Dr. David Lewis, a former senior research microbiologist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research & Development.

Rachel Linden, GMO Free News: You wrote about your research being used in a lawsuit, and correct me if I get any of this wrong, by two families in Georgia that owned dairies that had previously used sewage sludge on their land and their cattle died. How many cattle and can you tell us the story of what happened with that?

Dr. David Lewis: In both cases it was two of the most productive dairy farms in the state of Georgia, had been in operation since the 1940's. Suddenly after the city of Augusta, Georgia talked these two farm families into spreading this free sewage sludge fertilizer on their farms their cattle started dying.
The cattle were getting infections, and in some cases rare infections the cattle didn't normally get. It's a story that I saw repeated across the country.

These toxic mixtures of heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals cause a depression of the immune system. We saw it in humans and animals.

And that's what was happening on these two dairy farms.

So, they were having to haul off the sick cows and replace them with healthy cows, but they couldn't keep up with it. It destroyed both dairy farms.

In the process, they hired expert veterinarians to come in and figure out what was going on. And what they found is that the liver and kidneys in these cattle were damaged from the cocktail of toxic organic chemicals and heavy metals that were in the sludge.

And what they discovered when they went back, they filed a lawsuit over this against the city, and one of the farmers filed a lawsuit against the USDA later on.

What they found in discovery is that, for one thing, in 1993, when the sewage treatment plant in Augusta and everywhere else, other sewage treatment plants, had to start following the EPA's 503 sludge rule for certain metals, that the historical data for over 20 years in Augusta look clean.

I mean it's amazing to look at the graph.

For decades they had high levels of cadmium in their sludge, high levels of molybdenum, high levels of other things, including organic things like chlordane, a banned pesticide. All of a sudden, all of that went away in February , but yet nothing was done to change anything at the waste treatment plant.

That happened at waste treatment plants across the country.

So we got into that and found out, and the plant manager at the waste treatment plant admitted when deposed under oath, he sat down at a computer when EPA came down to look at what was going on in Augusta and publish its own research paper on what was wrong with the cattle, when they arrived within a day or two, when EPA arrived in Augusta, Georgia, the plant manager in Augusta sat down and got rid of twenty years of data, created twenty --- created data on a computer to represent those years, that showed the heavy metals were far lower than they really were.

And all of the original data disappeared. They disappeared at the University of Georgia, they disappeared at the state EPD, the Environmental Protection Division, in Atlanta, they disappeared at the federal EPA, and in the city of Augusta.

All of these original valid data disappeared and they published these fake data.

So EPA tried to cover up what happened in Augusta, the lawsuit was filed over it, it got into federal court when they sued the USDA. The USDA pulled out their own paper they published saying the levels of metals were fine, there was no problem there.

The federal judge in that case, Anthony Alaimo, a judge that was famous for fighting civil rights issues in the prisons, in fact there's a book about him out. He was the first judge to look at any of this situation and rule on it, and he ruled that EPA's testimony and USDA's data were not reliable because it was based on fabricated data.

And Judge Alaimo devoted several pages of his thirty-page ruling to how EPA suppressed my own research on this and other sites.

So that's the story of the dairy farms.

The British science journal Nature covered Judge Alaimo's ruling in an editorial calling for EPA to investigate and report toxic chemicals in sewage sludge and published a two page news article on the fake data.

The interesting thing about this issue is we have the scientific community behind us that something's got to be done about this problem, unlike other things where the pharmaceutical industry and the chemical industry has gotten the upper hand ahead of us on issues where we've got the government suppressing research and data and putting out misinformation.

This is not one of those areas. We have the scientific community at large behind us to do something about this problem.

Resource Links:

• McElmurray v. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 535 F.Supp.2d 1318 (S.D. Ga., 2008) 
• A Summary of Court Records in Civil Actions Filed by David L. Lewis, Ph.D. , R.A. McElmurray, III and G. William Boyce Land Application of Processed Sewage Sludge (Biosolids) 1997-2011

Vallianatos exposes EPA through his book – Poison Spring | Tony Mitra

Vallianatos exposes EPA through his book – Poison Spring | Tony Mitra:


As the title says, Evaggelos Vallianatos, along with Mr. M. Jenkins co-authored the book on EPA, and how the organization has been literally captured by the toxic chemical industry, to the disadvantage of the average American, and by extension, of the people the world over.

I found the book very useful to understand how toxic chemicals get approved and how much of a clout the industry has over the regulatory mechanism.

• The prevailing culture in EPA was to pretty much let the chemical industry to run the show.
• The Government has been captured by the industry, and EPA is simply an example.
• EPA is too important to be allowed to be dominated by such outside forces.
• Decision made in EPA are questionable due to the influence that comes from the Congress, from the White House and directly from the Chemical Industry.
• Credibility of science has been damaged due to the history of fraud in the testing of these toxic chemicals for decades.
• The climate of fear, and acceptance of outside influence, is still pervasive.
• America aught to reject the current EPA and redesign it as an independent organization, with a wall of protection from the industry so the scientists would feel secure and confident that their work and decisions are to be made on reliable and untampered data.
• Also, the EPA or the Government needs to create a set of independent laboratories to test all these chemicals before they get into the market, and not rely on labs under control of the industry.
• Credibility of the industry right now is as good as zero. Nobody trusts it’s findings. He himself would not trust them because of what he has seen in EPA.
• This is very important because this not only affects the people of America, but also of Canada and pretty much of the industrial world and beyond.
• This system needs to be reformed, and its workings set right, and the industry needs to be kept away from interfering with the work of this agency.
• We need to raise awareness by speaking about it, in Canada, in USA and elsewhere, in order to raise public awareness to the level where it can make an impact.
• IT has been 53 years since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. There should be no need now to re-state the problem, and we are still tackling with the same old problem albeit with a new breed of toxicity.
• SPAN book TV has interviewed Dr. Vallianatos to be broadcast soon – and people are encouraged to see it.
• Eggevelos Vallianatos would love to speak to Canadians on this.
• He believes, if we have to select just a handful of pesticides that should be that should be removed immediately, we might kick our 2,4-D and Glyphosate.
• When EPA banned 2,4,5-T, they likely made a secret agreement with Dow not to touch 2,4-D since it was so popular.
• Glyphosate in Roundup is used for decades and there are some experts that believe it will destroy American agriculture. We don’t think such extremely toxic substances should be in our environment.
• Moms Across America has some young mothers test their breast milk and found traces of Glyphosate in them. Imagine the feeling of the mothers when they know they might poison their babies through breast feeding !!
• There is science papers out there already about how bad these toxins are for many animals and even humans. And now it is in mothers milk.
• Governments should ban it. There is enough good food possible through organic clean agriculture. There is no need for this toxic model.
• So why is this toxic industry surviving? Not to provide nutrition or kill insects do any favour to nature or people, Vallianatos argues. They survive so a small number of corporations can have a mega empire.
• Advise to  Canadians – start eating organic food. Doing so you avoid GMO, you avoid pesticide, you avoid sludge, radiation, and other synthetic chemicals. Then, start influencing others to do the same. Join environment protection groups. Then try to organize bigger groups to influence the politics of your region and your nation.

WWGF News Facebook Post with several of lDr. Vallianatos videos (2006, 2011)