Bill Toffey displays a sample of the biosolids material. ©WHYY photo by Brad Linder

"It's a highly nutritious organic material. So it makes a fantastic amendment to soil for gardening. And it is in fact sold in the Philadelphia area through garden centers."

What separates this fertilizer from other compost is where it comes from. Most compost is made of leaf litter. But this is made from biosolids — or the material pulled out of Philadelphia's wastewater. In short, it's what's flushed down Southeastern Pennsylvania's toilets.

Bill Toffey's job is to manage the Philadelphia Water Department's biosolids.

"We like to say the Water Department has two primary products. One is drinking water from our drinking water plants. The other is biosolids, which is a product that can be recycled for use on land."

Only one third of the product is turned into garden fertilizer. Composting is expensive. The rest becomes sludge cake... a treated form of biosolids. Cake is approved for spreading on abandoned strip mines and farmland, but wouldn't be as safe for home use.

Commercially available food isn't fertilized with biosolids, but animal feed is. So while the vegetables at the corner store probably haven't been growing in processed human waste, the ground beef in the next aisle might come from cows raised on corn grown in the stuff.

Sludge is high in nitrogen and phosphorous... making it ideal for use as fertilizer. But some people question the wisdom of using it, saying the material also contains pathogens, bacteria, and viruses.

Investigations have been made into the deaths of two Pennsylvania children that came into contact with biosolids on nearby farms. And many activists are looking to ban sludge spreading altogether.

Bill Toffey says their fears are unfounded.

"People are claiming health effects or they're claiming adverse environmental effects. But even those cases where the facts have been laid out and examined by public health specialists, medical doctors, environmental scientists. In every case, they have not substantiated the claims."

Toffey says given the choice between burying biosolids in a landfill and recycling it as fertilizer, he'd rather spread it on land where it can do some good. He says that includes farms, and abandoned strip mines.

Jim Golumbeski is the manager of the biosolids recycling center.

"You've got earth that's completely devoid of life and it's creating it's own environmental problems such as acid runoff, and just the fact that it's rubble and rock is not healthy for what used to be a pristine wooded environment. And here we could do something with our biosolids to replace those organics and get the environment back to where it was prior to coal being dug out of the ground."

But a growing number of citizens and environmental groups around the state are raising a stink over the sludge being brought into their townships. Politicians, lawyers, and ordinary people met just outside of the state capital this summer, to voice their concerns... and to propose solutions.

Roseann Weinrich, with the Mahanoy Creek Watershed Association has been fighting a proposal to use biosolids on mineland in east-central Pennsylvania.

"We have acid mine drainage, which is a problem. You know, we have the orange water. But I don't see that sewage sludge application is going to change that or fix it."

Weinrich says green grass on the hillside isn't worth sacrificing the health and safety of her community for.

Jim Lamont is a representative of the United Mine Workers of America. He says miners have gotten sick after coming in contact with sludge — and that the Environmental Protection Agency only requires sludge to be tested for a handfull of contaminants.

"They talk about the nine metals. They don't talk about the hundreds of other metals, or toxins, or pathogens, or bacteria."

Lamont says what's not being counted could be far more dangerous. He says EPA's regulated tests are incomplete. As an example, he holds up a bottle of soda.

" Let's just say I dump half the coke out and fill the rest up with arsenic. I'm going to use coca cola as my indicator. It's not telling you what else in this bottle of coca cola. So go ahead and drink it. There's nothing wrong with it."

People like Lamont and Weinrich have raised strong opposition in a number of townships across Pennsylvania. But municipalities do not have the power to refuse state-approved sludge. So a small number of townships are trying a new approach.

They're enacting ordinances which require sludge to be tested for the EPA's nine regulated metals... at the spreader's expense. Dan Brannen is an attorney in Centre County, responsible for drafting one such ordinance.

"The ordinance is not crafted to make sludge go away. We're powerless to do that at the municipal level. All we can do is test it and make sure that the state regulations for pollutants are being complied with."

At about 38 dollars per ton, Brannen says the fee would double the cost of spreading sludge... Brannen's ordinance has yet to be tested in courts.

But as long as toilets keep flushing, sludge will continue to be generated.

And at the Philadelphia Water Department, the consensus is that the stuff is useful. Steve Yagecic's been working at the biosolids plant for 13 years, and get his hands dirty with compost every day. Yagecic says he's still alive and healthy... and he doesn't glow in the dark.

"I've used it for years around my own home and in my vegetable gardens. And I still have one head."

In a small garden outside the Water Department's South Philadelphia recycling center several dozens plants are growing. At the end of the day, employees can stop by and pick a bell or hot pepper grown in sewage sludge, to take home for dinner.

More information's available on the web at GreenWorks.tv. I'm Brad Linder.