We are an informal committee of neighbors in the Mill Canyon area northeast of Davenport, WA. We are calling it a victory: We didn’t want sewage sludge to be applied to agricultural lands in our watershed. We fought hard against it. Now, due to our efforts and those of our supporters, sludge will not be applied to lands immediately adjacent to the canyon where we live, according to a newly approved permit, issued December 13th by the Department of Ecology.
The scale of the win for the committee is significant. The total acreage that will have sludge applied is reduced from the original 887.45 acres to 157.77 acres in the final permit. The original application indicated sewage sludge would have been applied less than one mile from Mill Canyon residents’ farms, gardens and wells and less than half a mile from the source of a private spring used for our drinking water that figured prominently in comments sent to the Department of Ecology citing concerns over potential contamination from the sludge. With the approved permit, the closest to the canyon any sludge will be applied is over 5 miles away.
Here is an archive of our successful campaign. We continue to work on banning sludge from disposal on farmland.
Protect Mill Canyon Watershed – In the News
More information is available on our Documents Page