Officials wouldn't blame sludge

July 13, 2000

By John Tuohy, USA TODAY

"Nobody's ever died from it, nobody's gotten sick."

For 4 1/2 years that mantra was uttered by government officials in response to Joanne Marshall's inquiries about whether sludge - sewage that is treated, then used as fertilizer - could have killed her son Shayne Conner, 26, on Thanksgiving Eve in 1995.

Marshall thinks that when sludge was spread by the truckload on a field 100 yards from her Greenfield, N.H., home for a month straight, her son inhaled some type of fatal bacteria in the mixture and was infected.

"Everybody in the family got nauseous, nosebleeds, headaches, stomach cramps, fatigue," Marshall says. "We had to hold our breath when we went out of the house. I am sure that is what killed my son. "

The official cause of Shayne's death is still listed as undetermined. Two years ago Marshall sued the waste treatment plant that made the sludge, the hauler that transported it and the grower who persuaded a landowner to use it. A trial has been scheduled for April, says Marshall's attorney, Finis Williams.

Marshall says her home was downwind of the sludge, and the "stench was so bad, it made me sick to my stomach."

Three days before Shayne died, he came down with a severe case of laryngitis. On Thanksgiving Eve, Marshall's other son woke her at 4 a.m. and said Shayne was having trouble breathing. Paramedics were called, but Shayne was dead when he arrived at the hospital.

At the same time, everyone in the family was feeling ill, and they wondered whether their lives were in danger, Marshall says.

"We could barely grieve for him because the rest of the family was sick," she says.

Mark Weidman, the president of Bio Gro of Millersville, Md., the company that transported the sludge, says there is "no scientific basis" to Marshall's allegations.

Investigations by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and the medical examiner's office concluded that sludge was not linked to the death, Weidman says.

He adds that sludge has to meet strict requirements and has been used safely in the USA for decades.

Marshall says she feels that the government has stonewalled her search for an answer to Shayne's death. The lawsuit, she says, is her only recourse.

"I wanted to work with them," says Marshall, who once worked at the Department of State. "Activists approached me and wanted me to join with them and I said no because I thought the government would help me get to the bottom of this."

She says she suspects the Environmental Protection Agency made a mistake with its sludge program and doesn't know how to back away without admitting culpability.

"Sometimes people make mistakes and don't realize it until years later," she says. "Maybe at the time they thought it was all right and it wasn't going to hurt anybody. I think there were people who wanted to help, but their hands were tied."