Belmont, New Hampshire Stands Against Sludge: Town votes to strengthen sludge protection laws

This spring, Belmont residents voted overwhelmingly to maintain local protections against sludge. Often marketed as a fertilizer for croplands, sludge is the byproduct of sewage treatment and contains heavy metals, dioxin, and human pathogens. Yet businessmen in town were pushing a ballot measure to eliminate all local control of sludge-spreading, effectively stripping the town of any protections.

The Belmont Conservation Commission acted quickly to present  their case to the Planning Board. The Board was so convinced, they recommended their own ordinance: to ban any spreading of sludge. The ballot campaign was a tough one: the Planning Board’s ordinance needed to pass and the sludge-spreading ordinance needed to lose, or else they would cancel each other out.

Toxics Action Center trained a new citizens’ group, Belmont Citizens for the Environment, which then got to work talking to hundreds of voters. The day of the vote, the group handed out flyers at the polls to clarify the different measures. Belmont Citizens for the Environment celebrated when results came in: the measure to ban sludge passed, 458-283, and the measure to strip regulations lost, 175-552.