Officer tails sludge trucks

• By DEBRA LEMOINE
• Florida Parishes bureau
• Published: Apr 28, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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HAMMOND — Al “Bayou Wolfman” Toups spends his days thinking about where sewer sludge goes after it is pumped from a septic tank.

Toups, a retired Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s deputy, is one of the parish’s two environmental enforcement officers hired in the past two years whose job is to curb illegal dumping. 

Toups spends his days tailing sludge-hauling trucks or reviewing records at septic system cleaning businesses to make sure sludge is properly disposed. “All I’m doing is putting the heat on them,” he said.

Illegal dumping of construction debris and sewer sludge became a problem in the parish’s rural areas, particularly after Hurricane Katrina, said Buddy Teal, environmental services administrator.

The parish stepped up its enforcement capabilities, as well as its ability to process sewer sludge at its 420-acre regional landfill near Independence, to ensure sewer sludge is properly disposed of by the 13 sludge haulers licensed by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to operate in the parish, Teal said.

The parish also is reminding residents of an ordinance requiring them to contact the regional landfill before hiring a hauler so that the parish can check on the hauler, Teal said.

“It’s something we should have done long ago,” said Parish President Gordon Burgess. “We thought people were properly disposing of the dump outs,” he said.

The enforcement efforts appear to be working as the regional landfill has treated more sewer sludge in the past 106 days than it treated last year, Teal said. 

From Jan. 1 to April 15, the landfill treated 204,000 gallons of sewer sludge, Teal said. That is 13,000 more gallons than the 191,000 gallons brought to the landfill in 2007, he said.

Depending on the system used, a residential or commercial septic system must be cleaned out, on average, every seven to 12 years, Toups said. 

A sludge hauler is then hired to suck out the contents of the septic tank and dispose of it, he said. The mixture of highly concentrated solid waste and water is sewer sludge.

Yet if this raw sewage is not treated and properly disposed, it could contaminate groundwater and pollute local waterways, said Kilren Vidrine, an environmental scientist with the state Department of Environmental Quality.

At the same time as the parish is stepping up its enforcement efforts, the DEQ has begun targeting sewage sludge haulers because of the increased post-hurricane illegal dumping, said Cheryl Easley, senior environmental scientist with the agency.