In Johnson County, Texas, ranchers are facing sickened family members and dying cattle—not from nature, but from man-made chemicals.
Tony Coleman and James Farmer, two local ranchers, noticed rancid odors from their neighbor’s property— stemming from the large, conspicuous piles of smoking fertilizer. Then when heavy rain poured down, the runoff flowed into Coleman’s and Farmer’s land and ponds. It wouldn’t be long before their stock ponds were brimming with dead, floating fish appeared. These are the same ponds their livestock drink from.
The culprit? Their neighbor used “biosolids”—a marketing term for sewage sludge produced by wastewater facilities. Sewage sludge is exactly what you would imagine. It is the by-product of everything that goes down the drain, containing various hazardous medical, household, and industrial chemicals. More bluntly, it’s human fecal matter mixed with a cocktail of thousands of other toxic substances, marketed as fertilizer to farmers far and wide. In just 2018, Texas used or disposed of 473,800 dry tons of sewage sludge.