Sustainability isn’t just a word – it’s a power-packed symbol that is being twisted by corporations. And it sure fools our Vermont legislators… So the Legislature in turn backs the corporate agenda. Makes ‘em look good. Many even feel that they’re doing good.
Millions of the taxpayer’s hard-earned cash go into ‘sustainability’ programs in Vermont. Reckless spending: does the money make it back into our communities? No. Boutique energy doesn’t benefit Vermont families one jot.
So I say, Occupy the State House in 2012! Vote ‘em out, run against ‘em. Restore Vermont’s Citizen Legislature. Start with the Senate: there’s just thirty seats. We’ve got six candidates so far… join us!
Follow the money.
David Blittersdorf of NRG Corporation grabs millions in solar tax credits, and then kicks back into the Democrat Party. The cash must flow.
Vote out the political machine in Montpelier!
The press had done a good job shedding some light on the $8000 donation to Peter Shumlin by big time donor David Bilttersdorf, Shumlin’s appointment of Bilttersdorf to the Clean Energy Development Board, and Bilttersdorf’s company ultimately receiving $4.3 million tax credits from that very board.
However, this $8000 investment with an apparent $4.3 million payoff is just the tip of the iceberg. –True North Radio
by John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
Originally published in PR Watch, Third Quarter 1995, Volume 2, No. 3
To educate the public at large about the benefits of sludge, the EPA turned to the “Water Environment Federation.” Although its name evokes images of cascading mountain streams, the WEF is actually the sewage industry’s main trade, lobby and public relations organization, with over 41,000 members and a multi-
million-dollar budget that supports a 100-member staff. Founded in 1928 as the “Federation of Sewage Works Associations,” the organization in 1950 recognized the growing significance of industrial waste in sludge by changing its name to the “Federation of Sewage and Industrial Wastes Associations.” In 1960, it changed its name again to the cleaner-sounding “Water Pollution Control Federation.”
In 1977, Federation director Robert Canham criticized the EPA’s enthusiasm for land application of sludge, which he feared could introduce viruses into the food chain. “The results can be disastrous,” he warned. By the 1990s, however, Federation members were running out of other places to put the stuff. The Federation became an eager supporter of land farming, and even organized a contest among its members to coin a nicer-sounding name for sludge.
The proposal to create a “Name Change Task Force” originated with Peter Machno, manager of Seattle’s sludge program, after protesters mobilized against his plan to spread sludge on local tree farms. 
“If I knocked on your door and said I’ve got this beneficial product called sludge, what are you going to say?” he asked. At Machno’s suggestion, the Federation newsletter published a request for alternative names. Members sent in over 250 suggestions, including “all growth,” “purenutri,” “biolife,” “bioslurp,” “black gold,” “geoslime,” “sca-doo,” “the end product,” “humanure,” “hu-doo,” “organic residuals,” “bioresidue,” “urban biomass,” “powergro,” “organite,” “recyclite,” “nutri-cake” and “R.O.S.E.,” short for “recycling of solids environmentally.” In June of 1991, the Name Change Task Force finally settled on “biosolids,” which it defined as the “nutrient-rich, organic byproduct of the nation’s wastewater treatment process.”
The new name drew sarcastic comment from the Doublespeak Quarterly Review, edited by Rutgers University professor William Lutz. “Does it still stink?” Lutz asked. He predicted that the name “probably won’t move into general usage. It’s obviously coming from an engineering mentality. It does have one great virtue, though. You think of ‘biosolids’ and your mind goes blank.”
According to Machno, the name change was not intended to “cover something up or hide something from the public. . . . We’re trying to come up with a term . . . that can communicate to the public the value of this product that we spend an awful lot of money on turning into a product that we use in a beneficial way.”
Sludge critic James Bynum saw a more sinister motive behind the name change. In 1992 the EPA modified its “Part 503″ technical standards which regulate sludge application on farmlands. The new regulations used the term “biosolids” for the first time, and sludge which was previously designated as hazardous waste was reclassified as “Class A” fertilizer. “The beneficial sludge use policy simply changed the name from sludge to fertilizer, and the regulation changed the character of sludge from polluted to clean so it could be recycled with a minimum of public resistance,” Bynum wrote. “Sludge that was too contaminated to be placed in a strictly controlled sanitary landfill was promoted as a safe fertilizer and dumped on farmland without anyone having any responsibility. . . . There is a real concern for everyone, when a bureaucrat can write a regulation which circumvents the liability provisions of the major Congressional mandated environmental laws, by simply changing the name of a regulated material.”
A few months after the debut of “biosolids,” the Water Pollution Control Federation dropped the words “pollution control” from its own name and replaced them with “environment.” At the group’s 64th annual conference, WEF President Roger Dolan explained the reasoning behind the latest name change: “We don’t control pollution anymore; we eliminate it. To the outside world, our people came to be seen as pollution people. In today’s world, the word ‘control’ just isn’t good enough.” In fact, this claim was largely rhetorical. “Virtual elimination has not been achieved for one single persistent toxic,” said E. Davie Fulton, a Canadian official involved in sagging efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.
In 1992, the Water Environment Federation, describing itself as a “not-for-profit technical and educational organization” whose “mission is to preserve and enhance the global water environment,” received a $300,000 grant from the EPA to “educate the public” about the “beneficial uses” of sludge. “The campaign will tie in with the Federation’s ongoing efforts to promote use of the term ‘biosolids,’” reported the Federation’s December 1992 newsletter.
References
Is Your Compost Made of Sewage? The Truth About Biosolids – Bill Kohlhaase, Planet Natural
Smart Meters Raise Controversy In Vermont
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Petitions, if signed by the community to challenge the structure of law that regulates the destruction of the planet and the amount of local authority we ‘re allowed to have, bring the people to the point of asserting rights, and are worthwhile.
Those petitions that are easily “clicked” give us a false sense of participation and security.
When the people finally awake to the dream that has been prescribed to them, and find themselves in the middle of a regulatory nightmare, then we are on the way to change. If we cannot point to a space and time where democracy happens, then it does not exist. When the rights of people, community, and nature are elevated above the claimed rights of corporations, then we actually govern. So long as we are subject to propaganda – like calling murder “collateral damage” and sewage sludge “recycled biosolids” and corporatocracy “representative government” – we are sacrificing the future of our children and grandchildren to the endless production of endless more, and the magnification of privilege.
Reality, is by definition – those things that when you stop believing in them are still there.
So, if we are not the ones making the decisions – and those who we elect are not making those decisions for our benefit – then democracy does not exist here. If the regulatory system is not set up to protect us and the planet, what is it for?
If we think industry writes the laws that they are governed by and that permits are issued to allow destruction, not to prohibit it, then who is government working for? What are we going to do about it?