Environmental groups ask Carbon County to press governor for stronger sewage-sludge testing

Representatives of local environmental organizations told the Carbon County Board of Commissioners on April 3 that the county should press the governor to strengthen testing and regulation of sewage sludge.

At the commissioners' public-comment period, a representative said the groups had previously requested that the county send a letter to the governor and that the letter “is going out.” The speaker said Carbon County would be the first county to intervene in this way and urged commissioners to continue leadership on the issue.

The organizations said the sewage-sludge matter is not limited to Carbon County and that other counties are affected; they asked the commissioners to anticipate follow-on concerns about land preservation. “We have a new open space program and my concern is that we're preserving property that might have this on it,” a commissioner commented during the same public-comments segment, saying the county could end up preserving property that later proves unusable. That commissioner noted the potential for long-latency health effects and said state action would be preferable.

Speakers identified the issue as a public-health and land-use concern but did not cite a specific statute or regulation. The transcript does not record a motion by the Board to send or to ratify a letter to the governor during the meeting.

Because no formal action on the topic is recorded in the meeting minutes provided, it is not possible to confirm from the record whether the county has formally transmitted a letter or taken administrative steps beyond the public comment. The environmental groups asked for a county-level intervention and credited the commissioners for previous leadership on the matter.