Animal Manure: A Problem and an Opportunity-Technologies Transferable from Biosolids Management to the Management of Animal Manures

Over the years of the evolving National program for the management of biosolids, cost effective technologies have been developed to generate, treat, store, transport and use or dispose of this human equivalent of animal manures. While biosolids are predominantly derived from the treatment of domestic sewage and, therefore, is primarily a material derived from treated human wastes and primarily organic in nature, there is an industrial wastewater component that adds other substances to the finished material. It remains, however, that both the physical and chemical properties of biosolids whether in the untreated form or as a finished biosolids product suitable for use or disposal is similar enough to the analogous physical and chemical properties of both raw and treated animal manures such that the above-captioned treatment technologies for biosolids could be applied in a cost effective manner to animal manures as well. At least this conclusion should be treated as a rebuttable presumption as EPA and USDA begin to develop a joint animal manure strategy.