The battle over sewage sludge as fertilizer in Northampton County will go on.

Biosolids applied to a farm in Mitchells, Virginia, are displayed June 6, 2007. (AP file photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Pennsylvania's Environmental Hearing Board earlier this month rejected motions for partial summary judgment in the appeal of state approval to spread biosolids on three farms in Upper Mount Bethel Township.

Township residents organized as Sludge Free UMBT filed the appeal in February 2014 and were joined by the nonprofit Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

Biosolids are made of mainly human waste and can contain other materials and disease-causing microorganisms, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The sludge opponents are battling approval granted by the Pennsylvania Department of Education for Synagro Mid-Atlantic Inc. to spread the fertilizer on three farms owned by Ron Angle in Upper Mount Bethel: Potomac, Sunrise and Stone Church, all leased and farmed by Paul Smith, according to the Environmental Hearing Board.

"To date no biosolids have been applied to the Angle farms," the board's July 1 ruling against partial summary judgment reads.

The ruling sets up a hearing before the board that Angle said he expects to be held before November, the earliest Smith could apply the biosolids for the next growing season.

Ron Angle speaks in August 2010. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

Angle said Tuesday night biosolids are approved for use by state environmental officials and recommended for use by the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences. They're also in use in neighboring Lower Mount Bethel Township, he said.

"They've been spreading it the past year in Lower Mount Bethel, farm after farm, it's hurt nobody, the crops look great," Angle said, adding about the appeal: "All it's doing is depriving the Upper Mount Bethel farmers of having free fertilizer."

According to the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, all three Upper Mount Bethel farms drain into the Allegheny Creek, which flows into a section of the Delaware River designated as Special Protection Waters by the Delaware River Basin Commission. Some of the farm sites also drain into the river directly, or into other tributary streams, the group says; the farm sites also drain into neighboring and nearby wetlands.

Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum heralded the ruling.

"Industrial operations, development projects, and other corporate and political goals that harm peoples' ability to drink safe water, to breath healthy air, to live safely in their homes free from pollution, floods and invasion, should not be allowed to advance; corporations and politicians should be forced to find a better way," she said in a statement. "This decision helps make that point."

Angle notes helped try to start a free seed program for cover crops in Upper Mount Bethel, as an alternative to biosolids and claims those opposed to biosolids didn't support the proposal.

"Everybody wants to drive by corn when it's growing, everybody wants to smell hay when it's being cut," he said. "Well let's do something to help the farmer."

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.