Damaged Fields Raise Farmers’ Doubts They Suspect Industrial Waste By-Product May Have Done More Harm Than Good

More than 10 Deer Park-area farmers say that industrial by-products spread on their fields by Northwest Alloys Inc. might have damaged their crops of alfalfa, canola and timothy hay.

They used the by-products to improve the pH balance in their soil, but now their fields are weed-riddled and spotty.

The farmers think the product, called High Mag Gro - which is derived from waste left after making magnesium - may be the culprit. Northwest Alloys said if there is damage, it was likely from the way the product was applied.

The damaged crops raise new concerns about use of industrial by-products on fields. So far there are many more questions than answers.

On Monday several farmers, a Washington State Department of Agriculture agent, a scientist, members of Northwest Alloys and the former mayor of Quincy, Wash., toured several fields north of Spokane to inspect the damage. They found ailing hay plants, bare patches in an alfalfa field and large leftover chunks of the product that was spread this winter and spring.

High Mag Gro is designed to counter the natural acidity of soil. For $6 an acre, the company will spread between 800 and 4,000 pounds on each acre. That’s a bargain to farmers who otherwise would have to spent $70 an acre to spread lime.

The product’s ingredients include potassium-chloride, calcium-chloride, magnesium-chloride, magnesium-oxide and calcium-oxide, among other things. All are by-products from the manufacture of magnesium at Northwest Alloys’ smelter in Addy, Wash.

“It’s a good liming agent,” said Ozzie Wilkinson, remediation and public affairs manager with Northwest Alloys, a subsidiary of Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). It’s also common practice to use by-products such as these to improve the quality of soil, he said.

“It’s better to recycle these materials and get the benefit back out of them if you can,” he said.

By recycling these products onto the fields, Alcoa has saved millions of dollars in disposal costs over the years.

The practice was approved by the state in the spring of 1998 when Governor Locke signed into law a bill to regulate what metals went into fertilizers. Still, a study to determine what of these metals and chemicals a plant takes up won’t be completed until December 2000.

“I’m here investigating a complaint,” said Levi Strauss, feed and fertilizer specialist for the state department of agriculture.

He and David Yonge, a civil and environmental engineer with Washington State University who was working on his own time, said they’re a long way from knowing exactly what happened in these fields.

“It’s an issue of even beginning to understand what impact this product would have on crops,” Yonge said.

The group first stopped at Bob Dyck’s field of timothy hay and alfalfa. In the area he didn’t have treated with High Mag Gro, he’s getting three tons of yield per acre. In the field that was treated, it was just 1.25 tons, he said.

“My biggest concern is all these dead spots,” Dyck said, pointing to strips of greener color running through the field. “They fill with weeds.”

Wilkenson said that a problem with the spreader as it was putting High Mag Gro on the fields might have caused some damage by applying too much.

“If we caused a problem, we’re certainly willing to deal with it,” he said. But the agent is registered with the state and fully legal, he said. “Heavy metals-wise, there’s less than what naturally exists in the soil.”

They may have followed the law, but it raises the question of applying industrial waste to farmland, said Patty Martin, Quincy’s former mayor, who a few years ago raised questions statewide about the practice. Her vocal stance brought national attention to using industrial waste in farming.

“I’m here because I’m still concerned about this,” Martin said.

She said that Northwest Alloys’ products have a history of problems, citing a case in Oregon where a farmer’s clover field treated with product from the Addy smelter mysteriously wilted. That farmer reached an out-of-court settlement.

And the company is responsible for cleaning up the site of a former business partner, L-Bar, also of Addy, which buried barrels of acid left from its business recycling magnesium from Northwest Alloys.

Now some Deer Park farmers are concerned about the practice, too.

Brent Berger said he first noticed some difference in his fields this spring. “And I picked up rumor of other people getting into trouble,” he said. He called around, learned that others had also gotten High Mag Gro treatments and then filed a complaint with the state Department of Agriculture. “We’re trying to figure out what the heck is going on,” he said.

Northwest Alloys is willing to continue tests on the farms with the help of a neutral party to determine what caused the damage the farmers claim they have.

Many of the farmers who have complained about High Mag Gro haven’t yet been billed for it.