Overturned truck spreads human waste on ramp
By TERRI SANGINITI
The News Journal
03/31/2006
State environmental workers spent the better part of their day Wednesday scooping up something unpleasant -- processed human waste, to be specific -- from a highway ramp near Odessa.
The substance, about 5 tons of it, escaped from a tarp-covered tractor-trailer that flipped over on its side about 8:15 a.m. on the Lorewood Grove Road off-ramp from southbound Del. 1.
State police cited the driver, Stanley Massenburg, 48, of Queenstown, Md., with careless driving for traveling too fast and failing to negotiate the curve, agency spokeswoman Sgt. Melissa Zebley said.
Massenburg was operating a 1995 International tractor-trailer, owned by Ranny Goldsborough Haul Co. in Maryland, that was carrying the human waste from Philadelphia to Synagro in Baltimore, where it was destined to become fertilizer.
Zebley said the truck had an "open top with a cargo-type cover," allowing half the load to escape.
A state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control emergency response team arrived at the scene about 10 a.m. to begin the tedious task of cleanup. By that time, the rig had already been removed.
DNREC environmental scientist Matt Higgins said about 5 gallons of diesel fuel also spilled.
Higgins said the substance police called "human waste" that oozed over the pavement and shoulder of the highway was actually "stabilized sludge," a waste byproduct from a treatment plant.
Following the more than four-hour cleanup, "copious amounts of lime was spread on the area to kill the pathogens," Higgins said. Workers also used a dry absorbent to aid in traction on the highway, he said.
The Baltimore company has a permit to carry the sludge through Delaware, but it received a citation from DNREC enforcement for not properly handling the material, officials said.
The highway was reopened to traffic about 1 p.m., Zebley said.
