It was an idea whose time, it was thought, had come: using nutrient-rich sewage sludge from waste-water plants to fertilize the earth, rather than disposing of it through other means.

The Environmental Protection Agency loved the idea of giving out the sludge free to farmers -- they wouldn't have to pay for the fertilizer, and the plants (usually part of the local goverment) wouldn't have to pay for the disposal.

But then Georgia farmer Andy McElmurray's cows started dying, and milk began showing up on store shelves with 120 times the recommended levels of thallium -- the key ingredient in rat poison. The farmer blamed the problem on sludge applied to his lands from the Augusta sewage treatment plant.

And this week, a federal judge ordered the agriculture department to compensate the McElMurray, who also recently received a settlement from the city of Augusta for $1.5 million.

The Associated Press gives the whole account here.

This is one of those stories that scares the heck out of me, especially because the AP reports that milk with some of the same contaminants showed up at a local dairy market, and some regulators knew about it.

The Sun's Mary Gail Hare wrote a bit about a similar issue in the northern Chesapeake Bay area of Havre De Grace, where farmers wanted to spread sludge on farms near parkland. Officials agreed to stop spreading it near the park, according to her last story.