A settlement agreement approved by Augusta commissioners this week means the end of lengthy and costly litigation over sewage sludge and dying dairy cows.

Former city attorney James W. Ellison said Wednesday that the settlement means insurance carriers will pay the city's legal costs in defending a lawsuit filed by the Boyceland Dairy and pay R.A. McElmurray & Sons to settle its lawsuit against the city.

"No costs to the taxpayers," Mr. Ellison said.

The McElmurray and Boyce families - dairy farmers in south Augusta and Burke County - initially sued the city in 1998.

They contend that sludge from the Messerly Wastewater Plant that the city offered as free fertilizer contained dangerous amounts of heavy metals that poisoned their land and cattle, according to reports in The Augusta Chronicle.

The Boyce family lawsuit was filed in Richmond County Superior Court, and a jury awarded the family $550,000 in 2003. The family had asked for $12.5 million.

Judge J. Carlisle Overstreet, who presided over the Boyce trial, threw out the McElmurray lawsuit. Higher courts, however, reinstated the lawsuit, and it had gone all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court and was pending trial.

The settlement ends all of the litigation, Mr. Ellison said.

Lloyds of London, National Union Insurance Co., Coregis Insurance Co. and St. Paul Insurance Co. agreed to pay $1.3 million for the cost of defending the city in the Boyce lawsuit. The companies will pay the McElmurray family $1.5 million to settle their case.

The city filed suit against the insurance companies in federal court in 2004.

Though the consolidated government doesn't have outside insurance, the city had policies before the 1995 consolidation, Mr. Ellison said.

The city contended that the insurance companies should pay for the cost because the sludge was applied before consolidation, Mr. Ellison said.