Sludge Watch ==> Where has Toronto sludge gone ? Land application only 6.9% of sludge

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Where has Toronto sludge been going?



Ashbridges Bay sewage treatment plant – Canada’s largest sewage treatment 
plant

(unit of measure : 1,000 tonnes dry weight)



           incineration       land application          landfill             
   pellets      total



2001       28.0                                     17.3 **                 
2              47.3



2002       18.0                      5.1                   18.7            
4.4            46.4



2003          -                         2.3                  45.5            
3.3             51.1



2004          -                         3.0                  37.8            
     -             40.8



2005           -                        5.3                  38.5            
     -             43.8



Totals    46.0                       15.7                157.8              
9.7          229.4



%            20                          6.9                  68.9           
     4.2          100



**  for the year 2001 the City fails to say how much was land applied and 
lumps the number in with the landfill number.  Maybe there was no land 
application.  After Walkerton there was strong concern about placing 
pathogenic materials on the fractured limestone soils of Southern Ontario.



There is another sewage treatment plant that serves the west end of Toronto…
Highland Creek sewage treatment plant incinerates the sludge it receives. 
These numbers are only for Ashbridges Bay.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


Analysis:

Well, so much for Toronto's land application program.  I don't think that 
the municipal politicians have been told how very little sludge goes
to land application.  A mere 6.9% of sludge went to farms in the past 5 
years and for this the taxpayer paid hundreds of millions of dollars in 
infrastructure costs...digesters
etc.   And despite the failure of the biosolids program (both the land 
application of wet sludge at 27% solids, and the pellet program) the city 
insists that it
will continue with its 'Beneficial Use' program.  'Beneficial Use' is the 
bizarre euphemism for land application of sludge.

The pelletizer burned down in 2003.  Not much loss since the pellets were 
unsaleable.  USF paid a guy at Couse Ltd $25 ton to get rid of them however 
he could....but they went into spontaneous combustion and burned down his 
storage facility.  USF Canada told him it wasn't their fault. They didn't 
tell him that the pellets went into spontaneous combustion at other sites 
around the province.

Then the Brenzil's of Empire Agri Services (yes the Pelham paper sludge 
banditos) started hauling the pellets into Thorold...where again the fire 
department was called.

Note that in the 2005 annual report, the City of Toronto has started to 
refer to landfilling sludge in Michigan as a 'Beneficial Use'.  Beneficial 
to whom?

Attached is the MSWord version of this page...in case you have trouble 
reading it.  Also attached tables from the reports from the city for 2001 - 
2005

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