Sludge Watch ==> Arizona - making sludge and taking sludge

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Sludgewatch Admin:

About half the sludge in Arizona is trucked in from California.  With Kern 
County closing its borders to sludge land application, and with resistance 
to sludge compost site in Hinkley and other rural communities, it looks like 
more and more sludge will be trucked to Arizona.

Arizona - the New Kern County?
..............................................................................


http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=66794


Local News
Ed Grabek, district manager of Superstition Mountains Community Facilities 
District, checks biomass settled from raw sewage at the wastewater treatment 
plant in Apache Junction.

Toru Kawana Tribune

Sludge becomes cash crop at treatment plant
By Art Martori, Tribune
June 1, 2006


Ed Grabek knelt Tuesday beside a huge pile of sewage, plunged a hand into 
the brown sludge and let it sift through his fingers. Grabek is manager of 
the Superstition Mountain Community Facilities wastewater treatment plant. 
To him, the stuff is valuable.


View sludge processing graphic


“This is safe,” he said. “It’s good stuff.”

When residents of Apache Junction and the surrounding area flush their 
toilets, it ends up at the treatment plant where Grabek works — 1.4 million 
gallons of it every day. After wastewater is purified enough to be pumped 
away and used for agriculture, Grabek is left with all the microscopic 
organisms, known as biomass, which once cleaned sewage by consuming human 
waste.

The facility produces about 3 tons of biomass each day, which is turned into 
compost and then resold. Some other Valley wastewater treatment plants haul 
their biomass away to landfills because generally it’s more expensive to 
convert biomass than dump it.

The Superstition Mountains plant loses money on its biomass project.

It costs the state $8.50 a ton to convert biomass into compost, Grabek said. 
That comes to roughly $6,500 a year at the Superstition Mountain facility. 
Plus, there are added costs for transporting large amounts of the sludge.

Right now, the plant’s biomass fetches about $3 a ton. But Grabek said that 
doesn’t take into account the intangible value of turning waste into 
something usable.

“This is really applied environmentalism,” he said. “We’re taking it full 
circle.”

In 1993, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began regulating the 
amount of pollutants in biomass fertilizer so that it meets the requirements 
of the federal Clean Water Act. But critics argue the EPA regulations are 
inadequate and could allow dangerous toxins to contaminate nearby crops and 
water sources.

Rob Smith, southwest regional director for the Sierra Club, said using 
biomass fertilizers still can be unsafe.

“What’s legal is not necessarily clean.” he said. “The EPA standards cover 
some things but not everything. That’s not nearly a strong enough standard 
to be considered safe.”

A recent National Academy of Sciences report called for more research on 
biomass use because of there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it’s safe to 
use it as a fertilizer. The U.S. produces about 5.6 million tons of biomass 
yearly, of which 3.4 million tons are converted to fertilizer, the report 
said.

Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club Environmental Quality Program, 
confirmed the relative danger in using biomass fertilizers is unclear. He 
added that it could be extremely dangerous if a plant was processing 
industrial waste.

“It depends on the type of waste that’s discharged,” Hopkins said. “It’s 
probably less of a concern in communities whose treatment plants accept 
mostly residential waste.”

The Superstition Mountains plant handles the less dangerous type, Grabek 
said.

It’s crucial to continue developing the process, he said. Projections show 
the plant will nearly double its output within the next 15 years — to 32 
tons of biomass daily — mostly because of growth in Apache Junction and in 
the nearby Lost Dutchman Heights state trust land.

And soon it could become a lucrative business. The Superstition Mountains 
plant and a local fertilizer producer are currently exploring ways to 
increase the quality of biomass fertilizer and its price, which could jump 
to as much as $35 a ton. When they do, Grabek said it could lead to more 
than $400,000 in yearly revenue, which could offset operating costs at the 
plant while continuing to improve service. “Good compost does receive quite 
a bit of money.”
Contact Art Martori by email, or phone (480) 898-6514