Sludge Watch ==> Ventura - Keep sewage sludge out of Toland Landfill

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Ventura is looking at a proposal to put its sewage sludge in the Toland 
Landfill.  In this story
Jason Raley writes :

"Kern County voters voted last year to stop accepting sludge from Ventura 
and Los Angeles counties"


This is inaccurate.  The Kern County voters voted to ban the LAND 
APPLICATION OF SEWAGE SLUDGE on lands in the County jurisdiction.  They DID 
NOT vote to stop accepting  LA or Ventura sludge.  This was an environmental 
ordinance to stop the risk to the Kern aquifer and Kern agriculture from 
land application of sludge .... not to close sludge processing 
facilities...and not to arbitrarily bar out of county sludge.  Since Ventura 
sludge is not land applied in Kern County the Kern ordinance had no impact 
on Ventura's current sludge disposal practices.

Ventura can continue to send sludge into Kern County for composting or land 
fill or any other use/disposal so long as they do not land apply it on 
farmfields in Kern County.   The Kern initiative was and is no bar to the 
current disposal of Ventura sludges.

What is accurate about the story is that any disposal or use of sludge needs 
a thorough environmental assessment.  And Jason is right when he says that 
there are many new sludge disposal / use/  technologies that are better than 
'haul and dump'.




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Keep sewage sludge out of Toland Landfill
By Jason Raley
Sunday, September 9, 2007

Tuesday, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors will vote on a proposal by 
the Ventura Regional Sanitation District to haul the county's sewage sludge 
to the Toland Landfill, between Santa Paula and Fillmore. The proposal has 
mostly flown under the radar, so many county residents may not know anything 
about the project. It is late, but somebody needs to sound the alarm loudly 
enough for the whole county to hear.
The proposed project would have sewage sludge delivered to the landfill by 
truck, along Highway 126, from cities across Ventura County. The new 
facility would include as many as four machines to cook the sludge. The VRSD 
then intends to use it as "daily cover" at the landfill (think of the 
frosting on a multilayered cake). There is serious concern about the 
wind-blown pathogens (think, e-coli), metals, etc., that could contaminate 
the orchards and row crops of the Santa Clara River Valley.

The equipment proposed for this project is designed to be used at a 
wastewater treatment plant, where the untreated water removed from the 
sludge can be treated. The equipment is not designed to be used at a 
landfill. It is still not clear what the VRSD would do with the water 
removed from the sewage sludge at Toland, which would be in the millions of 
gallons. It might be used for dust control. It might be trucked back to the 
cities to be treated at the original wastewater treatment plants. Or it 
might be evaporated as steam, which would mean the VRSD would have to build 
large steam towers at the landfill. Again, we worry about what could be 
carried to the crops of the Santa Clara River Valley with the steam from 
these towers.

So, what's the problem? In fact, there are two problems. The first problem 
has to do with the plant itself. Simply put, it's the wrong project in the 
wrong place at the wrong time with too many dangers left unaccounted for. 
Residents of the Santa Clara River Valley would again bear the burden of 
increased traffic, odor and dust, and the potential risk from bacteria, 
viruses and heavy metals in the air and water. The project is a violation of 
any reasonable person's sense of social and environmental justice.

The second problem has to do with the way the project has been handled by 
the VRSD. It has managed to keep most citizens and local politicians in the 
dark about the true nature of its project. The VRSD acted as its own "lead 
agency" and chose not to conduct a full environmental impact report for the 
project. Anyone involved with solid waste management we have talked with is 
shocked that an EIR has not been done, considering the magnitude of the 
project and the many unknowns connected to it.

Little surprise, since a full EIR would have considered alternatives to the 
construction of a plant at Toland. The VRSD calls this new plant a "minor 
modification" to the existing landfill, trumpets its use of landfill gas as 
"green power" and, when pressured, exaggerates the urgency of the project. 
If we don't let this happen now, it implies, we're facing piles of sewage 
with nowhere to go. That is simply not true.

Right now, the county's sludge is trucked to Kern County. When Kern County 
voters voted last year to stop accepting sludge from Ventura and Los Angeles 
counties, the counties were concerned. However, a federal court decision 
ruled that Kern County must continue accepting sludge. What does this mean? 
Trucking it to Kern isn't what anyone wants, but the decision gives us time 
-time to figure out what is best for all Ventura County citizens, and what 
would keep Ventura County in the environmental and economic vanguard.

Sewage sludge is a huge issue all over the world right now. New technologies 
are coming very quickly. There are many alternatives. There are very few 
counties that have ever allowed sewage sludge in their landfills, and those 
that do are phasing out that use. Yet, our county wants to start doing what 
other counties would never think of doing in the past, much less in the 
future.

The trend in development is to keep the sludge at the wastewater treatment 
plants. Then it does not have to be trucked long distances and can be dealt 
with in small batches. To haul an entire county's untreated sewage sludge to 
one place and dump it is simply outdated. There are technologies currently 
in use in Europe and Japan that could soon be feasible in the U.S. that 
would treat sludge in a way that actually generates power, and that produces 
clean water and safe, construction-grade material.

We are left with too many questions for the project to be approved and there 
is no urgency. Why didn't this project go through a full EIR? What are the 
alternatives to this project? Why is the Santa Clara River Valley carrying 
the burden of the other cities in the county? What is the VRSD going to do 
about the bacteria, the viruses, the heavy metals that may be carried in the 
dust and water generated by the sewage sludge? How will our crops and our 
citizens be protected? In the end, who is going to keep us safe?

So, let's ring the alarm bells. And let them be a call to the work of 
figuring out the best way to handle our sewage sludge. Dumping the county's 
96,000 tons of yearly sewage sludge into Toland Landfill is certainly not 
the answer.

Tuesday meeting
The Ventura County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to discuss the issue of 
depositing sludge in the Toland Landfill at its Tuesday meeting at 2:30 p.m. 
Log on to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors' Web site for an agenda. 
The board meets in the hearing room in the Hall of Administration at the 
county Government Center, 800 S. Victoria Ave., Ventura.

Jason Raley lives in Santa Paula.

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2007/sep/09/keep-sewage-sludge-out-of-toland-landfill/