City Beat - Philadelphia
The Sludge Report
Employees slam plans to privatize biosolids plant.
March 30-April 5, 2006
by Jenna Portnoy
ENVIRONMENT
WASTE, WANT NOT: Some think working conditions at the sludge plant off I-95 are hazardous. Richard Smith, an industrial electrician there, doesn't.
: Michael T. Regan
Every day, compost specialist Michael Keough shovels sludge at the processing facility that makes everyone driving into the city on I-95 roll up their windows and wonder just what that stench is. Although neighbors and environmentalists insist the biosolids he stands in are toxic, Keough says the job he's held for 18 years has never aggravated his asthma or caused other health problems.
In fact, Keough, industrial electrician Richard Smith and other employees are so convinced of the safety and effectiveness of the city's current program for getting rid of human waste, they can't understand why the city wants to outsource the work [News, "Smelling Faults," Jenna Portnoy, March 16, 2006].
"I know they're uneducated about it," Keough says. "If they'd spend a day in my life, they'd see."
While the city boasts that outsourcing would save millions, quell environmental concerns and eliminate noxious odors, employees counter that it would cost taxpayers more money, hurt the environment and address a harmless odor.
Most of plant's 100 workers would also have to learn new jobs somewhere else within the city, but "it's not just about our jobs," says one of several longtime employees who did not want their names printed for fear of retribution. "It's about a waste of millions and millions of taxpayer dollars."
Water Commissioner Bernard Brunwasser wants Synagro (along with two local firms, McKissack & McKissack and Len Parker & Associates) to build a $66 million indoor facility to heat-dry sludge and turn it into pellets that the company would then sell as fertilizer or biofuel. Once the facility is up and running, the city would pay the company's utility costs within limits. Both sides agree the pellet-producing system requires more natural gas and electricity than the Biosolids Recycling Center (BRC) uses now. How much that will cost is a matter of debate.
The difference lies in the fluctuating cost of natural gas. To figure out the annual cost, Water Department attorney Barry Davis uses a conservative number that halves the number employees use to calculate the cost. (He supposes that a quarter of fuel will be produced at the nearby sewage treatment plant.) While Davis says utilities will cost $5.2 million annually, employees pin the figure at $9.45 million.
After comparing current operating costs with the fee Synagro would charge, Davis says Synagro would save the city about $3 million the first year. Over the 20- to 25-year life of the contract, taking into account inflation and price indexes, the savings would climb to a total of $98 million, he says.
But employees don't buy it. They say, in part because of high gas costs, the plan will backfire and force the Water Department to raise rates to balance the budget.
Higher costs might be worth it if the city could at least address environmental concerns. But employees say it cannot.
Of the two types of biosolid the city makes, Class A and Class B, only the former is safe for landscaping. (Class B sludge is spread on farms and used in coal mine reclamation; there is controversy over whether it is dangerous.) The Water Department favors the Synagro plan because the pellets would all be Class A, which means there's less risk they could contain germs called pathogens.
Synagro has to get rid of these pellets—they could be sold to Florida citrus growers or cement plants—yet employees say the market is flooded and Synagro would have to landfill them.
Perhaps even worse for the environment, there have been reports of fires at other plants. Earlier this month, an explosion blasted a hole in a metal wall at a different company's sludge plant in Ocean County, N.J.
A silo at the Synagro-run plant in South Bronx exploded in September 2003. In a prepared statement, Synagro spokesman Jim Hecht said the Bronx plant was built in the early 1990s and "over the past 15 years, there has been marked improvement in pelletizing technologies, dramatically improving process control."
That's not enough to convince workers of the proposal's validity. And neither is the company's promise of smell-free processing.
The stench is a major reason why the city wants to go ahead with the plan. "We continue to subject the citizens of Philadelphia and visitors to our city to odors and sludge piles at the current BRC," Brunwasser wrote in a March 8 letter in response to Councilman Michael Nutter's inquiry about the plan.
He continued that the city's own watchdog, the Air Management Services (AMS) unit of the Department of Public Health, has not enforced odor violations "with the understanding that an environmentally sound alternative has been proposed."
Employees counter that complaints are rare, a fact backed up by AMS, and that the smell is nothing to worry about. "We know from being on the plant that the place doesn't smell good," says one worker who maintains that an unpleasant smell is hardly worth the financial and environmental risks.
Underlying this debate is workers' concern that they have been excluded from plans. In a February letter to Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, Andrew Bond, the AFSCME District Council 33 agent who represents most BRC employees, declared, "We are confident that there are viable alternatives that will help the Philadelphia Water Department reach its goals of cost and odor control."
"This just seems to me like a total waste of money," says Keough. "This company, first and foremost, their loyalties are to the stockholders."
Ultimately, it's up to City Council to take a critical look at the box of documents the Water Department sent to each member earlier this month and ask the right questions at a hearing tentatively set for April 25.
Employees want to spread the word before then.
Says one: "It's a very volatile thing that neighbors should know about."
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2006-03-30/cb.shtml?print=1
The Sludge Report
Employees slam plans to privatize biosolids plant.
March 30-April 5, 2006
by Jenna Portnoy
ENVIRONMENT
WASTE, WANT NOT: Some think working conditions at the sludge plant off I-95 are hazardous. Richard Smith, an industrial electrician there, doesn't.
: Michael T. Regan
Every day, compost specialist Michael Keough shovels sludge at the processing facility that makes everyone driving into the city on I-95 roll up their windows and wonder just what that stench is. Although neighbors and environmentalists insist the biosolids he stands in are toxic, Keough says the job he's held for 18 years has never aggravated his asthma or caused other health problems.
In fact, Keough, industrial electrician Richard Smith and other employees are so convinced of the safety and effectiveness of the city's current program for getting rid of human waste, they can't understand why the city wants to outsource the work [News, "Smelling Faults," Jenna Portnoy, March 16, 2006].
"I know they're uneducated about it," Keough says. "If they'd spend a day in my life, they'd see."
While the city boasts that outsourcing would save millions, quell environmental concerns and eliminate noxious odors, employees counter that it would cost taxpayers more money, hurt the environment and address a harmless odor.
Most of plant's 100 workers would also have to learn new jobs somewhere else within the city, but "it's not just about our jobs," says one of several longtime employees who did not want their names printed for fear of retribution. "It's about a waste of millions and millions of taxpayer dollars."
Water Commissioner Bernard Brunwasser wants Synagro (along with two local firms, McKissack & McKissack and Len Parker & Associates) to build a $66 million indoor facility to heat-dry sludge and turn it into pellets that the company would then sell as fertilizer or biofuel. Once the facility is up and running, the city would pay the company's utility costs within limits. Both sides agree the pellet-producing system requires more natural gas and electricity than the Biosolids Recycling Center (BRC) uses now. How much that will cost is a matter of debate.
The difference lies in the fluctuating cost of natural gas. To figure out the annual cost, Water Department attorney Barry Davis uses a conservative number that halves the number employees use to calculate the cost. (He supposes that a quarter of fuel will be produced at the nearby sewage treatment plant.) While Davis says utilities will cost $5.2 million annually, employees pin the figure at $9.45 million.
After comparing current operating costs with the fee Synagro would charge, Davis says Synagro would save the city about $3 million the first year. Over the 20- to 25-year life of the contract, taking into account inflation and price indexes, the savings would climb to a total of $98 million, he says.
But employees don't buy it. They say, in part because of high gas costs, the plan will backfire and force the Water Department to raise rates to balance the budget.
Higher costs might be worth it if the city could at least address environmental concerns. But employees say it cannot.
Of the two types of biosolid the city makes, Class A and Class B, only the former is safe for landscaping. (Class B sludge is spread on farms and used in coal mine reclamation; there is controversy over whether it is dangerous.) The Water Department favors the Synagro plan because the pellets would all be Class A, which means there's less risk they could contain germs called pathogens.
Synagro has to get rid of these pellets—they could be sold to Florida citrus growers or cement plants—yet employees say the market is flooded and Synagro would have to landfill them.
Perhaps even worse for the environment, there have been reports of fires at other plants. Earlier this month, an explosion blasted a hole in a metal wall at a different company's sludge plant in Ocean County, N.J.
A silo at the Synagro-run plant in South Bronx exploded in September 2003. In a prepared statement, Synagro spokesman Jim Hecht said the Bronx plant was built in the early 1990s and "over the past 15 years, there has been marked improvement in pelletizing technologies, dramatically improving process control."
That's not enough to convince workers of the proposal's validity. And neither is the company's promise of smell-free processing.
The stench is a major reason why the city wants to go ahead with the plan. "We continue to subject the citizens of Philadelphia and visitors to our city to odors and sludge piles at the current BRC," Brunwasser wrote in a March 8 letter in response to Councilman Michael Nutter's inquiry about the plan.
He continued that the city's own watchdog, the Air Management Services (AMS) unit of the Department of Public Health, has not enforced odor violations "with the understanding that an environmentally sound alternative has been proposed."
Employees counter that complaints are rare, a fact backed up by AMS, and that the smell is nothing to worry about. "We know from being on the plant that the place doesn't smell good," says one worker who maintains that an unpleasant smell is hardly worth the financial and environmental risks.
Underlying this debate is workers' concern that they have been excluded from plans. In a February letter to Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, Andrew Bond, the AFSCME District Council 33 agent who represents most BRC employees, declared, "We are confident that there are viable alternatives that will help the Philadelphia Water Department reach its goals of cost and odor control."
"This just seems to me like a total waste of money," says Keough. "This company, first and foremost, their loyalties are to the stockholders."
Ultimately, it's up to City Council to take a critical look at the box of documents the Water Department sent to each member earlier this month and ask the right questions at a hearing tentatively set for April 25.
Employees want to spread the word before then.
Says one: "It's a very volatile thing that neighbors should know about."
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2006-03-30/cb.shtml?print=1
Labels: biosolids Pellets, philadelphia sludge, synagro
posted by Sludge at 6:20 PM
