Sludge-Pellets

2008-06-03T08:59:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Barn fire suspected to be sparked by human waste

June 2, 2008
By TARA HAGAN

The Observer

A barn fire suspected to be sparked by piled human waste, had Sarnia Fire Rescue Services working round the clock over the weekend.

Platoon Chief Brian Crowe said crews first responded to a call at around 9 p.m. Saturday, where a portion of human sludge stored in the barn was smoldering.

Shad Kember, who lives next door to the property, said his wife Anne called the fire department after the couples son who lives down the road noticed smoke coming from the barn near their Confederation Line home.

He called us up and said there was a fire in the barn, said Kember. So we called the fire department in; but there was no real big fire, it was just kind of smoldering.

At that time, Kember got in his loader and began removing the smoking sludge.

He was digging it out, and thought that he got it all, said Crowe. The officer in charge left it with him to monitor it; there was no actual fire at that time.

But Kember says it was the fire department who should have better monitored the incident.

I thought theyd have someone there to keep an eye on it, he said.

Crowe said the waste was piled at least 10 feet high.

Hours later, at about 3 a.m., Kembers wife said she woke up to see the barn, which is about 500 feet from their home, engulfed in flames.

The flames were 40 or 50 feet high, she said. So we called the fire department and they were right back out here. There was a huge cloud of smoke we knew she was a goner.

Crowe said the fire was totally involved, when crews arrived.

The Kembers said they watched fire crews work through the night to battle the blaze, which left the 25-year-old, 900 by 60-foot barn completely demolished.

Fire crews, along with the Ministry of Environment, were on site, Sunday.

Kember, who used to run Kembers Topsoil and Turkeys at the property, sold it two years ago to Guelph-based LEL Farms.

Currently, the site is rented to Mark Lumley of Fairwind Farms, who declined to comment.

Kember said the human waste, which was being stored for use as fertilizer, was a likely cause, because of its flammability.

He said about 15 semi-loads of the waste, brought in from Windsor, were being stored there.

Its flammable stuff when it gets wet, said Kember, who thought something may have been wrong earlier that day.

I went outside and smelled something aweful, and I didnt know what it was, he said.

Damage estimates and the actual cause, were not confirmed at press time.

No one was injured in the fire.

2008-05-16T07:48:00.000-07:00

'Biosolids' plant takes stink out of sludge
Pellets to be used for fertilizer
By MICHAEL CASS • Staff Writer • May 4, 2008

The things you flush down your toilet could feed someone's lawn before summer's over.
Metro Water Services is running the final tests before it opens a new waste-water treatment facility on Second Avenue North. The $125 million Central Biosolids Facility will convert waste water produced by Metro residents and businesses into tiny pellets that can be used as fertilizer.

About 70 tons of pellets, known as "biosolids," will replace the 350 tons of treated sludge the city has been sending off to landfills every day. The stench that has sometimes annoyed residents of nearby Germantown and Salemtown also should be eliminated, Metro officials said. The city spent $10 million on odor control.
"Salemtown and Germantown continue to develop, so we had to do something," said Ron Taylor, chief engineer for the water department's operations division.
"To go from having to send all that material to landfills and sending a lot of trucks through developing neighborhoods to a point where we'll cut the trucks by 75 percent, that is a transformation."
But the biosolids project still makes some people queasy.
Some environmental activists say Metro is essentially taking sludge that would go to landfills and putting it on soil, where it could hurt animals and people.
" 'Biosolids' is just a pretty name the industry gives sludge," said Sherry Force, who runs a recycling and environmental awareness program at Granbery Elementary School. "We should continue to landfill it until we find a safe way to dispose of it.
"These people do not know what's in this material at any given time, yet they've sanctioned it to be spread out on agricultural fields."
Taylor said the Metro treatment process will eliminate disease-causing pathogens found in the sludge, however, and produce a safe, nutrient-rich class of pellets. The process meets the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's standards for reuse of waste water.
But the EPA's blessing doesn't mean much to Force or fellow activist Bruce Wood.
"Maybe the federal government lets us get away with it, but they let us pollute the Cumberland River, too," said Wood, who leads a Nashville environmental and public health advocacy group called BURNT.
More sewage processed
The number of Metro sewer customers has increased about 15 percent in the past seven years, Water Services Director Scott Potter said at a Metro Council budget hearing last month. Taylor said Metro has been sending about 100,000 tons of sludge a year to landfills at a cost of about $3 million annually.
That will change under the biosolids process, which will take the residual sludge produced by the older waste-water treatment process — the smelly gunk now going to landfills — and break it down further.
The new facility will thicken the residual sludge to start removing water and use anaerobic bacteria — bacteria that don't need oxygen — to reduce pathogens and decompose the sludge. That part of the process, which takes place in large buildings called "digesters," produces methane gas.
The digested sludge then will go to one of five centrifuges, which will "dewater" it to remove excess liquid. Finally, it will go through a heat-drying system, powered by the methane gas from the digesters, to evaporate the remaining water, destroy the remaining pathogens and produce the biosolids.
The pellets will be heated to 200 degrees Fahrenheit when the process is over.
Metro has contracted with Arkansas-based Mannco Fertilizer Co. to market 25,000 to 30,000 tons of pellets a year, according to the company's Web site.
"Mannco has successfully developed markets for use on row crops, golf courses, horticulture and turf grass needs," the Web site says.
Jeff Gossage, Metro's purchasing director, said Friday that the marketing contract had been awarded but did not call back with details.
Greenway planned
Metro also is planning to build a greenway near the biosolids facility, said Shain Dennison, greenways director for Metro Parks. Construction could start this summer on the 1.5-mile stretch, which would be part of a greenway system connecting downtown to MetroCenter and would feature a spur to Germantown's Morgan Park.
"It's going to be a better thing when they get everything done," said Salemtown resident and blogger Mike Byrd, who has complained about the smell coming from the waste-water treatment plant in the past. "All the dominoes seem to be falling into place. … It's a great thing for Salemtown."
Metro also has built a smaller, $25 million biosolids facility at its Dry Creek waste-water treatment plant in the Rivergate area. The Dry Creek plant opened in 1961, three years after the Central plant opened north of downtown.

http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080504/NEWS01/805040428/-1/ARCHIVE01

2008-05-16T07:20:00.000-07:00

Another Sludge Pelletizer Fire - Honolulu

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Jul/15/ln/FP707150378.html

Posted on: Sunday, July 15, 2007

Oahu sewage upgrades fall behind

Photo gallery: Sand Island wastewater treatment plantBy Johnny BrannonAdvertiser Staff WriterHawaii news photo - The Honolulu AdvertiserAt the Sand Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, Tim Robinson stands in front of a key part of the facility, an egg-shaped "digester" that is used as part of the sludge recycling process.Photos by JEFF WIDENER The Honolulu Advertiser
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu AdvertiserSand Island sewage plant employees Allen Perry, back, and Silvestre Ulep walk along a large holding tank for raw, untreated sewage.

Growing pressure to reduce pollution risks from O'ahu's sewage and to decrease the amount of debris flowing into the island's main garbage dump, two costly projects that affect both situations remain hampered by problems.An important disinfection unit at the Sand Island Wastewater Treatment Plant is five years behind schedule and has cost $40 million more than the city's original $60 million estimate.The project — a first-of-its-kind application — is complete but has yet to begin a crucial yearlong period of continuous operation and testing to prove its effectiveness.Before that period concludes, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to call for a major plant upgrade that could cost $800 million more and require major changes to the system of pumps and pipes that feeds into the disinfection unit.The second delayed project, a $38 million facility that converts dried sewage sludge from the Sand Island plant into organic fertilizer pellets, remains inoperable after it was damaged by an early-morning fire one month ago.In the meantime, about 36 tons of dried sludge "cake" are trucked to the city's Waimanalo Gulch dump each day as that site nears its permitted capacity. The dump's operating permit expires in less than a year, but the city hopes to expand the site and extend its operation.SOLUTIONS IN WORKSOfficials say problems with the sewage disinfection unit and fertilizer facility should be resolved within months, and that they are committed to making sure both projects are operated safely and efficiently.The disinfection unit — which zaps treated sewage with powerful banks of ultraviolet lamps to destroy pathogens — is now fully operational, said Allen Perry, city metro region wastewater superintendent.But a few lingering problems must be corrected, and some preliminary tests must be completed before the yearlong proving period begins, he said.The electric power that feeds the unit has sometimes spiked and damaged key parts or caused equipment to be shut down.That can't happen during the proving period, because the unit must operate without interruption — or face more delays, Perry said.A recent power fluctuation lasted only 10 seconds but destroyed 30 of the plant's 1,680 ultraviolet lamps, which cost nearly $300 each.Electricity to run the unit is expected to cost up to $9 million per year, so different light intensities and operating methods are being tested, city environmental services director Eric Takamura said.The light must be strong enough to disinfect the sewage properly without wasting electricity or wearing out lamps prematurely."We're trying to optimize the system to keep the costs down," Takamura said. "Every time we test under a different scenario, we have to wait for lab results to come back."Testing during the proving period will help determine whether the city must operate the unit continuously in the future, or only run it under certain weather and flow conditions that could push discharged effluent back toward O'ahu's shoreline.The unit is designed to handle up to 150 million gallons of sewage per day, and has five channels that can be opened or closed as there are peaks and lulls in the city's sewage flow.Each channel has 336 ultraviolet lamps that can be submerged in the sewage during operations.The unit was originally scheduled to be completed in July 2002 at a cost of under $60 million, but work was delayed by design changes and construction problems that increased the cost to $100 million.The fertilizer facility was to be completed by mid-2004 to help comply with a federal consent decree that requires the city to recycle some of its sewage sludge.But the project was delayed by community opposition and City Council concerns about possible health risks from use of the fertilizer pellets, which the city insists are safe.FIRE CAUSES DELAYSConstruction was completed in December, and production testing began early this year. But the fire that broke out before dawn on June 14 has pushed the schedule back again.The facility had been shut down for the night before the fire broke out, and the cause of the blaze remains under investigation, said site manager Kenny Huy of Synagro, a company that will operate the facility for the city.Repair work is on schedule and should be completed by the end of September, and insurance should cover the cost, which is still being estimated, Huy said.The company is awaiting final approval from the state Health Department to begin selling the fertilizer pellets, which also could be used in some city parks and golf courses.The fire mainly burned fiberglass odor-control ducts, insulation and plastic water pipes. The blaze also broke or melted several large windows and singed parts of the facility.But a key part of the facility — an egg-shaped "digester" 116 feet tall — was not damaged and remains operational.Officials expect that more than 90 percent of the dried sludge that now goes to the dump will be made into fertilizer pellets when the facility is fully operational.The project was recently named a 2007 project of the year by the Hawai'i chapter of the American Public Works Association.The city expects to hear sometime after October whether the EPA plans to require the sewage plant to upgrade from enhanced primary treatment to a more comprehensive process, called secondary treatment.The process breaks down the biological content of sewage more thoroughly, and is performed at most U.S. wastewater treatment plants.The Sand Island plant, and another at Honouliuli, have operated for years without secondary treatment, under special waivers from the EPA.The federal agency announced in March that the Honouliuli plant should be upgraded, which city officials estimate would cost $400 million. A similar decision is expected in October regarding Sand Island, and officials estimate an upgrade there could cost $800 million.Mayor Mufi Hannemann and other city officials contend the upgrades are not necessary because the plants discharge treated sewage effluent in deep water far offshore. Most plants that perform secondary treatment discharge into lakes, rivers or shallow coastal waters.http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Jul/15/ln/FP707150378.html

2008-05-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

Windsor City Blogspot writes about Prism-Berlie (Azurix) American Water Services Pellets

(and don't forget about the big fire that shut down the plant in Oct 2002)

http://windsorcityon.blogspot.com/2006_09_03_archive.html

"Windsor Biosolids Processing FacilityThe City of Windsor, Ont. contracted with Prism Berlie (now Azurix) to build, finance, own and operate a biosolids processing facility for 20 years. The facility was completed in the spring of 1999 and uses heat drying to convert sewage sludge (biosolids) from Windsor's two sewage treatment plants into marketable fertilizer pellets. The City is responsible for providing a minimum of 30,000 wet tonnes per year to Azurix. The company is responsible for transportation from the City plants, all facility operations, permits and marketing the pellets to end-users. The original capital cost of the project, financed by then-Prism Berlie, was $10 million."
So I decided to look into it since it was described as a $60 million deal over its life. That's big money in any league. I read a very interesting document prepared by the City describing the deal. One comment jumped out at me "The private company's incentive under BOOT [build, own, operate,transfer] is to make as much money as possible during its period of ownership." Ownership transfers to the City after 20 years.It appears that sludge smells. Not only smells but stinks, badly. Getting rid of sludge can also pay well if you do it right.
The odours from "the open method of stabilizing and then storing biosolids, sometimes for periods exceeding six months, have upset both domestic and industrial residents in the west end of Windsor." Council decided in 1997 to plan for a "more effective non-odorous method of stabilizing and recycling the biosolids from" the two pollution control plants. Moreover, as the Star reported "Michigan Democrat lawmakers don't want stinky, blood smeared trucks carrying biohazards and bodily waste -- including treated sewage sludge from Windsor -- rolling through Michigan streets. "After an extensive RFP proposal that is set out ad nauseum in the Administration Report, Prism-Berlie won the job with their technology. Of course it was picked since it was "state of the art" and would "operate with no offending odour." We in Windsor have to be the pace-setters right.
In an article I found, I saw that
"Azurix Corp is a holding company formed in 1998 with the majority of stock split evenly between Enron Corp and Marlin Water Trust. (Public shareholders own the rest. It is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, listed under the short form AZRX. Azurix companies are located around the world, among them Wessex Water Services Ltd. in the United Kingdom, and there are water treatment facilities in Argentina as well."
One of its "purchase in Ontario was Prism Berlie, which operates a state-of-the-art biosolid pelletizing plant in Windsor." In April 2001, Enron announced it would break up Azurix and sell its assets.
The contract was signed in 1997 to start, after construction, in 1999. There was a 2 year period when the former contract ended and the new plant was operating so a tender went out for hauling sludge to a landfill and Prism-Berlie won that tender at a price of $27 per ton. [Remember that number]The plant opened. I am not sure if someone confirmed that the plant met its specs at the time and was able to process all of the sludge. I believe that, in fact, the plant may not have done so and therefore some amount of sludge still had to be hauled away. That should be an easy figure to obtain.
Another interesting Star story in June 1999 said
"Windsor's much-vaunted high-tech and environmentally friendly solution to dealing with its sewage has, according to this story, turned into very expensive garbage. It cost city taxpayers $40 a tonne a few months ago to landfill city sewage. The $19-million state-of-the-art Prism-Berlie biosolids recycling plant which opened Thursday with much fanfare turns that sewage into $84 a tonne fetilizer pellets for commercial sale. The pellets, however, are being trucked straight to the landfill. Agriculture Canada still hasn't granted a licence so the pellets can be sold as fertilizer."
The Star reported that "The plant was plagued by fires following its March 1999 opening and closed in October 2002 when an explosion destroyed equipment, blew holes in walls and caused $5 million in damage." Obviously from that time until re-opening, sludge had to be shipped away. The Star reported that it was actually a good deal for the City since we were being charged $60 to send the sludge to the landfill and not paying the amount of $90 under the contract for the sludge to be processed.No matter the optimistic Administration reports to Council that set out the new opening dates (September 2003, then March 2005, then June 2005), it took around 4 years to rebuild the plant. During all of that time, sludge was hauled to landfills in Ontario and Michigan by Prism-Berlie at $60 per ton it appears.In going through this series of events, I had a number of questions:
Did anyone in the past confirm and can anyone confirm now that the old plant and now the new one meets specs and can process what it is supposed to process. Is the plant in compliance and what tests were run to prove it
If not, what will the City do about it?
During the period while the plant was operating, what percentage of the sludge was processed? For the balance, what happened to it. If it was shipped to a landfill, what price did the City pay---$27, $40, $60 or $90
During the 4 years after the explosion, did the City pay $60 for hauling and not $27 and if so, why? It was said that the city "saved" money....In fact, did the City pay out too much ["Shuttering the plant saved the city money. It's been paying $60 per ton of sludge to haul 2,500 tons of waste per month to Michigan for disposal in a landfill. It costs $90 per ton for the recycled process. "It's cheaper to put it in a landfill, but it's not environmentally viable or an appropriate thing to do," [Kit] Woods said."]
How was the $60 calculated and did it go out for tender?
Will the City get a plant of value when the contract expires
"The city signed a 20-year contract." Given the downtime, will the contract be extended?
Depending on what the facts are, money may be owing to the City if we overpaid for getting rid of sludge. If money is owing to the City, how much is it? I assume that the City will go out and collect it.
Why didn't the sharp-eyed, line-by-line, eagle-eyed Coucillor Budget and the Budgeteers catch this?
Easy---Just so you know, "biosolids processing is financed through the Sanitary Sewer Surcharge which is a self-financing reserve fund and cannot be used for other municipal purposes." In other words, no one would really notice anything about it or care. It's just a few pennies. But those pennies multiplied by millions of gallons of water add up quickly!

2008-05-10T09:18:00.001-07:00

www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-black_boxsep20,0,3744954.story
chicagotribune.com
TRIBUNE INVESTIGATION

Of big claims, insiders and a sludge plant
How the Chicago sanitary district bought into a company's dubious track recordFrom Seattle to Stickney
By David Jackson
Tribune staff reporter
September 20, 2007

Eight stories tall and sheathed in corrugated steel, the windowless tower juts above the umber lagoons of the world's largest sewage treatment plant, in west suburban Stickney.Its outer walls are painted white, but Chicago sanitary district officials use a dark nickname for this structure.They call it "the Black Box."Its four 60-foot-tall ovens are designed to each day swallow about a quarter of the district's sludge and churn out 150 tons of fertilizer. The dry pellets, small as mustard seeds, are supposed to be safe enough to spread on farms where food is grown for human consumption.District officials say the $217 million project will help protect a vital public trust: the Midwest's "inland ocean" of freshwater lakes, underground aquifers and sun-splashed rivers.But the company that won the lucrative contract did so based on questionable assurances about its executives' track record at a similar facility, government records show. At the very time one of those executives was persuading Chicago officials to hire his company, Seattle authorities were cutting short its contract. They complained about noxious fumes, fires and unreliable output.Chicago sanitary district officials never reviewed government files in Washington state to verify the claims made by the company, Metropolitan Biosolids Management LLC."I only recall one telephone conversation with the people from Chicago to discuss the project," said John Smyth, project manager for King County's Department of Natural Resources and Parks.The history of Chicago's project also is tangled by the city's old-school insider politics. Records show extensive ties between the sanitary district superintendent who championed the Black Box and the MBM executive in charge of building it today.The showcase plant is now nearly four years behind schedule. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago plans to levy more than $1 million in late charges against MBM. In 2004, top district officials tried unsuccessfully to end the deal because of construction delays and permit disputes.District officials say the past problems have no bearing on the project's prospects and add that some of the delays came because they are closely monitoring MBM's work.The firm was created by former district General Supt. Bart Lynam, who left office in 1978 about a year after a federal jury acquitted him of corruption charges in a high-profile district bribery scandal.Lynam's current corporate partner, and MBM's majority owner, is a division of Veolia, the French-based conglomerate that calls itself the world's largest water company and a pioneer in the global trend toward privatizing government water services. Veolia was not involved in the Seattle operation.In Chicago, district officials expect operations to start in January after a 60-day test to confirm the plant's safety and effectiveness. MBM will own and operate it for 20 years, and the district will pay the $217 million in installments as sludge is processed.In a letter to the Tribune, Lynam said his Seattle plant met its contract requirements, and he called the Chicago project "a very 'green' operation for the good of the community."For Veolia, the Black Box represents a new solution to a pressing public need, and company executives say its future is untainted by Lynam's earlier, shuttered venture.Veolia's own experience, though, shows how pelletizer technology remains a tricky enterprise. In 2003, a fire nearly destroyed a Veolia plant in Toronto that officials hope to open later this year. And in Atlanta, Veolia and city officials are locked in a federal lawsuit over who is to blame for a long-stalled pelletizer project there.The company says it is constantly refining the technology. The Stickney facility, for instance, will have added fire protections and odor controls, making it far better than Lynam's Seattle operation, said Veolia Water Vice President Michael Wheeler. "We want this to be a showplace people come from all over the world to see."A well-placed advocateA first-time visitor might be forgiven for gazing up slack-jawed through the nearly finished building's grated metal floors. Its ovens shimmer with the latent power of rockets on a launching pad. Twisting feeder tubes and squat turbines are housed in a cathedral-tall cinder-block shell. The air pressure will be lowered inside to help draw dangerous fumes through a series of high-tech scrubbers."This is an important project," said the district's current general superintendent, Richard Lanyon, adding that the district needs to find ways to better recycle and even sell its treated sewage.Although the district doesn't stand to lose money in the Black Box deal, which is being financed in part by bonds issued through the Village of Hodgkins, insiders already are profiting. In addition to his role as an MBM principal, for example, Lynam runs a firm that has submitted at least $200,000 in "consulting" bills to serve as a liaison with the district and provide "technical input" and marketing, according to construction invoices examined by the Tribune. Such arrangements are not prohibited.When MBM bid for the project, Lynam found a staunch advocate in the now-deceased Chicago sanitary district chief who oversaw the Black Box contract.Hugh "Mac" McMillan had reported to Lynam at the district during the 1970s, then succeeded him as general superintendent. McMillan left the district, and during the 1980s he and Lynam both served as corporate officers of Paschen Contractors, then a major district contractor.Rejoining the district as superintendent in 1994, McMillan soon launched the Black Box as his administration's top priority. He gave it that secretive name because the district asked prospective firms to craft an innovative design but didn't tell them what sort of technology to use. At district meetings, McMillan brushed back questions about Lynam's Seattle operation, calling it a "success" and "proven technology."In December 2000, after overseeing MBM's selection as the Black Box contractor, McMillan retired to join a key Black Box subcontractor responsible for the project's engineering design, permitting and legal counsel, records show.The district has no "revolving door" policy that limits post-employment work in the private sector, so district officials say McMillan's private-sector affiliations with Lynam were not inappropriate. "It was known to us," Lanyon said of McMillan's ties to Lynam and the contract.A spokesman for Consoer Townsend Envirodyne Engineers, the subcontractor McMillan joined, said he did not work directly on the Black Box account.Lynam's letter to the Tribune said he didn't learn of McMillan's move to Consoer Townsend until after it took place. Lynam added that he and McMillan did not work together at Paschen: "In fact, we lived at opposite ends of the country. He resided in Florida."McMillan died in 2004. Today, his likeness gleams from a metal plaque outside the district office pavilion named after him on Erie Street.A bit of sewage alchemyFreshwater scarcity is emerging as one of the 21st Century's signature issues, and big cities such as Chicago are scrambling to rinse the ceaseless gush of waste from homes and factories.That urgent quest has spawned a multibillion-dollar industry, from boring deep wells that render methane gas from municipal waste to melting sewage residue into a glass aggregate that can be mixed into asphalt.But few places have the vast needs of Chicago's sanitary district. Each day, more than 1 billion gallons of wastewater sluice to one of the modern world's civil engineering marvels. At the 560-acre Stickney Works and six smaller sites, the slush is screened, dried slowly in long ponds or in rapidly spinning drums, fed to cleansing microorganisms and run through anaerobic digesters until it has the clumpy consistency of lawn soil after a spring rain.Each day, the district pays contractors about $27,000 to haul some 300 tons of this final sludge cake to landfills and farms.In the district's map-lined offices, a half-block west of Michigan Avenue's glittering boutiques, global engineering firms vie for wastewater treatment contracts alongside inventors who peddle miracle machines.Here, in 1996, then-General Supt. McMillan announced the Black Box proposal with a sobering speech."At the moment, I am not confident that we have, even today, an ability to dispose of our current production," McMillan told district commissioners.Hauling and landfill costs were soaring, and suburban residents had grown increasingly vocal about noxious fumes at Stickney and other preliminary treatment sites, he said.Like his counterparts across the country, McMillan sought an innovative technology to produce a drier product that would be cheaper to truck. While that process might leave traces of heavy metals and household chemicals, it could destroy enough pathogens to allow the district to market a fertilizer safe enough to spread on food-crop fields.With his Seattle sludge pelletizer, McMillan's friend Lynam proposed just such an alchemy.Boots-in-muck entrepreneurWorkers at Cunningham Manufacturing Co. in Seattle thought a rat had died. They ripped out the walls of an upstairs office bathroom in a vain effort to locate the stink.A few doors away in the swath of shipping firms and factories that form Seattle's South Park industrial district, United Iron Works employees started going home sick.Then 140 South Park workers signed a petition demanding that Seattle officials shut the sewage treatment plant run by Lynam's company. They said its fumes caused stomach flips, sore throats and headaches.This was the back story to the "patented technology" Lynam pitched to Chicago officials.Lynam moved to Seattle after resigning from the district in 1978. There he launched the first of three firms that partnered with giant construction and water companies to bid for government and industry contracts.Starting in the 1980s, Seattle officials were under pressure to tear down five 30-foot-tall sewage digesters stacked on an outcrop of Discovery Park, a trail-laced preserve that tumbles onto beaches rimming Puget Sound.In hopes of removing at least some of the digesters, local authorities in 1989 awarded Lynam's company a 20-year contract to build a pelletizer. But soon after he opened his South Park demonstration plant, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency cited it for eight air-pollution regulation violations from 1992 to 1994. During that time, the agency took the unusual step of filing a civil lawsuit to force Lynam's company to comply with air-emission laws.From government records and interviews, Lynam emerges as a tireless, boots-in-the-muck entrepreneur who disputed odor complaints as he struggled to keep his experiment afloat."They really tried to make it work," said King County project manager Smyth. And so did local government officials; Smyth was assigned an "odor beeper" so he could quickly address complaints.In his letter to the Tribune, Lynam called the eight Puget Sound air-regulation violations "allegations" and said Seattle's "antiquated sewer system" was the source of any foul smells.Lynam's company, however, did acknowledge odor problems in correspondence with Washington state officials, stating that machinery breakdowns and human error caused the emissions. The firm hired odor consultants, upgraded equipment, retrained staff and at one point cut back plant hours to run only at night.In August 1994, police responding to a fire noticed a stench from 12 blocks away and "believed that there was a decaying corpse in the area," their incident report said.Nine months before the South Park demonstration contract was slated to end, Lynam's company -- then called PCL/SMI -- agreed to "terminate for convenience" and avoid default, a King County report said."They shut down before they got a shutdown order," Smyth said in an interview.For his part, Lynam said his team made improvements to the South Park plant, but "because it was a temporary facility, we agreed to end the project." His company had "gained valuable experience and knowledge," which was the plant's purpose, he said.Seattle officials still hoped to replace the Discovery Park digesters so they pressed forward with Lynam's strategy to build a second, larger plant in the park. "We decided to go ahead," Smyth said.Safety concerns stemming from two flash explosions delayed that plant's required performance tests, according to a local government report. And odor problems persisted."Smells like a sewer outside," Albert and Della Gordon said in a July 1996 complaint to the clean-air agency.Lynam told the Tribune that the odor complaints stemmed from nearby municipal pipes and said his company bolstered the facility's fire protections.Still, his fertilizer pellets sometimes came out fluffy, making them difficult to truck and spread on fields. One food grower stopped taking deliveries after tractor drivers and farmworkers complained of breathing difficulties and skin rashes. "We do not wish to put our employees at risk," John Huffman of Natural Selection Farms Inc. wrote in a May 1996 letter.Lynam told the Tribune that the dust was "pathogen free."On Nov. 13, 1996, a week after being elected governor of Washington, King County Executive Gary Locke sent Lynam a notice of termination "effective as of the date of this letter.""By ending this experiment now, we can lower rates, reduce odors and ensure environmental safety," Locke announced.In public statements about the termination of PCL/SMI's contract, King County officials said the venture was cut short "for convenience, not cause."Lynam cites that phrase as evidence that his Seattle project "met the contract requirements."But Smyth gave a different explanation. "What that essentially means is that we wanted out of the deal but didn't want to go through long and drawn-out litigation," he said.At the time the Seattle contract was canceled, Lynam told local reporters that his company had been blindsided. "This came as a complete shock to us," he said. "I know what we are doing is environmentally right. This is unquestionably the best way to do it."To this day, many Seattle officials and activists admire Lynam's intentions. "He's a publicly spirited guy. He wants to make it work for all the right reasons," said Metropolitan King County Councilmember Larry Phillips.But municipal sludge is smelly and combustible, Phillips added. "It takes time to get this perfected, and locally we just ran out of time."Even as his Seattle venture was being cut short, Lynam began laying the groundwork for a new future in Chicago.Questions raised, rejectedIn the months after McMillan announced his Black Box proposal, Lynam's PCL/SMI company was one of 27 firms that sent the district expressions of interest in bidding.On Nov. 15, 1996, two days after King County mailed Lynam its notice of termination, Chicago officials wrote Lynam to ask for "additional information" about his Seattle plant, district records show.In his response a month later and in other bid letters, Lynam said his 1990s Seattle operation "successfully" produced 60 tons of dry fertilizer pellets per day.According to government files examined by the Tribune under Washington state's Open Records Act, that facility never passed the 60-ton-per-day acceptance test required by King County authorities. It produced an average of only 41 dry tons of pellets per day during its best month.Lynam's December 1996 bid letter also said his Seattle operation "had no violations of our permits."That was true of his second plant, but the first South Park facility paid penalties for regulation violations and faced the government lawsuit. In recent interviews, Chicago district officials said they were unaware of the South Park plant's infractions."Violations always matter," General Supt. Lanyon told the Tribune. But Lanyon added that Lynam needed only his second plant to qualify Metropolitan Biosolids Management for Chicago's contract: Bidders had to have run a facility that produced 30 dry tons of treated sewage and operated for one year during the last five years; it didn't need to be currently functioning. Lynam's second Seattle venture matched those specifications.He told the Tribune that King County government officials had "made a political decision" to cut short his company's contract because pressure from a local union made it difficult for the city to supply enough sludge. In a 1997 newsletter, a union leader claimed credit for stopping Lynam's company.In interviews, though, union officials said the opposition Lynam cites did not arise until the plant's final 90-day trial period. And Smyth called those union troubles a "misleading" explanation for why the county cut short the contract. By then, he said, the union resistance was "another nail in the coffin."Back in Chicago, numerous bids were winnowed. MBM's proposal, which was significantly lower than the others, gradually advanced through several years of open competition.Finally, at a November 2000 district board meeting, Commissioner Patricia Young asked McMillan why Lynam's Seattle plant was shuttered. "Can you explain what happened with that operation, why it failed?""It did not fail," McMillan said. "We have representations from the owners of that facility -- I'm talking about the municipal agency -- that it did not fail to meet the contract requirements.""So why is it not operating anymore?""Union disputes.""Union disputes?""That's correct," McMillan said.A month later, at a December 2000 board meeting, Young offered a motion that the district adopt revolving-door hiring restrictions like those enforced by the City of Chicago and Cook County.Again, McMillan shut her down. No commissioner seconded Young's motion, so it failed.Days later, with Young as the lone dissenting vote, commissioners authorized the district to award Lynam's company the Black Box contract.----------dyjackson@tribune.com
Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

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2008-05-09T19:04:00.000-07:00

Sewage sludge pellets: fire and explosion risks

The article below was published by the Ontario Fire Marshall's Office in the Publication: Ontario Fire Service Messenger November/December 2002

Sewage sludge pellets: fire and explosion risks

There are rabbit food pellets, pellets for guns, wood pellets for burning in stoves, and there are even sewage sludge pellets! What will they think of next? Introduction Sewage sludge is the nutrient-rich organic byproduct of the wastewater treatment process. It contains most of the nutrients required for crop growth, and organic matter, which can enrich soil, and may also be called “biosolids”.

For some people, spreading biosolids on farmlands is considered to be perfectly safe way of returning nutrients to the ground if appropriate procedures are in place. Recycling this nutrient source is viewed to be better than putting it in a landfill site or incinerating it. Other people believe that cities are simply transferring urban pollution to the countryside, and site concerns about the fumes, respiratory infections and other negative health effects that may stem from exposure to biosolids, and the potential for contaminated well water and water courses.

Sewage sludge can exist in liquid forms and can also be converted into granules or pellets by removing the moisture. In this solid form, pellets are easier to handle and store, and transportation costs are reduced, as compared to liquid sludge. Although people may be aware of the environment aspects associated with the disposal of sewage sludge, they may not be aware that sewage sludge pellets have been associated with numerous fires and explosions.

For instance, Sludge pellets stockpiled at a farm in Windsor caused a smoldering fire. There were a series of explosions in a Windsor pelletization plant, most recently in October 2002. The City of Toronto had problems with the self-heating of sewage pellets in a storage silo. An explosion at the Miloganite plant in Milwaukee in 1996 caused serious injuries to a worker and $ 4.5 million worth of damage to the plant and property.

This article has been prepared to provide information on potential fire hazards associated with sludge pellets, safe storage and effective fire suppression. Self-heating properties of the product: Sewage sludge is mainly derived from human waste, but may also contain animal products, paper, high fat content from processing plants, heavy metals, organic contaminants and petroleum products from petroleum and diesel spills. When formed into pellets, the finished product has less than 5% moisture content. Should the moisture content of this material reach between 5- 10% by weight of the product, aerobic biological decomposition occurs, causing self-heating.

Water generated by this process is absorbed by the surrounding sludge, which intensifies the self-heating process. A smoldering fire may occur if the heat generated by this self-heating process is not dissipated to the surroundings. Processing and Handling In the initial stages of sewage treatment, the digestion process produces methane and carbon dioxide. If raw sludge is stored it will decompose and produce hydrogen sulphide and other volatile sulpher compounds. With the addition of chemicals to dewater the sludge, hydrogen sulphide and ammonia may be released. Conversion of sewage sludge into granules or pellets, by removing the moisture, is the final stage of the sewage treatment process.

The amount of dust produced in the drying process and later processing is affected by the method of drying and type of final product. Sewage sludge dust is about the same size and similar hazard as wood dust. Depending on the design of the plant, there is the potential for a dust explosion to occur at the main dryer, dust collector and handling plant, pelletizer and final product discharge plant.

In pellet form the product is sufficiently hard to withstand the normal conditions of mixing, handling and transportation without producing excessive levels of dust. These pellets have a relatively low auto-ignition temperature, as low as 2650C, and may be easily ignited without process precautions. A risk assessment followed by implementation of suitable prevention and protection measures is required for all parts of the process.

Special attention should be given to the specific hazards associated with the generation of methane, hydrogen suphide, and dusts. Appropriate ventilation, relief venting, suppression systems, containment features, avoidance of ignition sources, and safe handling and storage practices also need to be considered. Storage Once dried, pellets may self-heat to the point of ignition and slow burn.

To minimize the potential for self-heating, sewage sludge pellets should be kept cool and dry and should not be stored in large piles. Storage silos should be designed to aid cooling and be sized to allow thermal dissipation of heat. For this reason, tall narrow silos are preferable to wide silos. Where significant levels of dust are likely to be produced in the storage silos, they should be designed to mitigate the effect of any explosion. The simplest protection is the provision of explosion relief panels venting to a safe location. Silos should be designed to identify and contain a fire. A slow burning silo fire is likely to be starved of oxygen and therefore produce carbon monoxide. A carbon monoxide detector in the silo will indicate an incipient fire.

As well, multi-point temperature probes may be installed to monitor the temperature of the product. As an alternative to indoor storage, pellets should be transported to a site location and be off-loaded and turned into the soil as soon as possible. If this is not possible, the material should be spread on the ground evenly in the form of a very thin layer. This configuration will dissipate any heat generated into the ground and atmosphere.

Fire suppression

Inside a silo, an inert gas can be used to contain, but not necessarily extinguish, a fire. The injection of an inert gas will cause a drop in temperature, but may only have a limited effect. The temperatures should be monitored for several hours before deciding if the fire has been controlled. Procedures to deal with a silo fire may include the gradual emptying of the silo to a safe location. Outside, a sewage sludge pellet fire typically smolders at the surface with a relatively low burning temperature and emits dense white smoke and products of incomplete combustion. The smoke may contain organic acids and other compounds that are irritating agents.

The simplest way to deal with such a fire is to dissipate the heat by spreading out the pellets. It may also be extinguished by confining and smothering. Alternately, the pellets may be mixed into the soil or stamped with heavy earth moving equipment. In some cases, the use of Class A foam may be considered for fire suppression. Class A foam is a special formulation of hydrocarbon surfactants, that reduces the surface tension of water and provides for better water penetration and increased effectiveness. Class A foam acts as a surface barrier to stop or prevent further combustion. The use of water to suppress this type of fire is controversial.

The application of water may actually support a fire by contributing to the process of aerobic decomposition. Further, adding water may return the dried sewage into liquid sewage and create additional leachate and runoff. In turn, this may contaminate ground and surface waters surrounding the site and could cause significant environmental and health risks. Overall, fire fighting tactics need to consider a range of circumstances, not the least of which include the size of fire, location, wind/weather conditions, water supply, personnel safety, access to heavy equipment, and environmental impact.

Conclusions

Although fires involving sludge pellets are not common occurrences, they do tend to attract a great deal of public attention and challenge the fire service. By working with the public, pellet factory owners, and owners of sites used to spread sewage sludge pellets, the fire service can ensure that safe practices are employed, thereby protecting the public, environment and emergency responders.

Article prepared by OFM Fire Protection Engineers Beth Tate and M. Mailvaganam.

2007-03-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

Explosion Blasts Hole in Roof of Hagerstown, MD Fertilizer Plant.

From Hagerstown, MD Herald

An explosion Tuesday tore a hole in the roof of a building where a company turns sludge into fertilizer for the City of Hagerstown, MD at a water-treatment facility on Frederick Street. One man sustained minor injuries but declined treatment after the early-evening explosion, according to Mike Spiker, director of utilities for the City of Hagerstown. Soot covered the edges of a jagged hole in the roof of a beige building near the back of the city's treatment plant. A Washington County Emergency Services dispatcher said the explosion was reported at 5:10 p.m., and crews left the scene at 7:27 p.m.

Hagerstown Fire Marshal Tom Brown said he did not know whether the explosion was related to three fires - two of them Tuesday - that had broken out in a drying drum at the facility over two days. None of the fires was reported, he said. "The only thing we're sure of is (it was) a dust explosion, but we have right now an undetermined ignition point," Brown said. No flames were visible at the scene, where people began gathering within minutes of the explosion.Kandy Brown, who stood with a cluster of people on Frederick Street near the Kenley Village shopping center, said she did not see what happened. "No, I just heard a bang, that's all I heard," said Brown, who lives near the plant.

Donald Barton, wastewater operations manager for the city, said Synagro leases the building from the city under a contract to turn sludge into fertilizer.Synagro was operating under a five-year renewal contract, after finishing out a 15-year agreement, Barton said. The contract is for about $79,000 a month, he said. "They actually have a real good safety record company-wide," Barton said.

According to its Web site, Houston-based Synagro Technologies Inc. offers services that include composting, incineration, and drying and pelletizing, the functions it performs for the city.Synagro serves more than 700 municipal and industrial facilities in 40 states, and its Web site says safety is its first priority. Four Synagro employees were in the building at the time of the explosion, Spiker said.

Two City of Hagerstown employees also were working, Barton said.Barton said the city will have to find an alternative way to handle its sludge, which Synagro turned into fertilizer pellets. "They used to sell it, but the market for sales now has kind of dried up," Barton said.Spiker said Synagro and city officials will meet to discuss who will have responsibility to pay for equipment and building repairs, but he said he could not provide a damage estimate.

The dispatcher said all of Hagerstown Fire Department's units, as well as crews from Funkstown and Halfway responded to the scene. Rescue units clogged Frederick Street, which temporarily was blocked from Wilson Boulevard to Kenly Avenue. A sign in front of the wastewater plant said City of Hagerstown employees have logged 270 workdays without a lost-time injury.

2006-09-11T15:11:00.000-07:00

Safer, cheaper way to treat solid waste
Monday September 11, 2006

By Owen Hembry
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=614&objectid=10400665

Auckland-based Flo-Dry Engineering has developed a safer and cheaper way to treat human sewage to target a global market the company says is worth millions of dollars. Flo-Dry project manager Tissa Fernando said the worldwide demand for the technology used to dry out sewage sludge for disposal or recycling was worth €300 million ($597 million) a year and growing. "The concept is changing," Fernando said. "There's a lot more pressure on treatment works to get rid of their sludge in a safe and beneficial manner." A city roughly the the size of Auckland with one million people pumps out 250 tonnes of wet sludge every day, which once dried could be reduced to about 100 tonnes.

Many countries no longer allow the dumping of solid waste at sea, meaning it must be treated for safe use or disposal on land. Once the sludge has been dried it can be used as a fertiliser or as a fuel with half the heating value of coal. Flo-Dry already made sludge-drying equipment and had built plants here and in Australia but the international market was dominated by a competitor, Fernando said. Despite the technological and price competitiveness of Flo-Dry's current offering, many customers simply opted for the better-known brand, he said. In order to gain a competitive advantage Flo-Dry has spent two years and about $1.8 million - including investment of $534,000 from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology - on a project to dry sludge in a cheaper and safer way.

Every tonne of sludge dried using traditional technology needs to be mixed with between three and five tonnes of already dried material for the process to work. Traditional equipment ran at temperatures of up to 400C, putting the material at risk of igniting, Fernando said. "Sewage material once you start drying it because of the carbon content, it becomes very explosive." It was a risk that had caused some systems overseas to explode, he added.

Flo-Dry has developed a two-stage thermal drying method that doesn't require the reintroduction of already dried and combustible material and can run at up to 700C before later drying at the much lower temperature of about 90C. WaterCare project manager Graham Barker said biosolids now being disposed of in landfills by the company were about 23 per cent solid, with the rest water. Drying it out would increase the solid content to up to 95 per cent.

2006-08-29T21:42:00.000-07:00

Sludge and Scandal

Here are two more stories on the Bronx sludge pelleting plant: And remember : Organic fertilizer does NOT mean it meets organic food production standards. Certified organic farms would lose their organic certification if they use use sludge or sludge products.

Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/
environment/20040212/7/869

Sludge and Scandal

by Sam Williams
12 Feb 2004

When Alvarado Sorin gives a tour of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company’s plant in Hunts Point, which processes what was originally the city's raw sewage into fertilizer for farmers, she is sure to warn people about the stink. Few know that stench better. A consultant for the company, and a member of the local community board who serves as the Bronx community liaison for the company, Sorin takes the call anytime the smells inside their plant get too much for local residents. Even with a full quarter mile between the plant and the nearest residence, the calls are frequent. But ask some local residents, and they will say something else at the plant stinks. "The smell is not just a nuisance," says Elena Conte of Sustainable South Bronx, a Hunts Point environmental group. "It's what's in the smell that concerns folks." Launched in 1993, the New York Organic Fertilizer Company is the largest facility of its type in the world. It processes up to 40 percent of the city's treated sewage sludge (up to 300 tons a day, according to the company), and has the capacity to handle the city's entire output, if needed. It is the flagship operation for Synagro Technologies Inc., a Houston-based company that bills itself as an "industry leader in biosolids, sludge, and residuals management." At first glance, the conversion of sewage into commercial fertilizer appears to be an environmental "win-win." Both the 1972 Clean Water Act and the 1988 Ocean Dumping Act put limitations on how cities dispose of the solid waste that passes down toilets, sinks, and gutters. Currently, the choice boils down to one of three options: incineration, landfill dumping, conversion to fertilizer. In its effort to encourage the third option, the Environmental Protection Agency "strongly supports" the efforts of industry groups such as the National Biosolid Partnership to educate cities about fertilizer recycling. That's where the trouble starts. Environmental groups, decrying the cozy relationship between the EPA and industry, have argued over the last two decades that the standards used to determine the safety of recycled sewage are dangerously lax. Of particular concern are so-called "Class B" fertilizers which undergo little more than a brief heating process to kill bacteria and can be spread in certain limited environments such as open pastureland. In 2002 Synagro settled out of court with the family of Shayne Conner, a New Hampshire man who died in his sleep a month after the spread of such fertilizer on a neighboring field. Although the settlement required that the family members state the lack of scientific evidence of the company's complicity, the EPA, in the wake of similar suits, announced last month that it would review its safety standards on 15 chemicals found in recycled sewage sludge and, according to the New York Times, look for pathogens. As a producer of Class A fertilizer -- a more tightly regulated product that can be mixed with other forms of fertilizer for general agricultural use -- the New York Organic Fertilizer Company's Bronx plant runs its sludge through an intense heating process designed to kill pathogens. Nevertheless, there are concerns over heavy metals, such as iron, lead, and zinc, a byproduct of both industrial waste and human waste. There was also concern when, last September, there was an explosion at the plant, caused by a volatile mixture of oxygen-rich air and swirling dust inside a silo. Although the explosion caused no injuries and did damage only to the silo's interior, the New York Post headline -- "Dung Flung" -- caused some apprehension halfway around the world, in Hawaii. There, the Honolulu City Council was considering a proposal by Synagro for a similar plant. That is undoubtedly why the company purchased tickets to fly Alvarado Sorin and Marta Rivera, chair of community board 2, to Hawaii, where they offered testimony favorable to the company. "I felt it was very important for your community to know that sometimes media can get a hold of a story and sensationalize it," said Rivera, according to a printed transcript of the December 3 testimony. "Unfortunately, people do not want to hear the truth and the truth is Synagro has been a responsible company." This little junket caused a different kind of explosion. The Daily News ran two stories in January playing up the quid-pro-quo element of the emerging scandal while also hinting at a possible investigation by the city's Conflict of Interest Board. The Conflict of Interest Board declines to say now whether or not a complaint has been filed. Rivera, meanwhile, resigned her position as chair of community board 2, though she still remains a member of the board. At a February 3 meeting to hire her successor, Alvarado Sorin, announced that she, too, was resigning as chair of the board's economic development committee but not from the board itself. She took responsibility for the decision to invite Rivera to Honolulu, which she said in retrospect was wrong, but blasted fellow board members for feeding the media the story. Speaking a day later in the conference room at the New York Organic Fertilizer Company facility, Sorin sounded more conciliatory, focusing on the facility's ongoing attempts to maintain an open dialogue with its harshest critics. "The community organizations are asking for more accountability from the managers and to have more input," she says. "My operations people have no problem sitting with the people if that's what they want." Marian Feinberg, health coordinator for the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition, has yet to be convinced. Earlier this month, she and other community members participated in a sitdown with managers following a tour of the plant. It wasn't the first time her organization and the plant had attempted a clear-the-air session, but, while the meeting was long -- "We were there long enough that we all had to go home and wash our coats and clothes," she says -- she does not believe that much was accomplished. More important than direct communication, Feinberg says, is the pressure finally coming from outside the borough. The demand for better, cleaner process is increasing, thanks to: the EPA standards review the personal injury lawsuits a pending state Department of Environmental Conservation review of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company's airborne emissions permit the growing number of grass roots groups willing to trade information and keep one another apprised of the latest developments "We will meet whatever guidelines the state and federal governments set for us," Sorin says. It is doubtful whether that pressure will be enough to result in zero odors and close-to-zero emissions, which is why plant opponents have created a slogan that has become their rallying cry -- "clean it up or shut it down."

http://www.gothamgazette.com/print/869

//////////////////////////////////// and a pre-edited version: Sludge and Scandal By Sam Williams [Note: This is a pre-edited version of a story which appeared in the Jan. 14 edition of The Gotham Gazette under the headline "Sludge and Scandal." The final, edited version is available on the Gotham Gazette site.] A New Yorker can cope with bad odors. From the piquant stench of a urine-soaked stairwell to the musky scent of a mid-summer subway car, one quickly learns to block out the minor nuisances and to move past the major ones. The smell that emanates from the interior of the New York Organic Fertilzer Company's sludge recycling plant in Hunts Point, on the other hand, is a different story entirely. "Pardon me if I walk a little fast," says plant tour guide Lisa Alvarado Sorin, striding briskly down a central catwalk after opening the door. "But I think you'll thank me for it later." She's right. Within three steps, the smell of treated sewage has become an engulfing miasma, burrowing its way into sinuses, hair, and clothes. As we pass piles of fresh, "dewatered" sewage sludge rolling down an adjacent conveyor belt -- sludge that will soon be recycled into EPA-approved fertilizer pellets for farms and orchards -- it's hard not to imagine the air in between us as a transparent liquid of pure stench. Few know that stench better than Alvarado Sorin. A consultant who serves as the Bronx community liaison for New York Organic Fertilizer and its parent company, Synagro Technologies Inc., it's her job to take the call anytime the smells inside their plant find their way into the irritated nostrils of local residents. As Alvarado Sorin will be the first to admit, even with a full quarter mile between her plant and the nearest apartment or house, the calls are frequent. "You can't blame them," she says about the complainers "Between the smokestack, the [pellet] silos and the smell, (the plant) does tend to draw attention on itself." Launched in 1993, the New York Organic Fertilizer Company is the largest facility of its type in the world. It processes up to 40 percent of the city's treated sewage sludge -- up to 300 tons a day according to the company -- and has the capacity to handle the city's entire output, if needed. It is the flagship operation for the Houston-based Synagro, a company that bills itself as an "industry leader in biosolids, sludge, and residuals management." At first glance, the conversion of sewage into commercial fertilizer appears to be an environmental "win-win." Both the 1972 Clean Water Act and the 1988 Ocean Dumping Act put limitations on how cities dispose o the soild waste passes down toilets, sinks, and gutters. Currently, the choice boils down to three options: incineration, landfill dumping, or conversion to fertilizer for alternate use. In its effort to encourage the third option, the Environmental Protection Agency "strongly supports" the efforts of industry groups such as the National Biosolid Partnership to educate cities about fertilizer recycling. That's where the trouble starts. Environmental groups, decrying the cozy relationship between the EPA and the sewage recycling industry, have argued over the last two decades that the standards used to determine the safety of recycled sewage are dangerously lax. Of particular concern are so-called "Class B" fertilizers which undergo little more than a briefy heating process to kill bacteria and can be spread in certain limited environments such as open pastureland. In 2002 Synagro settled out of court with the family of Shayne Conner, a New Hampshire man who died in his sleep a month after the spread of a subsidiary's Class B fertilizer on a neighboring field. Although the settlement required that the family members state the lack of scientific evidence of the company's complicity, the EPA, in the wake of similar suits, announced January that it would review its safety standards on 15 chemicals found in recycled sewage sludge and, according to a Jan. 3 New York Times report, look for pathogens as well. For the New York Organic Fertilizer Co., such stories provide background to what has mainly been a local drama involving obnoxious smells and airborne pollutants coming out of the plant. As a producer of Class A fertilizer -- a more tightly regulated product that can be mixed with other forms of fertilizer for general agricultural use -- the plant runs its sludge through an intense heating process designed to kill pathogens. Still, concerns over heavy metals such as iron, lead, and zinc, a byproduct of both industrial and concentrated human waste, keep the facility's activities well-linked to Synagro's distant battles with environmental groups. "The smell is not just a nuisance," says Elena Conte, solid waste and energy coordinator for Sustainable South Bronx, a Hunts Point environmental group. "It's what's in the smell that concerns folks." If Alvarado Sorin and her parent company needed any proof of the growing coordination between city and outside opponents, they got it late December. That's when the local news media seized on the story that she and Bronx Community Board 2 chairwoman Marta Rivera had offered testimony favor to Synagro at a zoning board meeting of the Honolulu City Council. Flying to Hawai'i on tickets purchased by Synagro, the two played down the local media coverage of a September explosion in one of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company's storage silos. "I felt it was very important for your community to know that sometimes media can get a hold of a story and sensationalize it," said Rivera, according to a printed transcript of the Dec. 3 testimony. "Unfortunately, people do not want to hear the truth and the truth is Synagro has been a responsible company." Conte, who says her group had been in communication with Honolulu city council staffmembers, says word of the testimony quickly filtered back. "They informed us that two women of color from the South Bronx had testified in defense of [New York Organic Fertilizer Co.]," says Conte. "Our interest was immediately piqued." So too was the interest of the Daily News, which ran two stories in January playing up the quid-pro-quo element of the emerging scandal while also hinting at a possible investigation by the city's Conflict of Interest Board. The Conflict of Interest Board declines to say whether or not a complaint has been filed. Rivera, meanwhile, has since resigned her position as board chairperson while still remaining a member of the board. At a Feb. 3 meeting to hire her successor, Alvarado Sorin, announced that she, too, was resigning as chair of the board's economic development committee but not from the board itself. In her resignation speech Alvarado Sorin blasted fellow board members whom she accused of feeding the media coverage in the hopes of prompting just such a shakeup. Taking credit for the decision to invite Rivera to Honolulu, she labeled decision "wrong" in retrospect but limited her apologies to Rivera only. "I'm doing this out loyalty to Marta," she said, summing up the resignation. Speaking a day later in the conference room at the New York Organic Fertilizer Company facility, Alvarado Sorin offered a more conciliatory tone. Instead of dwelling on the political fallout of the Honolulu hearing, she focused on the facility's ongoing attempts to maintain an open dialogue with its harshest critics. "The community organizations are asking for more accountability from the managers and to have more input," she says. "My operations people have no problem sitting with the people if that's what they want." Marian Feinberg, health coordinator for the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition, has yet to be convinced. On Feb. 2, the day before the community board hearing, she and other community members participated in a sitdown with managers following a tour of the plant. The meeting was long. "We were there long enough that we all had to go home and wash our coats and clothes," she says. Still, says Feinberg, it wasn't the first time her organization and the plant had attempted a clear-the-air session. "I don't think any new ground got broken, but that's my opinion," Feinberg says More important than direct communication, Feinberg says, is the pressure finally coming from outside the borough. Between the EPA standards review, the personal injury lawsuits, a pending state Department of Environmental Conservation review of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company's airborne emissions permit, and -- most importantly -- the growing number of grass roots groups willing to trade information and keep one another apprised of the latest developments, the demand for better, cleaner, sewage recycling is becoming an uproar. "We will meet whatever guidelines the state and federal governments set for us," says Alvarado Sorin. Whether that pressure will be enough to result in zero odors and close-to-zero emissions is doubtful, however. Faced with the choice of "clean it up or shut it down" -- a popular slogan among plant opponents -- Alvarado Sorin, a Bronx resident, is stoic. "If the community wants to better itself, that's to be expected," she says. "We have a long, long way to go, I know, but I think people should be applauding themselves already for how far we've come in the last 10 years."

http://vader.inow.com/~sam/sludge.html

2006-08-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

Don't Budge on Sludge

http://citypaper.net/current/feedback.shtml

Letter to the Editor in Philadelphia

Don't Budge on Sludge

I am a forensic engineer and have been in the sludge business for more than 16 years. Philadelphia should not consider a dryer for sludge [News, "The Sludge Factor," Jenna Portnoy, March 30, 2006]. The reasons: All dryers have exploded or caught fire; the end-product pellet is not stable and upon rewetting, is extremely odorous; natural gas costs are not coming down; and carbon dioxide releases into the air account for 36,000 tons/year of carbon dioxide contribution to greenhouse gases while lime stabilization is 4,200 tons/year. Anyone putting in a dryer is not considering the value to the citizens.

Sam Shepherd

Houston, Texas

2006-08-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

Aug 21, 2006
New York

Foes raise stink over firm permit
BY BILL EGBERTDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Environmental advocates in the South Bronx have been trying for years to revoke the solid waste permit of the smelly New York Organic Fertilizer Co.
Now they've found out the firm, which roasts sludge to produce fertilizer pellets, doesn't actually have one anymore.
"I was definitely surprised that its permit has been lapsed for 18 months," said Kellie Terry-Sepulveda, executive director of The Point CDC, a longtime crusader for cleaner air in asthma-ridden Hunts Point. "It's also troubling."
Regulations do allow extension of expired permits but only if a "timely and sufficient" renewal application has been filed.
But the state Department of Environmental Conservation has rejected the company's renewal application as "incomplete" four times.
The discovery by Columbia University School of Law's Environmental Law Clinic was noted in a detailed letter to the DEC on behalf of The Point CDC.
Columbia lawyers cited city regulations, state regulations and case law, indicating that under the circumstances, the firm's renewal application should now be treated as a new permit application, requiring public hearings.
The letter also documents repeated violations of the fertilizer factory's expired permit and city law - including discharging untreated sewage into the East River.
The company general manager, John Kopec, said the facility has "made many changes" since most of the documented violations. Of the assertion that the firm no longer has permission to operate, Kopec deferred to counsel.
"Right now it's in our attorneys' hands," he said.
DEC spokeswoman Kimberly Chupa responded, "The department's treatment of this application is consistent with state law and regulations governing permit renewals. The solid waste permit application from [the company] which we have before us is a renewal/modification application.
"In December 2004, the department and the facility entered into a consent order to address previous air and solid waste violations. Currently, DEC is working with the facility to ensure that the renewal application and modifications are consistent with the consent order."
Rep. Jose Serrano (D-South Bronx) said he was "deeply concerned" about the company's record - especially a series of fires and explosions at the plant in the summer of 2004 - and called on the DEC to close the controversial facility.
"It is incumbent upon [the DEC] to fulfill its enforcement and oversight responsibility," said Serrano. "Until [the company] comes into compliance and has a valid permit to operate, it should be shut down."

August 21, 2006
New York Daily News

Elena Conte
Solid Waste and Energy Coordinator
Sustainable South Bronx
Greening for Breathing Coordinator
890 Garrison Avenue, 4th Floor
Bronx, NY 10474
phone 718.617.4668
fax 718.617.5228
elena@ssbx

2006-08-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

For Odors Unpleasant, Inspiration From Wall Street

Sunday, August 13, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/nyregion/thecity/
13stoc.html?_ r=1&oref=slogin

Hunts Point

By JENNIFER BLEYER
Published: August 13, 2006

When it’s especially hot out, or the wind is blowing in a certain direction, Silkia Martinez refuses to eat outside in her Hunts Point neighborhood. The odor from the New York Organic Fertilizer Company’s plant, she said, might make her gag. “It’s plain old nasty,” said Ms. Martinez, a freshman at the Interboro Institute and the mother of a 6-year-old girl. “It’s as bad as when you pass a horse stable.”The plant, which is part of Synagro Technologies, a Houston company, converts much of the city’s sludge into fertilizer pellets, but many residents say it also produces an intolerable stench. They have made those complaints since the plant, which is between the Bruckner Expressway and the East River, opened in 1992. Now critics have taken a new tack in their 14-year battle.In 2004, a consortium of nonprofit organizations, including an environmental advocacy group called Sustainable South Bronx, bought 1,750 shares of Synagro stock for about $2.50 a share — a token holding, but enough for a shareholder vote in the company. Since then, the critics have discovered that investors can have clout. In December, for example, they proposed a shareholder resolution requesting that Synagro report how many toxins, molds, pathogens and other substances are released from the plant, and how those pollutants affect local health and safety.In May, at the annual shareholder meeting in Houston, the resolution garnered 31 percent of the vote — more than enough to hold management’s attention. “We were thrilled,” said Elena Conte, a coordinator at Sustainable South Bronx. This is not the first time critics of the plant have sought creative solutions to their problems. Last spring, for example, a teacher and students at St. Athanasius School, a Catholic school on Southern Boulevard half a mile from the plant, printed about 400 “Smelly Calendars” on which neighbors could down particularly noxious days to report to 311, the city government hot line. Since becoming a shareholder, the groups say, they have had strikingly good results, among them productive meetings with Synagro’s chief executive, Robert Boucher, and its general counsel, Alvin Thomas. Before the consortium made its investment, Ms. Conte said, “there would be no way we would get a phone call from the C.E.O. and head lawyer.” “As soon as we introduced the resolution, they flew to New York.”The shareholder activists are continuing to meet with Synagro executives and are working with them on the scope of a report on the plant’s operation and emissions. “As long as it’s cost-effective and provides useful information, we’ll do it,” said Mr. Thomas, whose company accepts some responsibility for the local smells, but also points out that other odor-causing businesses are in the area. Sister Valerie Heinonen, a New York consultant with the national Mercy Investment Program, one of the groups in the consortium, hopes that Hunts Point residents will soon see benefits from the stock holding. “We’re not just looking for a report,” she said. “We’re looking for an improvement in the situation that gets accomplished through the report. We’re looking for a return on our investment.”

2006-04-30T16:34:00.000-07:00

Milwaukee - Kids' illnesses seem related to sewage discharge

Sludgewatch Admin:
Problems seem to be related to discharging 'blended sewage'. Making Milorganite is the a very expensive way to dispose of Milkwaukee's sludge. Maybe if Milwaulkee spent less money on making sludge 'fertilizer' there would be more money for proper sewage treatment. City staff want to suggest work done in Children's Hospital is lacking integrity!
.....................................................................

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=419926

Kids’ illnesses raise ‘red flag’
But MMSD rips study that suggests link to discharged sewage
By MARIE ROHDE and SUSANNE RUST
mrohde@journalsentinel.com
Posted: April 30, 2006

A study presented Sunday at a national gathering of pediatric professionals raises a "red flag" about whether there is a connection between the dumping of partially treated wastewater into Lake Michigan and what researchers say is an increase in emergency room visits by children suffering from gastrointestinal illnesss. There currently is no evidence of drinking water quality degradation at Milwaukee Water Works treatment plants as a result of secondary sewage bypasses at the wastewater treatmentplant.
- Bevan Baker,Milwaukees health commissioner We only found an association. We cant show a cause-and-effect relationship, but we think its worth further exploration.
- Marc Gorelick,Senior author of study and head of Childrens Hospital emergency department
Officials at the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District hotly disputed the study, calling it flawed both in methodology and what they called a conflict of interest.
The study, which was presented at a gathering of the Pediatric Academic Societies in San Francisco, was conducted by researchers at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, the Medical College of Wisconsin and Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers.
The authors were cautious in their conclusions and said their results warrant further investigation into the possible health consequences of discharging partially treated sewage into the lake.
"We only found an association," said Marc Gorelick, the senior author on the study and the medical director of emergency services at Children's Hospital.
"We can't show a cause-and-effect relationship, but we think it's worth further exploration," said Gorelick, also a professor of medicine at the Medical College.
Critics of the study are concerned about what they see as conflicts of interest.
One of the authors is Cheryl Nenn, a project director at the Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers - an environmental watchdog group - and Gorelick is married to Lynn Broaddus, the executive director of the group.
But the authors denied the association had an effect on how they approached or analyzed the study, a denial that didn't assuage the critics' concerns.
"They really don't have a clue what caused these cases of diarrhea," said Bill Graffin, a spokesman for the sewerage district.
Meanwhile, representatives of the Milwaukee Health Department and the Milwaukee Water Works were quick to say that the city's drinking water is safe.
"There currently is no evidence of drinking water quality degradation at Milwaukee Water Works treatment plants as a result of secondary sewage bypasses at the wastewater treatment plant," Bevan Baker, Milwaukee's health commissioner, wrote to Journal Sentinel editors.
The authors reiterated that their conclusions raised a "red flag."
They stressed they didn't know what was causing the children to become ill, only that there was an association between these secondary sewage bypasses and an increase in emergency room visits by children.
The study, which was conducted over a three-year period starting Jan.1, 2002, and ending Dec. 31, 2004, focused on six episodes in which partially treated effluent was discharged into the lake. The authors looked at ER admissions records from Children's Hospital in the three to seven days after these events.
After two of the six events, Dec. 10, 2003, and May 14, 2004, they found a statistically significant increase - around 2.5 patients per day - in the number of ER admissions for diarrhea.
The authors said while that may not sound like a lot, it was a significant increase and couldn't be accounted for by season or rainfall - two variables they controlled for in the study.
These two were the largest of the six discharges, indicating that if the children did get sick from drinking tap water, the quantity of the blended sewage could have played a role.
In addition, visits to the emergency room were tallied by ZIP code, separating children living within the Lake Michigan drinking water area from those living outside. There was a significant increase only in visits by children living in areas where the drinking water came from Lake Michigan.
The children ranged in age from younger than 1 to 18, the authors said.
The authors cited several limitations to their study: They did not take bacterial or viral cultures of the children, so they do not know precisely what caused the illness, nor could they determine if children had used bottled water or come in contact with water during recreation.
Despite the limitations, Marty Kanarek, professor of population health studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the study warranted further investigation. He was not connected to the study.
Milwaukee Health Department officials agreed that more study is needed.
"The authors' specific conclusion that further study should occur to investigate if a secondary bypass event may have human health effects can be supported by public health," wrote Baker in his letter to the newspaper. However, he stressed that such a study must be "rigorously designed" to control for "confounding variables" that are inherent in studies that "explore correlations between environmental exposures and human health outcomes."
The study is the latest episode in a longstanding debate over the practice known as "blending," a process that allows sewage to skip one of the steps in the treatment process as long as some state standards for the effluent are met, something district officials say they have always achieved.
The Environmental Protection Agency withdrew a proposed policy in May 2005 that would have liberalized use of the procedure across the country. The move came just before Congress withdrew money for its implementation and after more than 95,000 comments - most opposed, said Kevin Weiss, a chemical engineer with EPA's wastewater permits division in Washington D.C.
Weiss said a new proposal that would require that wastewater treatment plants show that there was "no feasible alternative" to blending is expected to be implemented this summer. The alternative was supported by both environmentalists and the association that represents treatment plants.
The state Department of Natural Resources allows the district to dump up to 60 million gallons a day of partially treated sewage at the Jones Island Wastewater Treatment Plant during heavy storms. "We know sewage - particularly poorly treated sewage - carries with it large concentrations of waterborne pathogens," said Joan Rose, a microbiologist at Michigan State University who has done research for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It is quite clear that large outbreaks occur when sewage impacts recreational or drinking water systems."
Paul Biedrzycki, the Health Department's manager of disease control and prevention, said workers at the treatment plant collect samples during most blending events. His department then tests for Cryptosporidia and Giardia in its own lab. On May 1, 2003, they found Cryptosporidia and Giardia. On four other occasions, they found Giardia.
In 1993, about 403,000 Milwaukeeans were sickened and 100 died during an outbreak of disease caused by Cryptosporidia, the largest outbreak of waterborne disease in U.S. history. While the cause of the outbreak has not been definitively determined, a large amount of melting snow and the dumping of untreated sewage were suspected. The intake pipe for the water that went through the Howard Ave. water treatment plant was located in the plume of the Milwaukee River that contained discharges from the Jones Island Treatment Plant.
The intake pipe was later moved 1.25 miles farther out into Lake Michigan, and many improvements were made at the water plants.
But little is known about how to destroy some viruses, the largest contributor to gastrointestinal illnesses, said the study authors.
Biedrzycki said his department would support further study of the impact of blending, and while the preliminary study conclusions are "gentle and well-placed," the hypothesis is "somewhat spurious and misleading."
Michael McCabe, the top lawyer for the sewage district, was harsher in his criticism.
"They made no connection between the blending and the disease," McCabe said. "That is the case because they don't know the cause of the outbreak."
McCabe said the Children's Hospital researchers "falsely stated" that the blended sewage was under-treated, because the effluent met the standards set in the district's permit. He said preliminary treatment of blended sewage removes 60% to 70% of the contaminants; the second step, the one skipped in blending, brings that to 85% to 90%.
In any case, McCabe said the district was conducting its own study in collaboration with Water Environment Research Foundation to study the effect of blending. The foundation is a subscriber organization funded by utilities, government agencies, equipment manufacturers and industrial organizations, according to its Web site. McCabe said the district study would not have the same conflict of interest concerns as the Children's Hospital study because the water foundation is a "highly respected research foundation."

2006-03-30T18:20:00.000-08:00

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