In-N Out Biosolids
We are about to embark on eating season. Halloween and candy, followed by Thanksgiving with the bird, sides, and pies, and then the December holidays with potato pancakes, if those are your passion, and/or holiday cookies, roasts, and cakes. The expression ‘you are what you eat’ is well known. Well, this month we address our own special version of that saying: ‘We are what we pass’. I just made that up in case you were wondering.
The library this month is in honor of the upcoming eating season and focuses on our own contributions to the wastewater system and how what we eat impacts our urine, feces, the wastewater process, and the planet. Call this light reading for a highly specialized audience.
 The average person in a well-off country produces 126 g of poop per day (wet weight) with quantities ranging from 51 g - 796 g. The dry weight of that is 28 g with about 50% of that dry weight consisting of dead and living microbial biomass. If you are from a low-income country, your daily production is higher, a mean of 250 g per person per day with a range of 75 g - 520 g. The dry weight also increases, with a mean of 38 g and a range of 18 g - 62 g per person per day. The difference is fiber. People in low-income countries eat more fiber than we do and so poop is heavier and wetter. For those with constipation concerns, this quote from the paper may be of help: non-degradable fiber undergoes minimal changes in the digestive tract as it is relatively un-fermentable and shortens colonic transit time (Bijkerk et al., 2004). Another bit of news on fiber is that digestible fiber, such as oat bran and cabbage, will increase fecal weight and moisture content. There is also a discussion of how many movements per day are normal.
From there we take a step back to a much wider lens. The paper gives approximate values for the carbon intensity of different types of food. As more and more of us become aware and concerned about climate change, changing our diets is a tool that each and every one of us can embrace now. No need to build a wind turbine in your front yard. Just eat less meat and more nuts or legumes. If you do eat meat, make it pork or chicken, not beef or lamb. This is a paper that gives you the numbers behind Meatless Mondays ( https://www.mondaycampaigns.org/meatless-monday). I have not given up on beef. Those steaks are just too good to let them go completely. I just eat them less frequently and my portions are smaller. That puts me in the flexitarian category. Here is a glimpse of one of the many tables with a ton of data.
So think about fish over filets. Tastes good, helps the planet and is potentially even better for you.
Those people who go the whole way to strict vegetarianism have an impact on wastewater treatment. Paper #3 ( Plant-based diets add to the wastewater phosphorus burden.) discusses this impact. If you skip the meat, vegetarian diets can increase the P load in wastewater influent. The authors here focus on P loadings in the UK. Peak P intake for people was in 1963 (1599 mg P pp -1 d -1) and has since decreased (1354 mg P pp -1 d -1). Processed foods account for about 50% of this P. If people adopt a low meat or vegan diet, the scenario modeled in this study, P into treatment plants would increase by 17% - 35% over baseline. That isn’t so good now, is it? 
I just happened to have some of the larvae in my freezer. I’ve tasted these and they are no match for a good NY strip. We may not be ready to talk about eating them directly, but consider them as food for Fido. I am all in. I say this as a dog owner and lover, not as a way to pass the larvae. These critters are voracious and not at all picky eaters and can offer a great alternative for both waste treatment and for production of a high protein and fat food source (just not for my supper right now).
The library ends with an article on beef production and how to lower its carbon footprint. There is a long way to go, and plenty of room for improvement. One of the ways is through better use of manures and compost in fields and pastures that cattle are allowed to graze on. The authors include Rebecca Ryals from UC Merced who did some of the seminal work on the Marin Carbon Project. She is now working on biosolids, and one of her students presented this work in our online Biofest a month ago. Appropriate soil management and giving cattle access to soils and pastures can significantly reduce the impact of beef production. Organic amendments are a critical tool in that formula. ( Paper #5: Reducing climate impacts of beef production: A synthesis of life cycle assessments across management systems and global regions.)
So enjoy the beginnings of this holiday season and remember ‘You are what you pass.’
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SPOTLIGHT on COMPOST - AUGUST 2021
Composting is an enduring process for transforming biosolids into a Class A EQ product. Compost facilities in the mid-Atlantic region span a full array of sizes, technologies, and ownership models. The region has facilities located both at small water reclamation plants and at large treatment plants. It has windrow systems, enclosed static pile, and in-vessel agitated beds. Composting is done with various amendments -- purchased wood chips, yard debris, and organic matter recovered from solid waste. The region has various ownerships -- municipally-owned and operated composting, municipally-owned and contract-operated, and privately-owned merchant facilities. The common element to all of this variety is a product that is has a firm place in the landscape market for use in residential and commercial landscaping, as a component in soil blending, and as a specialty amendment for agriculture. Biosolids compost is a well-tested and well-accepted soil product. What is more, at least two more biosolids composting facilities are in permitting within the region. Below are several of the branded biosolids compost products made by MABA members
McGill SoilBuilder Premium Compost
 For more than 30 years, McGill Environmental Systems has designed, built, and operated state-of-the-art indoor facilities for industrial-scale production of McGill SoilBuilder Premium Compost. It manufactures this premium compost product through the processing and recycling of non-hazardous, biodegradable by-products and residuals from municipal, industrial, and agribusiness sources. The McGill Regional Composting Facility at Waverly (McGill-Waverly) opened in 2008. It is in Sussex County, Virginia, near the town of Waverly. Its primary service area includes the coastal mid-Atlantic region. This encompasses the District of Columbia south through Richmond-Tidewater to northeastern North Carolina. McGill-Waverly accepts all types of biodegradable materials including food waste and compostable plastics. It is designed to receive and process source-separated wastes transported in roll-off containers, tractor-trailer rigs, and other commercial vehicles that can safely tip into the receiving bunker. Located on a former timber tract, the operation processes in both banked and encapsulated bays with aerated curing. Aerated curing eliminates the need for windrow turners at this facility.
For more information, contact Sean Fallon, Business Development Manager, [email protected], 919-406-4270. The Waverly facility is located at 5056 Beef Steak Rd, Waverly, VA 23890. WeCare Compost
 WeCare Denali, a division of Denali Water Technologies, operates 24 composting facilities around the United States, two of which are county-owned biosolids composting plants. The Burlington Biosolids Composting Facility is a 300 ton per day capacity composting facility in Columbus, NJ, owned by Burlington County, but operated by WeCare Denali, serving about 20 agencies in the county and beyond. It is the largest biosolids facility in New Jersey under contract operations. The Rockland Green Co-Composting Facility, owned by the Rockland County Solid Waste Authority, recycles biosolids from wastewater plants in Rockland County, NY. At both plants, biosolids are mixed with clean wood waste and then composted in in-vessel agitated bed composting systems. The finished product is used on golf courses, flower gardens, and landscaping projects, and are also ingredients in topsoil This plant is adjacent to the Authority's Materials Recovery Facility and Transfer Station in Hillburn, NY. WeCare Denali markets a suite of WeCare Compost products under its WeCare Compost, Mulch, & Soil line.
For more information, contact national sales manager, Ryan J. Cerrato, [email protected], 315-575-4595. The Burlington facility address is 800 Coc-co Lane, PO Box 318, Columbus, NJ 08022. The Rockland facility is 1988420 Torne Valley Road, Hillburn, NY 10931.
ORGRO High Organic Compost
 ORGRO is a product of the Baltimore City Compost Facility, a facility owned and operated by Veolia, under contract with the city of Baltimore Department of Public Works. This facility, which was first built in 1984, processes a 45 dry ton per day portion of the anaerobically digested biosolids from the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant, the balance made into a thermally dried product. The compost plant produces about 35,000 cubic yards of compost in through in vessel composting and extended curing. This facility is one of the original national examples of a public-private partnership, and one of the original programs for commercial marketing of biosolids to commercial landscapers.
For more information, contact Tom Fantom, project manager, [email protected], 410-354-1636. The facility address is 5800 Quarantine Road, Baltimore, MD, 21266. Landscaper’s Advantage
 Landscaper’s Advantage is the product of the A&M Compost Facility, a large enclosed static pile composting plant owned and operated in Manheim, Pennsylvania by the J.P. Mascaro company. It is a merchant plant, accepting biosolids from a wide reach of plants in the mid-Atlantic. The facility is nearly 15 acres under roof. Its website offers a “ virtual tour” slide deck describing the components of its operation and its environmental controls, which includes under one cover both aerated composting and biofiltration. A&M is managed by a registered professional engineer, Ryan Inch, PE, and a compost specialist, Mark Hubbard.
For more information, contact Matt Mascaro, [email protected], 267-228-5288. The facility is located at 2022 Mountain Rd, Manheim, PA 17545.
earthlife Compost
 The Hawk Ridge Composting Facility, New England’s largest compost facility, is owned and operated by Casella Organics, a MABA Board member This facility uses an in-vessel tunnel system (the Gicom Tunnel) to compost a blend of biosolids with woodchips and sawdust, producing a screened compost with the tradename earthlIfe. Recently, Hawk Ridge reached the distinction of delivering its one-millionth cubic yard of compost. Its wholesale customers include golf courses, nurseries, garden centers, and athletic facilities.
For more information, contact John Leslie, [email protected], 207-461-1000. The facility is located at 3 Reynolds Road, Unity, ME 04988. |
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Biosolids Restoration of Land and Hope
I facetiously say my morning doom scrolling is a search for hope and good news, when mostly it is about covid, politics and the debt ceiling. But one recent morning, the scrolling was not about these themes, but instead about mass extinction, specifically a report on the dual effect of rising temperatures and nutrient flows on toxic microbial blooms. The article in my ScienceDaily feed (I highly recommend this for science nerds) was Animals Died in ‘Toxic Soup’ During Earth’s Worst Mass Extinction, a Warning for Today. The authors are quoted saying “The end-Permian is one of the best places to look for parallels with what’s happening now.” A science article about a parallel between mass extinction and today’s climate is not likely one that yields hope and good news.
I have long been fascinated by the end-Cretaceous asteroid strike that killed off all dinosaurs except for some flying ones (Asteroid impact, not volcanism, caused the end-Cretaceous dinosaur extinction). But oddly this is a “sort-of” good news story, as the asteroid collision paved the way for mammals, and hence humans. The End-Permian was a far more horrible extinction event for life on Earth 252 million years ago. This event resulted in about 95% extinction of species. This international team of researchers of End-Permian “has identified a new cause of extinction during extreme warming events: toxic microbial blooms.” Good news is hard to find in that mass-extinction story.
I have been tracking toxic microbial blooms for several years, having noticed that federal and state governments were issuing the Lake Erie Harmful Algal Bloom Forecast. That is when I learned about blue-green algae (not an alga, but instead a cyanobacteria) and that microcystin released by this class of harmful algae bloom (HAB) was potentially lethal to pets and people in contact with infested waters. Biosolids became wrapped in this issue because phosphorus can ignite blooms (Mitigating harmful cyanobacterial blooms: strategies for control of nitrogen and phosphorus loads), farming practices allow phosphorus release (Lake Erie, phosphorus, and microcystin: Is it really the farmer's fault?), and biosolids is a super source of phosphorus for crops (Mineralization and mobilization of biosolids phosphorus in soil: A concise review and Classification and Assessment Models of First Year Biosolids Phosphorus Bioavailability). We biosolids advocates do not want extinction of life on Earth to occur because biosolids-borne phosphorus ignites toxic algae blooms.
Thanks to the occasionally optimistic nature my doom scrolling, I believe I can now make the argument that biosolids will help save humanity from extinction, and the answer is in using biosolids for land restoration.
I have been following the flurry of document releases by the International Panel on Climate Change. On 6 August 2021, the IPCC released the nearly 4,000 page Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, with its much more manageable 47 page Summary for Policy Makers. More recently, on 17 September 2021, the UN Secretariat issued its report Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement Synthesis report. This is a global survey of individual national contributions to reducing GHG releases; The United States of America Nationally Determined Contribution was released April of this year.
This “NDC” synthesis report was unsettling for its failure to show adequate contributions by nations to deal with the climate threats set forth in the Physical Science Basis. This failure was reported by the Washington Post article As climate pledges fall short, U.N. predicts globe could warm by catastrophic 2.7 degrees Celsius. Independent NGOs also responded to the failure of the NDCs to show an adequate response to the urgent threat. One of these critical reports is from a European consultancy, RethinkX, with a report titled Rethinking Climate Change.
The critique of the NDCs underscored the role of carbon sequestration as a “contribution” for mitigating climate change. My attention jumped to the RethinkX call for ecological restoration as a key “rethink.” The World Wildlife Fund has a website, A New World is Coming, #NDCsWeWant, where it offers its report NDCs – A Force For Nature. The WWF introduces the concept of NbS, or Nature-based Solutions, in restoring degraded landscapes as a key strategy. We biosolids managers could very well argue for a role of biosolids in both the WWF and the RethinkX solutions.
I have been for long an advocate of biosolids use for restoring degraded landscapes. Philadelphia embraced reclamation with biosolids in the earliest years of its recycling program, when ocean dispersal was ended in 1980 in response to national policy and international compact. Back in 2003, I wrote a report Twenty-Five Years of Mine Reclamation with Biosolids in Pennsylvania. I chronicled 4,000 acres of reclamation up to that time, and more than 10 years of biosolids application to mine lands continued after that date. Some thirty years ago, an extraordinary project was the hauling by rail of biosolids mixed with compost to a project in southwestern Virginia. This is a large research site, the Powell River Project in Wise County, Virginia, directed for many years now by Dr. Lee Daniels. In the mid-2000s, the Philadelphia Water Department contracted for the application of biosolids to completed anthracite mines in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, and that project evolved into one using Deep Row Entrenchment (“DRE”) and installation of hybrid poplar plantations. DRE is a technology that has been heavily researched by the University of Maryland, and its extension service has developed a publication on DRE available for download. The leading researcher on this work , Dr. Jonathan Kays, has a three-session webinar in October 2021 discussing this technology for biosolids use: Deep Row Entrenchment of Biosolids Using Hybrid Poplar. The Philadelphia DRE project was documented in a 2007 WEF biosolids conference paper “Demonstrating Deep Row Placement of Biosolids in Coal Mine Reclamation.” The mine reclamation projects in Pennsylvania have also evolved over time to show their larger economic and ecological value. MABA member American Green, an affiliate of Reading Anthracite, undertakes Coal Mining & Land Reclamation in eastern Pennsylvania, and one of its restored sites is a Pure Bred Angus and Goat Farm.
Land restoration would seem to be the brightest opportunity for biosolids recycling. Yet, its adoption is limited in the mid-Atlantic. Regulators seem to resist restoration technologies. Our projects are large scale, unlike customary agricultural practices, and are not protected from public complaint by “right-to-farm” policies. Application rates are high, giving rise to risks of pollutant or nutrient releases, real or imagined. The calculus of regulatory approval does not count the benefits of restoring watershed productivity, sequestering carbon, and mitigating acid drainage.
We need to build a new approach to gaining support for biosolids use in land restoration. We need a new “narrative” that focuses on the results of biosolids use, not the biosolids itself. This point was driven home by John Lavery at the September 2021 Northwest Biosolids’ BioFest. His presentation, “Visionary restoration narratives - tools that solve bigger problems than our own,” focused on the compelling “narrative” of three SYLVIS environmental’s land restoration projects: OK Ranch Rangeland Fertilization, City of Calgary Willow Biomass Crop, and Paintearth Mine Biomass Reclamation. For each project, results valued by the property owner and the community are held out as the story line in the narrative. Biosolids is just a tool. Land improvement, habitat restoration and carbon sequestration are the messages, with an additional shout-out to the value of jobs and economy.
Lavery tells us we need to gain the understanding and support of the larger community, and that is where the NDCs come into play. The two most desperate issues facing humanity today are ecological deterioration and climate change. Our opportunity, our duty in fact, is to emphatically connect our biosolids work to the inspirational work already underway within these two environmental domains. We can offer our own special, unique tools and experience to these large issues, and for that we need to align with others.
In the domain of ecological restoration, we could align with the Ellen Macarthur Foundation. This is the leading advocacy group for the principle of the circular economy. This September the foundation offered a program, now available on YouTube, How the circular economy can help to tackle biodiversity loss. Its publication The Nature Imperative introduces “regenerative production,” in which the circular economy produces outcomes of “healthy and stable soils, improved local biodiversity, improved air and water quality, and higher levels of carbon sequestration.” To my ear, this sounds like SYLVIS environmental’s projects and Virginia Tech’s Powell River Project.
In the domain of climate change, we could align with Project Drawdown. This project was organized around the work of sustainability guru Paul Hawken, described in his book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. One of the major categories of “drawdown” is Land Sinks: “Where ecosystems have been degraded, restoration can help them recuperate form and function, including absorbing and storing more carbon over time.” Two Land Sink project examples outlined on his website are Perennial Biomass Production (“offers a productive and carbon-sequestering use of degraded lands, farm borders, riparian edges, and other spaces”) and Tree Plantations on Degraded Land (“they can restore soil, sequester carbon, and produce wood resources in a more sustainable way”). This organization has spawned Drawdown Labs, a consortium of “visionary” partners that, in Climate Solutions at Work, proclaims “…in this most all-encompassing challenge in human history, every job must be a climate job.” Why cannot all the stakeholders in our biosolids professional community be partners in this concept that our jobs are “climate jobs?” By this definition, John Lavery and Lee Daniels have “climate jobs,” and so do I.
Joining our work with the work of thousands of other people committed to land and climate issues could transform the “narrative” of biosolids, which is too often negative, to one of hope and health. It is our job to make that connection. A survey released in September (Young people’s voices on climate anxiety, government betrayal and moral injury: a global phenomenon) found “over half of those surveyed said they thought humanity was doomed.” We need to hold out to children, college students and young professionals our narratives that speak to tangible actions, actions of the kind we deploy with land reclamation. Our narratives can convey a vision of restored lands and carbon sinks that counterbalances the abyss that our young people otherwise see in the deterioration of climate and ecological systems. The survey authors asserted “nations must respond to protect the mental health of children and young people by engaging in ethical, collective, policy-based action against climate change.” We in the biosolids business are poised perfectly to be part of that protective governmental response. But to do so, we need to re-imagine ourselves with “climate jobs” in “regenerative production.” Biosolids restores land, which is darn good, but what is more awesome is that biosolids restores health and hope. |
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