Columbus to Spread More Wastewater Sludge on Farm Fields

Designing Storage Tanks to Hold the Sludge

The city wants to spread its wastewater sludge on farm fields rather than burn it and dump it into landfills.

To do that, Columbus will spend $3.2 million to design storage tanks to hold the sludge.

Where does it come from? It's the solid waste that travels through the city sewer system and ends up at one of two wastewater-treatment plants.

The plants send water back into the area's watershed, but keep the sludge — often laden with pollutants — to be further cleaned before disposing of it in a landfill or turning it into compost.

Columbus historically has burned its sludge, said Dax Blake, the city's sewers and drains administrator.

But new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules governing air quality and emissions at sewage-treatment plants will go into effect in March 2016, and Blake said the city had to figure out how to meet those standards.

"Sludge comes in every day, day in and day out," Blake said. "There are no holidays taken from the bathrooms in our city."

The money allocated by the Columbus City Council on Monday will pay to design tanks at the Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant on the South Side.

Sludge can be used as a fertilizer on specific types of farmland in specific places and at specific times. The city already has special permits from the Ohio EPA to compost some of its sludge and to spread some of it on farmland.

Chris Abbruzzese, a spokesman for the Ohio EPA, said the city has to get permission before it can spread sludge on farmland.

"We're making sure it's not close to water bodies, property lines, other residences," he said.

Blake said sludge can't be spread onto farmland before a rainstorm because it would wash into the watershed, contaminating streams and rivers. Sludge also can't be spread over frozen ground.

That means the city must be able to store the sludge until it can be spread appropriately.

Michael Frommer, president of the Ohio Water Environment Association, a nonprofit organization that represents the wastewater industry, said spreading sludge on farmland often is cheaper than burning it.

Sewage ash can be reused, but the practice has come under fire. In Columbus, city officials once sold the ash as infield dirt for baseball fields, until tests showed high concentrations of lead in the ash.

Ash that doesn't get reused ends up in a landfill.

"There's not a lot of landfill space and it's costly," Frommer said. "But in Ohio, we have a lot of farm and agricultural areas."

The city will continue to compost some of its sludge at its Com-Til Compost plant and will continue to burn some of it at the Jackson Pike Wastewater Treatment Plant, Blake said.

"So many people out there think incineration is terrible, but they also say, ‘Oh, no, don't (spread it over farmland),'  " he said. "Where do you want me to put this stuff? It has to be dealt with and managed somehow."

Source: Dispatch

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• Sludge Management
• Environment