ECUA composting facility moving ahead
- June 23, 2015
- / Shannon Nickinson
- / economy
By September, the ECUA should complete work on a $2.5 million composting facility at the Central Water Reclamation Facility.
The closure of the Rolling Hills landfill in Wedgewood helped push the project onto the fast track, though it had been planned since 2011.
“It got pushed up because of the Rolling Hills situation,” said Randy Rudd, ECUA executive director of shared services. “We are composting now. Environmentally that is the better thing to do. It helps us with the sludge from the treatment plant.”
In March, ECUA stopped taking the yard debris it collects to Rolling Hills. DEP approved the revocation of the permit at Rolling Hills in May. In April the county fined the landfill owners for violating the magistrate's final order.
The landfill began as a small borrow pit, but grew into a larger facility over time that came into conflict with the neighbors and faced numerous financial woes.
The closure of Rolling Hills “has some major inconveniences and financial repercussions,” said Nathalie Bowers, the utility’s spokeswoman.
ECUA’s collected yard debris now is going to the county-owned Perdido Landfill at a cost of $27.69 per ton. Rolling Hills charged $10 or $11 per ton, Rudd said.
“Obviously, that’s a much higher rate,” he said.
The City of Pensacola also is taking vegetative debris to the landfill.
Bowers said the composting facility will take vegetative and yard debris and mix it with the sludge produced at the Central Water Reclamation Facility. That compost material can be sold to golf courses, sod farms, and is bulk as a soil additive. Some of it ultimately could be sold to the public as well.
[caption id="attachment_25129" align="aligncenter" width="850"]
Windrows, piles of compost material, at the ECUA's Central Water Reclamation Facility in Cantonment. Photo credit: Emerald Coast Utilities Authority.[/caption]
A composting facility was part of the original design for the CWRF in Cantonment, which replaced the ECUA’s sewer treatment plant on Main Street in downtown Pensacola.
“We took it out to cut cost,” Rudd said. “Now it makes sense to do it. Rolling Hills forced us to do what we can now. We’re fortunate we had this project coming along. We would have stopped using them eventually on our own” once the composting facility was up and running.
A notice in last month’s bills asked customers to consider switching to paper bag for yard trash to help the composting process along.
That, Rudd says, is a suggestion. The utility still will collect yard debris in plastic bags.
But if you can switch they’d like you to.
“We’re not banning plastic bags by any means,” Rudd said. “The more people we can get to move away from plastic, the better.”
In the heaviest time of year for yard debris collection, Rudd says ECUA will tweak the routes so that one set of trucks will collect yard debris bagged in plastic.
During slower months, any plastic bags that are at the curb, the driver will tear open those bags and put the material in the truck and keep the plastic out of the truck.
Crews will have time because there is less volume, Rudd said.
Long-term, Rudd would like to get tree services, landscapers and the like into the habit of using the ECUA facility, too.
The more vegetative debris collected, the more sludge from the plant that can be mixed in with it and reused as compost.
Windrows, piles of compost material, at the ECUA's Central Water Reclamation Facility in Cantonment. Photo credit: Emerald Coast Utilities Authority.[/caption]
A composting facility was part of the original design for the CWRF in Cantonment, which replaced the ECUA’s sewer treatment plant on Main Street in downtown Pensacola.
“We took it out to cut cost,” Rudd said. “Now it makes sense to do it. Rolling Hills forced us to do what we can now. We’re fortunate we had this project coming along. We would have stopped using them eventually on our own” once the composting facility was up and running.
A notice in last month’s bills asked customers to consider switching to paper bag for yard trash to help the composting process along.
That, Rudd says, is a suggestion. The utility still will collect yard debris in plastic bags.
But if you can switch they’d like you to.
“We’re not banning plastic bags by any means,” Rudd said. “The more people we can get to move away from plastic, the better.”
In the heaviest time of year for yard debris collection, Rudd says ECUA will tweak the routes so that one set of trucks will collect yard debris bagged in plastic.
During slower months, any plastic bags that are at the curb, the driver will tear open those bags and put the material in the truck and keep the plastic out of the truck.
Crews will have time because there is less volume, Rudd said.
Long-term, Rudd would like to get tree services, landscapers and the like into the habit of using the ECUA facility, too.
The more vegetative debris collected, the more sludge from the plant that can be mixed in with it and reused as compost.
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