4/30/17
In Brief / en bref...

  • The Slate Belt Heat Recovery project will use excess heat from landfill gas utilization to dry biosolids at a new facility to be built on the land of a major Waste Management (WM) landfill in northeast Pennsylvania.  Some local public concerns have been raised, the debate continues, and WM, Synagro, and other project partners are stepping up outreach and information sharing (with a letter and some involvement from NEBRA).
  • Hamilton, Ontario is moving ahead with a new biosolids heat drying facility involving Synagro and other partners.  The facility will replace the city's current cake land application program.  
  • International Compost Awareness Week is May 7 - 13. See NERC's write-up & join the celebration of compost: HEALTHY SOIL, HEALTHY FOOD!
  • Source control, industrial pretreatment, and pollution prevention (P2) continue to play a key role in protecting biosolids quality.  In the recent past, biosolids stakeholders have encouraged and benefited from phasing out of materials that society has used for years but that have generated concern as their properties (e.g. environmental persistence) became better known.  Examples include the antimicrobial triclosan (TCS) and plastic microbeads, both now banned in the U. S. Efforts are ongoing to reduce toilet disposal of non-dispersable wipes, including strict labeling requirements in the first-in-the-nation legislation passed last year in Washington, DC.  And pharmaceutical take-back programs, many supported by clean water agencies, are reducing traces of drugs in wastewater and biosolids. A phase out over the past decade is also proving to be the best answer to recent concerns about certain perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS, examples: PFOA and PFOS), which are found widely in the environment after decades of use in a wide variety of consumer products and industrial processes. Biosolids are a reflection of our modern environments and life-style, and their safety - and ours – is further improved as concerning substances are phased out of use.

  • The United Nations has highlighted the value of wastewater in a new report published in April. “We need to stop seeing it as a burden to be dealt with. It’s not a waste and should not be a waste, especially in this world of water scarcity," the publication's editor explains.

  • WE&RF has released the final report on Assessing the Benefits and Costs of Anaerobic Digester CHP (Combined Heat & Power] Projects in New York State.  https://www.werf.org/a/ka/Search/ResearchProfile.aspx?ReportId=ENER7C13e