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Elkhorn Has No Takers for Its Sludge Other Cities Have Found Farmers Who Will Accept the Waste Product for Use As Fertilizer.

Posted on: Thursday, 22 September 2005, 21:00 CDT

The City of Elkhorn's sludge won't budge.

Towns and cities throughout the Midwest distribute their processed sludge -- a thoroughly treated product originating mainly from human and industrial waste -- to farmers, who use it as fertilizer for their corn and soybean fields.

The concept might gross out some city people, but experts say it is far better to recycle the material than to put it in landfills. Further, they say, processed sludge is safe and regulated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

"I can't send it to the moon, I can't put it in the river, I can't put it in baggies and give it back to the owner," said Phil Koundakjian, a wastewater facilities manager in Des Moines. Using it as fertilizer is an excellent alternative, he said.

Farmers who use sludge call it a quality substitute for expensive commercial fertilizer.

"I think it's an excellent product," Rick Bond, a farmer in the Weeping Water area, said of the sludge produced in Omaha's wastewater treatment plants.

The processed sludge contains nitrogen, organic material and other elements that are good for the soil, Bond said.

Elkhorn has struggled over the past 18 months to find takers for its sludge. Administrators variously speculate that development in their vicinity has reduced the number of farm fields, that applying sludge is too timeconsuming for many farmers or that there might be quality concerns. Also, unlike some cities, Elkhorn does not compensate farmers for taking it.

At the moment, the city has 70 square feet of sludge two to four feet high stored at the Elkhorn wastewater treatment center. If no takers can be found, it will go to a landfill.

Wastewater treatment managers in Midlands cities such as Omaha, Lincoln and Des Moines say their sludge programs have had no trouble finding farmers to use the material. In Omaha and Lincoln, farmers bid for processed sludge, with those asking for the least compensation generally having the best chance to acquire some. Omaha pays farmers in the program an average of $450 annually.

Wastewater treatment experts prefer the term "biosolids" to sludge, because they say the latter is negative.

Material in wastewater treatment plants typically is broken down by microbes and heated for several weeks. Much of the water is squeezed out, and eventually sludge that meets federal specifications is produced.

Processed sludge looks nothing like what is flushed down the toilet.

By the time it goes through a lengthy treatment process at the wastewater treatment plant, sludge is a dark, spongy material that in small quantities has little or no odor.

About 64,000 tons are made annually in Omaha. "It is not what you'd expect," Gordon Andersen of the City of Omaha Public Works Department said of the final sludge product. "The farmers are literally lining up for two to three years out, waiting to get this."

Barb Ogg, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln extension educator, said the cities' compensation helps defray farmers' fuel, equipment and other costs.

The extension office in Lancaster County helps the City of Lincoln find interested farmers and performs other services for Lincoln's sludge program.

Omaha spends about $650,000 a year hauling the sludge to farmers. Andersen said the program is still less expensive than landfill fees.

Farmers say they like the soil enrichment they receive from using processed sludge. But it is applied to the fields by manure spreaders, which cover a narrow swath. Consequently, covering 80 acres is time-consuming compared to applying anhydrous ammonia, which can be spread in wide swaths with spraying equipment.

Terry Cameron, who farms west of Herman, Neb., said he hopes this fall to obtain enough sludge from Omaha to cover about 80 acres of the 1,500 acres that he farms. About 60 farmers annually are in Omaha's program.

"I wish we could get more material," Cameron said.

Ogg said many towns and cities distribute their sludge to farmers. They include Fremont, Malcolm and Waverly, she said.

Source: Omaha World - Herald

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