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Options Are Limited for Disposal of Sewage Sludge

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Rebecca Vandermeulen, Reading Eagle, Pa.

Jun. 7--There's no way around it: Sewage sludge is part of life and it has to go somewhere.

"It's an ongoing problem, trying to dispose of this material," said Thomas B. Baro, general partner with Jesse Baro Inc., Douglassville, which hauled sludge to seven Berks County farms last year.

Sludge is the end product of waste processed at sewage treatment plants.

Many sewage plants take some of their sludge to landfills, but there is a problem with that.

"Eventually, landfills run out of space," said Ryan K. Inch, engineering director for the Pioneer Crossing Landfill in Exeter Township.

Inch said the ideal disposal method for sludge, also known as biosolids, is to spread it on farms.

"The best place for it is on the fields," he said. "It all came from the earth, so it should go back to the earth."

Some municipalities use plants to absorb heavy metals that are in sludge.

The Robesonia-Wernersville Joint Municipal Authority, for example, spreads sludge on beds of cattail-like plants that cover about 15,000 square feet near the treatment facility.

The plants are cut each year and put in landfills or compost, plant manager Jeffrey L. Gerhart said.

The authority has about 1 million gallons of sludge to dispose annually, Gerhart said, adding that about half of that goes on the plant beds. The rest is taken to landfills or farmers' fields.

Using the plants saves money, but it cost $1.5 million to build the disposal beds, Gerhart said.

Sludge also could be used in making cement, said Edward L. Morton of Lehigh Cement, Salisbury, Lehigh County. The company's plant in Maidencreek Township is trying to obtain state permits to test the process.

Morton said a facility in Maryland recently started using dried sludge in its cementmaking process.

Removing water from sludge leaves behind material called a filter cake, which can be heated to make fertilizer pellets, he said. Those pellets can be heated enough to melt limestone that goes into cement.

"A lot of communities are interested in it," Morton said of the process. "Right now they're taking this filter cake material that's 80 percent water and paying to put it in landfills."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Reading Eagle, Pa.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Reading Eagle

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