This is the first in a series of articles detailing local governments' failed and costly attempts to deal with one byproduct of wastewater treatment plants--biosolids. SlurryCarb, the sludge-to-energy technology in question, has already cost taxpayers in Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange and San Bernardino counties hundreds of millions of dollars without creating a single BTU of usable energy. But that has not stopped politicos from investing millions more in tax dollars into the failed process. We will examine the politics behind this questionable environmental technology.
As contracts with EnerTech, the company behind the most recent attempt at implementing the technology, are being reviewed, government officials are considering throwing more taxpayer money at the project with no guarantee the technology will ever be developed. In our cash-strapped state where municipalities are terminating employees and demanding union concessions, some are raising questions as to the impetus behind their thought process.
In 1989, the California State Legislature passed AB 939, which created the California Integrated Waste Management Board and set up waste diversion goals for all cities and counties in the state. This bill mandated that local jurisdictions meet solid waste diversion goals of 25 percent by 1995 and 50 percent by 2000. Now almost 21 years later some jurisdictions have yet to meet these goals and face possible sanction.
We are all familiar with many of the programs enacted by jurisdictions to comply with AB 939. Whether we participate in curbside recycling with blue-, green-, and brown-coded trash barrels or do our part by separating our aluminum, glass, plastic and newsprint and hauling it to a recycling facility ourselves for a little extra pocket change, recycling has become a routine part of the California lifestyle.
However, most of us likely do not pay attention to another recycling component of our daily lives that our government cares about a lot, and that is what we flush down the toilet. We don’t give a second thought to what happens once we press that lever and hear the whoosh of water sending waste to distant places. If our residence is hooked up to a municipal sewer system, that distant place is a wastewater treatment plant.
Technology has developed to the point that solid organic waste can now be separated from all the other not-so-organic items people flush, such as pharmaceuticals, latex, and plastics. In modern terminology, organic waste separated and treated at a wastewater treatment plant is known as “biosolids.”
The jurisdictions that operate wastewater treatment centers must dispose of the biosolids, either by sending them to a landfill, which reduces their compliance with the 50-percent diversion requirement, or by finding another use. The two most commons uses for biosolids is direct-land application, which is commonly used in farming communities, and creation of compost, i.e., mixing biosolids with green waste to create fertilizer.
However, in large counties such as Los Angeles, the disposal of biosolids has been an issue for decades. In the 1980s and 90s, Los Angeles officials spent $500 million to build two plants, one for the city of Los Angeles and one for the county's sanitation district, to turn biosolids into energy, a process known as "SlurryCarb." The plants turned out to be nothing more than a half-billion-dollar boondoggle because the theory of how technology should work did not become reality.
Biosolids contain large quantities of liquid, which is corrosive to anything but stainless steel. Due to the cost restrictions, stainless steel was not used when building the plants and the biosolids eroded through the pipes. Fires erupted taking days to extinguish. The city's plant was shut down and the county's plant never went online.
But these first failures did not deter further attempts to improve the technology. According to their website, in 2002, EnerTech Environmental changed its focus to produce renewable energy from biosolids. The company constructed a demonstration facility in Ube City, Japan and conducted small-scale commercial testing of the process for three years.
After "successful" small-scale testing, EnerTech convinced five jurisdictions to sign on to utilize the new technology, entering into airtight contracts for as periods up to 20 years. In 2007 the George-based company announced that it had obtained $150 million in funding through equity and a combination of tax exempt and taxable bonds. Deutsche Bank agreed to purchase 100 percent of the bonds. Construction of the SlurryCarb facility began immediately in Rialto, California.
According to a press release at the time, "The Rialto SlurryCarb facility will convert 675 wet tons per day of biosolids from five municipalities in the Los Angeles region into approximately 145 tons per day of renewable fuel. The renewable fuel, called E-Fuel, will be used by a local cement kiln as an alternative to coal. The facility's customers include the Orange County Sanitation District, the Sanitation District of Los Angeles County, and the cities of Rialto, Riverside, and San Bernardino."
The new facility went online in late 2008. To date, few BTUs of energy have been produced and used for the cement kiln. The technology simply does not work as was learned more than a decade ago. Instead, the biosolids are being trucked to Vicksburg, Arizona and applied to farmland. Customers of this facility are paying up to three times what it would cost them to have their biosolids trucked to farmland or a composting site themselves.
Inquiries to EnerTech have gone unanswered. We will examine the Orange County Sanitation District contract in the next article.
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