Some would say the average politician is full of . . . eh . . . biosolids. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Politicians are, however, very aware of the green associated with them. We're not talking about the green waste that is sometimes mixed with biosolids to make compost. Rather this is the greenback variety that can add up to hundreds of millions of wasted taxpayer dollars. That is where the second part of this story begins.
The average person doesn't think of the disposal of biosolids as political or controversial. Dare we suggest, the average person doesn't think of biosolids at all. But they should. Taxpayer money is being flushed down the toilet with those biosolids and being used to line the pockets of those promoting green technology with claims that border on snake oil. Those Wall Street-funded snake oil salesmen have been very successful in convincing government jurisdictions to buy into what they have to offer, whether it works or not. That seems especially true with entities such as the Orange County Sanitation District, the city of San Bernardino, and the city of Rialto.
Our first story centered around EnerTech, a Georgia-based firm, flush with cash from Wall Street and expecting huge profits, which built its first facility in Rialto, California. The facility collects biosolids from five local wastewater treatment plants. EnerTech is contracted to process biosolids to remove liquid and turn them into "green" pellets to be used by a local cement kiln as an alternative to coal. What sets this process apart from the traditional drying of biosolids is that it is supposed to use less energy to make the pellets than the pellets, or SlurryCarb, will produce, thus providing a net energy increase, making it "green" energy.
The process simply doesn't work. But the snake oil salesmen have convinced jurisdictions to pay significantly more to dispose of their biosolids in this manner. Our mission was to find out how much more. And what a mission it has been.
"You're not going to get me fired are you?" "This is very political." As I attempted to get someone . . . anyone . . . to go on the record, those are the phrases I heard over and over. Even some California Public Records Act requests have been met with resistance or completely ignored.
The first jurisdiction to comply with our request was the Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD). OCSD is the key to the overall story for several reasons.
Without the OCSD contract, the facility in Rialto will likely have to close down. But EnerTech has been in breach of its contract with OCSD since February 2009. During the past 12 months while EnerTech has been attempting to comply with its contractual obligations, OCSD alone has spent approximately $1.3 million more on this failed technology than had it simply contracted to have its biosolids land-applied or transported to a composting facility.
EnerTech has asked OCSD to give them another 18 months to fine tune the SlurryCarb process in an attempt to be in compliance with their contract. That "fine tuning" will cost anywhere from $10 to 20 million with no guarantee it will work. That figure does not include the extra $1.8 million in costs to the taxpayers of Orange County. After over three years of EnerTech operating in Rialto, how much more time and taxpayer money is the Board going to give them? Is this the best use of taxpayer dollars?
This is where the politics comes in. The 25-member Board of Directors of the OCSD is made up of 21 city council members/mayors from around Orange County, a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, and three members from the sanitary/water districts in the county. No one from the OCSD Board of directors has been willing to talk with us on the record, but we have been told that some of those on the board are actually considering giving Wall Street's EnerTech the additional time despite the additional costs with no guarantee of success. Apparently, they are less concerned with abuse of taxpayer money and more concerned with appearing "green" whether or not the technology works.
As those who spoke to us off the record said, "It's political." Politics is apparently more important than being good stewards of the funds entrusted to them by their constituents. A final decision is expected at the January 26, 2011 meeting of the OCSD Board of Directors.
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