Subtitle: Morning, Eco-feminists!
We are f**ked, Patagonians. Allen Roland describes a plastic garbage swamp, twice the size of Texas has been discovered in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, contaminating sea life and thus the entire food chain with toxins of yet-to-be determined biological disruptability.
Never let it be said that After Gutenberg was unwilling to wade into the fertilizer controversy. Following a link provided by Biomes Blog, AG learned from blogfish that a large sewage treatment plant in Oregon is testing a process to make fertilizer from sewage. The plot thickens!
Perusers of AG coverage of the dissolved air flotation sludge beat will know that this is not our first such expose’. Most recently, we cited the executive director of the Center for Local Self-Reliance, who urged us not to squander such a valuable resource. David Morris advocated for natural processes that produce a nitrogen-rich organic fertilizer rather than relying upon production from fossil fuels. So, we nod our head knowingly when Mark Powell says to treatment plant engineers, “Nice try, mimicking the natural nutrient delivery of dead salmon carcases, but I’ve seen this idea misused in the past.”
Phosphorus is one of the pollutants responsible for algae blooms off the coast. These ugly, fish-killing messes that represent a lack of oxygen dissolved in the water (not to mention greater acidification) are the reason why the Durham plant is held to some of the tightest standards in the country. The once-heavily polluted Tualatin River has posed a significant threat to the coastal eco-system.
There is, of course, another side to the story, and mainstream media (hee-hee), like the Oregonian, is sympathetic to the treatment plant plight. Mark Poling is wastewater treatment director at Clean Water Services, the company that operates the Durham plant, where the new process is being tested. He explains why the new processed is being considered:
Today the treatment plant removes nearly 99 percent of phosphorus from wastewater before it reaches the Tualatin. But that puts heavy pressure on the plant, because sewage must circulate through repeatedly for the plant to pull enough phosphorus out.
The phosphorus eventually ends up as sludge-like “biosolids” that are trucked to eastern Oregon and spread on farm fields.
The phosphorus causes further problems as it recirculates through the plant, solidifying into concrete-like coatings on the inside of pipes. That shrinks the size of the pipes, cutting the amount of wastewater that can flow through them and reducing the capacity of the plant as a whole.
Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies of Vancouver, B.C. has developed a waste-to-fertilizer system. The wastewater passes through a chamber where magnesium is added in the form of deicing salt spread on icy sidewalks. The phosphorus, along with ammonia, hardens into small balls about the size of BBs, which settles and is then collected for sale.
So, it is may be similar to Agri-char, if there is money to be made (in this case, offsetting the cost of phosphorous extraction), does it matter if the process is environmentally friendly recycling?
