So what are you supposed to do with 100 tonnes of sewage sludge? The regional district just found out
KELOWNA – If the Central Okanagan Regional District has temporarily solved its sewage sludge disposal problem by trucking it to a site near Clinton, it’s partially because they can’t look to their nearest neighbours for help – they’re full.
“We just don’t have the capacity, so we can’t help,” said Kevin Van Vliet, manager of waste water services for the City of Kelowna. “We might be able to take a truck or two but that’s it.”
Delivery of biosolids from the Westside regional wastewater treatment plant has been disrupted by a continuing roadside blockade of BioCentral, a private composting company with a facility on Highway 8 west of Merritt in the Nicola Valley.
The regional district said two of its delivery trucks had voluntarily turned back rather than go through the roadside protest staged by local residents opposed to the facility and its operations. It has been trucking about 100 wet tonnes of biosolids each week to the Merritt facility since the beginning of October.
Kelowna’s biosolid plant delivers about 27,000 tonnes to a shared facility near Vernon, of which 18,000 tonnes comes from Kelowna itself.
“We’re watching the situation,” said Van Vliet. “Unfortunately, this stuff doesn’t stop piling up."
While regional district member communities share many services, the disposal of biosolids isn’t one of them. Kelowna and Lake Country deliver to a facility they share with Vernon in the North Okanagan, where it is a constituent of OgoGro, the popular gardener’s compost.
Wastewater from West Kelowna and Peachland, plus the two Westbank First Nation reserves IR#9 and IR#10 is treated on the Westside, with the biosolids trucked to the facility near Merritt.
In a press release sent out March 12, the regional district said it would temporarily transport future loads to an approved site run by a previous supplier, near Clinton B.C.
To contact the reporter for this story, email John McDonald at jmcdonald@infotelnews.ca or call 250-808-0143. To contact the editor, email mjones@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
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4 responses
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I love the cry by the sewage industry. “It’s piling up, we don’t know where to put it, we just do not have the capacity, and our nearest neighbor will not take it.” These guys are no neighbors. Money! I guess we can assume Central Okanagan Regional District is miss managed and has completely missed the boat on thinking ahead. So let’s just dump this toxic waste from industry, hospitals, road and household waste on our neighbors. I know, lets call it ” bio solids” so the ignorant neighbors will buy into it. Let’s tell them it is treated and safe. Absolutely no risk at all to food and water resources. Check out this partial list from the EPA: http://water.epa.gov/scitech/wastetech/biosolids/tnsss-overview.cfmLooks to me like the Native Canadians have a good handle on the ill conceived practice.Sewage sludge of any class is such a complex and unpredictable mixture of pathogens and chemical compounds that even if all the constituents were known, it would still be impossible to reliably assess the health risks when this toxic waste is land applied. Craig
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FYI, note the definition of safe:safe (s³f) adj. saf·er, saf·est. 1. Secure from danger, harm, or evil. 2. Free from danger or injury; unhurt: safe and sound. 3. Free from RISK;.SEWAGE sLUDGE OF ANY TYPE IS NOT SAFE.
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I love the cry by the sewage industry. “It’s piling up, we don’t know where to put it, we just do not have the capacity, and our nearest neighbor will not take it.” These guys are no neighbors. Money! I guess we can assume Central Okanagan Regional District is miss managed and has completely missed the boat on thinking ahead. So let’s just dump this toxic waste from industry, hospitals, road and household waste on our neighbors. I know, lets call it ” bio solids” so the ignorant neighbors will buy into it. Let’s tell them it is treated and safe. Absolutely no risk at all to food and water resources. Check out this partial list from the EPA: http://water.epa.gov/scitech/wastetech/biosolids/tnsss-overview.cfmLooks to me like the Native Canadians have a good handle on the ill conceived practice.Sewage sludge of any class is such a complex and unpredictable mixture of pathogens and chemical compounds that even if all the constituents were known, it would still be impossible to reliably assess the health risks when this toxic waste is land applied. Craig
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What to do with all that sludge?Do what is being done in many other countries and in some areas of the US: use it as a non-fossil fuel source of renewable energy.Meanwhile using sludge on highway medians and on state-of-the- art land fills and collecting the resultingmethane forheat and energy is farbetter than spreading sludge and sludge composts on the land where we grow our food and graze our animals.A hundred environmental, health, and farm groups, led by the Sierra Club, oppose using composts contaminated with sewage sludge.For more information visitwww.sludgefacts.organd https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/uploads-wysiwig/compost.pdf.
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