Brooks, Kerian
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MINUTES SAFETY/SERVICE STANDBY COMMITTEE Tuesday, December 17, 2002 - 4:30 p.m._______ Members present: Kreun, chair; Brooks, Kerian. Others attending: Council Members Gershman, Christensen; Todd Feland, director of Public Works, Candi Stjern, Al Grasser, Mark Walker, Beecher Vaillancourt, Steve Burian (AE sub consultant to Black & Veatch), and Scott Carr, Black & Veatch. Representatives of Simplot and RDO Foods were also present. 1. Bio-solids Management Facilities Plan. Chairman Kreun stated they are all aware of the wastewater treatment plant that's being designed and built and very close to operation and with that comes along another problem is our biosolids management, and they have been putting a plan together on how to manage the new wastewater treatment and also to build an economical biosolids plant that will handle needs of the industries as well as the city's without putting us too far in debt and to use it economically; that in the last few months they brought on A & E and Black and Veatch to help us with this plan so we can consolidate some of the usages of the wastewater treatment plant and the biosolids plant. He stated this is an overview of our plan that we have in place, lot of work and thought has been put into it and would like them to consider it very heavily when the presentation is finished and to ask questions of consultants and staff until get into actual implementation of the whole program. Todd Feland, director of public works, stated to present to the subcommittee and then bring to the city council in January, and looking for a three part presentation; that the consultants will go into some of the alternatives and alternative treatment strategies; most of the issues they've looked at are some of the things they've done and what can they do in the future, and where do they go from here and if deemed some of the ideas are good, still need approval from the ND State Health Department and EPA and need to finalize some of those previous discussions. He stated the presentation will include the alternatives, alternative treatment strategy and where do we go from here. Scott Carr, Black & Veatch, reviewed their draft report on biosolids management plan prepared for the City of Grand Forks. Steve Burian, Advanced Engineering, also made comments re. the plan. Mr. Carr stated the definitions of sludge which is by-product from the wastewater treatment process and biosolids is sludge that has been treated to where they can be beneficially used as a fertilizer or soil amendment. He stated they noticed is the component of sludge that is generated as a result of flows and loads from industries (RDO and Simplot) actually comprise about 75% of the sludge that is going to be generated at the future facility. He stated that RDO and Simplot each have their own wastewater treatment process (much like the City's) and as part of those processes they generate sludge, and the sludge comes through the sewer to the wastewater treatment plant; they then asked does it make sense to take the sludge from the industrial plants and handle that separately, not total wastewater discharge because for Simplot the sludge comes back, RDO has some additional treatment on it so not creating as much sludge, but there's a potential for actually handling those sludges at the industrial plants and the advantage of that is that industrial sludges has no domestic or no human wastewater component in it, all food wastewater product and does not require as much treatment to be of beneficial use, and looked at it over a 20-year period at two options (one option being separating it out and providing facilities at the industries for handling those sludges separately and over a 20-year period looking at a savings of roughly $9 million to Page 2 handle those separately. The other advantages without that sludge coming through the plant would be a little bit easier for wastewater treatment superintendent to manage the wastewater treatment process. He stated their next step was to establish the alternatives they were going to evaluate - 5 alternatives and each one had a separate component where the industrial sludges were being handled at the industries providing facilities at the industries and the industries providing the manpower and those costs were included in all the alternatives. He stated their goal was to identify the 5 best options that would meet the City's long term needs. The biosolids management alternatives were reviewed along with comparison or project costs: 1) Bale-fill disposal (commercial landfill as backup) 2) Land application (bale-fill as backup) 3) Land application (commercial landfill as backup). 4) Heat drying with land application (bale-fill as backup) 5) Composting and distribution (bale-fill as backup) Comparison of Alternatives and costs for municipal components ($ millions): 1) Dewater raw, air dray and bale-fill - Project $9.6 and O&M $0.54/yr. 2) Digest, dewater, air dry, and land apply - Project $10.6 and O&M $0.54/yr. 3) Digest, dewater land apply - Project $11.2 and O&M $0.72/yr. 4) Thermal drying - Project $13.0 and O&M $0.72/yr. 5) Composting - Project $13.9 and O&M $0.69/yr. with 2) recommended alternative because of the flexibility of the outlets and felt to be low capital and O&M cost and would provide flexibility for the future. Steve Burian stated that if the City approved the recommendation of Alt. 2 that the council would want them to look at designing that in such a way that if you have to go to composting, this would be the thought process and if go to thermal drying here would be the footprint in the thought process and if have to add additional capacity in the future, how would that be staged and that Alt. 2 although the number you'd heard before was more like $25.6 million for buyout solids, the big advantage of Alt 2 is $15 million less than that and with that you'd want to challenge them to look very futuristic in terms of how do they design this and construct it so that we don't over invest today but have a good strategy so that you're in a good position to use that flexibility moving forward, whether that be Class A or new wastewater regulation, lagoon challenges, etc. Kerian asked to go back to the Class B issue, the land applications and on what land would they be looking at and what use. Mr. Carr stated it would be basically serve as a nitrogen fertilizer material and probably 5% nitrogen content that would be primary value to farmers and would be looking at row crops (corn, beans, etc.), that AE looked at the region and the land characteristics, looking at more than 10 miles out from the plant to find suitable land, there is a relatively high water table close into the plant that would cause problems for laying application but once get beyond that there is quite a bit of acreage available for it and would be working with the local farmers to arrange time periods for laying application. He stated that nationwide that is probably predominant method - about 40% of material is land applied with Class B type material. Another large portion of material is used thermal drying dry product used as a fertilizer also. He stated the City would have to meet under federal regulations that regulate metals and City shouldn't have a problem with that and stabilize for the package control - it has been treated to reduce the containments to a suitable level. Mr. Burian stated Class A would be one step better in all of those areas. Mr. Carr stated the city would have to track the Class B products where it goes and how much has been applied on the site and EPA requires reasonable level of monitoring and record keeping; with Class A treatment that product you could use in Page 3 your home garden, front yard. Kerian asked if Class B material could be used as cover in the landfill; Mr. Carr stated they talked to the State initially about that because their under- standing is that you need some soil augmentation at the landfill and thought it might be great to blend in with the soil out there to further extend its use but feedback from the State is No - they would not allow that because its not considered an inert material because there's still some bulk and solids, that they went out about a month ago and talked to the State about this program and the same people were there and were very recept ive and the manager of the solid waste program stated we don't have enough dirt and need augmentation and were willing to work with the City and do some trials and it may be a possibility. Mr. Burian stated that Fargo is putting all of theirs in the landfill but for those putting it to beneficial use are Moorhead and Bismarck (are doing all Class B land application) and Bismarck is going through a wastewater master planning effort and they intend to stick with Class B land application with the idea that only if somebody mandated Class A down the road they could make that transition - he stated when you get to Class A the further you treat it, the less nitrogen it has in it - with nitrogen in the Class B it reduces their input cost and that could be best marketing strategies and both Moorhead and Bismarck have landowners that are willing to work with them because of the input cost reduction but somewhat cumbersome in handling it and if it gets to be expensive at all, cheaper to go over and buy ammonia or normal fertilizer because of the application method is more simplistic and have to make it convenient for them and no costs and works out well and that is the way they factored everything - that they looked at all these alternatives with zero revenue.