Would Fresno be hurt by composting human sewage? City pauses study of treatment options

A study of the practicality of composting “biosolids” sludge from Fresno’s sewage-treatment plant has been put on hold after a City Council member raised concerns over potential odor and environmental effects for the West Fresno community.

At its meeting Thursday, the Fresno City Council postponed authorizing a $400,000 feasibility study of options for processing treated human sewage sludge as a possible cost-saving measure for the city’s Public Utilities Department. Councilmember Miguel Arias, whose southwest Fresno district encompasses West Fresno as well as the Fresno-Clovis Regional Wastewater Reclamation Facility – the city’s sewage treatment plant southwest of Fresno – called for a two-week delay on a vote to hire a consultant to conduct the study.

“My contention is that West Fresno has the highest concentrations of pollution in the country (and) has the vast majority of brownfields in the region,” Arias told The Fresno Bee, “and has historically been a dumping ground physically and literally for the most environmentally damaging uses: industrial, landfills, garbage facilities.”

Neighborhods in southwest Fresno have some of the highest pollution burdens in the state, according to the CalEnviroScreen mapping tool from the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The sewage treatment plant is located about 2.5 miles from the nearest extent of the Fresno city limits, but some residential neighborhoods – and West Park Elementary School – are in the unincorporated area west of the city limits.

“I want us to press pause until we sit down with a group of community leaders in West Fresno to review this prior to us moving forward, …” Arias told Brock Buche, Fresno’s public utilities director. “You’re asking to spend $400,000 on a consulting contract before we know whether there is community support for such a facility.”

Buche said the goal of the study is to “evaluate if (composting) is a viable treatment option for our biosolids” rather than a a commitment to build and operate a composting facility.

Biosolids, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “are a product of the wastewater treatment process.”

“During wastewater treatment the liquids are separated from the solids. Those solids are then treated physically and chemically to produce a semisolid, nutrient-rich product known as biosolids,” the agency states on its website. “The terms ‘biosolids’ and ‘sewage sludge’ are often used interchangeably.”

The sewage-treatment plant currently produces about 325 tons per day of biosolids, Assistant Public Utilities Director Rick Staggs told The Bee.

Buche said the city now pays for all of that sludge to be hauled by truck out of Fresno for further processing such as composting. “We’re just looking at how do we keep the operation efficient and cost-effective,” he told The Bee. “This is one of the solutions mentioned in (the city’s 2019 biosolids) master plan.”

Arias said the residents of West Fresno, where industrial development has long been concentrated in the city’s history, deserve a heads up about what the department is considering. “Why only study one region of the city, the most polluted region, for this location?” Arias asked Buche.

“It’s all associated with the waste stream coming from the treatment plant,” Buche answered. “We have two by-products that come out of that facility: We have clean water that goes into percolation ponds, and we have the solid materials that are treated and deactivated so they are non-biological material, biologically inactive material.”

“So it’s treated human s--t, …” Arias interjected. “Residents are asking, ‘Why are you putting a human s--t farm in our neighborhood?’”

The scope of work for the consultant, Tetra Tech BAS Inc., includes “workshopping” with staff at the treatment plant “to confirm the most suitable area for a composting facility” at the plant site. “The evaluation will consider accommodation of up to three technology types of composting” identified in the proposed contract as windrows, covered aerated static piles and in-vessel within a covered building.

“One of the options is to have open-air compost piles, per your consultant’s scope of work,” Arias said, referring to the windrow style of composting. “Which on any windy day would dramatically affect people’s ability to open their windows or not.”

“I don’t want to spend half a million dollars on evaluating this option only to hear from residents and end up in litigation because nobody communicated with them,” he added.

City Manager Georgeanne White was visibly frustrated by Arias’ use of profanity to describe the material. “Labeling it like that is very inflammatory,” she said to Arias. “It is treated biowaste, just like we have treated wastewater that West Fresno was begging to have come into their community.” White was referring to a “purple pipe” program that brings treated water from the plant back into the city for landscape irrigation and other non-drinking uses.

In moving to push the issue off to the council’s Aug. 24 meeting, “I’m not asking to obtain united support from the community,” Arias said. “I’m asking to touch base with community leaders who for decades have litigated the city and other agencies for the oversaturation of environmentally damaging operations in that part of town.”

White relented and said the city would work to convene a meeting with West Fresno leaders.

The council agreed on a 6-1 vote to delay considering the consultant contract, with northwest Fresno Councilmember Mike Karbassi opposed.

“I recognize that we’ll have very few answers (for West Fresno residents) at this point,” Arias said after the council meeting. “But at the very least we should hear their concerns and be able to incorporate those concerns into any feasibility study, and also look at other sites around the city.”

Stagg said after the vote that sewage treatment is “a highly regulated activity.”

“We’re talking about air regulations, water regulations,” he said. “Obviously we’re in a very strict air district, so obviously this discussion about open rows and all that wouldn’t happen in this county anyway.”

Buche told The Bee that producing compost from the biosolids “kind of changes the dynamics” of the city’s costs. “Right now we’re paying to have it hauled off,” he said. “If it’s composted, it becomes a material that has more of a beneficial value and can be sold.” One aspect of the feasibiity study would be to examine what is the market for compost, he added, “and how do we deal with it once we’ve made it into compost?”

The regional sewage treatment plant southwest of Fresno is the seventh largest wastewater treatment plant in Califonria, according to the public utilities department. The department also operates the smaller North Fresno Wastewater Reclamation Facility on Copper Avenue in northeast Fresno.