DWSD Sludge and NEFCO

Throughout its existence, the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD) has disposed of most of its sewage sludge (aka biosolids) by incineration or in landfills.  (Small amounts have gone to farms as fertilizer.)

The high cost of maintaining and rebuilding the incinerators, more strict air quality standards and limitations imposed by landfills caused DWSD in 2013 to contract with the New England Fertilizer Company (NEFCO) to design, build and operate a plant in Detroit to dry and pelletize a significant portion of the sludge for use as fertilizer and power plant fuel.  

NEFCO photo: construction in Detroit

Under DWSD’s contract with NEFCO, sewer system ratepayers will be on the hook for nearly $700,000,000 over 20 years.

Last month, DWSD executive director Sue McCormick reported that substantial completion of NEFCO’s Detroit facility is expected this month (December 2015).

The NEFCO plant will replace the six oldest of 14 incinerators.  The facility is expected to process incoming sludge at a modest rate of 300 (relatively dry) tons per day (dtpd), 400 in a pinch.  DWSD’s average sludge production the past year has been about 400 dtpd.  (If memory serves, sludge production was required to be at least 450 dtpd under the Second Amended Consent Judgement when DWSD was overseen by a federal judge.)

The daily tonnage that isn’t removed from wastewater ends up in the Detroit River and then Lake Erie.  So, if there are 550 tons of biosolids in the wastewater on the average day and DWSD removes 400 (perhaps 300 of which will go to NEFCO for pelletizing; 100 incinerated), that means that the remaining 150 tons daily or 54,750 tons annually will feed the algae in Lake Erie. (If there’s more to this calculation than meets the eye, DWSD hasn’t been forthcoming about it.)

There are plans to phase out the remaining eight incinerators in ten years. That’s enough time to install around the region several Janicki wastewater processors, which produce pure water, significant amounts of electricity and a small pile of ash (NO sludge).  The Detroit wastewater treatment plant and the NEFCO facility would no longer be necessary.

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New England Fertilizer to pelletize DWSD sludge

NEW PLANT WON’T CHANGE OLD TECHNOLOGY MUCH

The New England Fertilizer Company (NEFCO) is coming to Detroit.  It’s purpose will be to dispose of sewage sludge, sometimes called biosolids, generated by the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD).  

The same purpose brought Synagro Technologies, Inc. to Detroit in 2007 and Vista Disposal, Inc. in 1980, but the exposure of corruption in those two deals stopped them in their tracks.

Inability to properly dispose of sludge is what caused DWSD to dump the nutrient-rich sludge into the Detroit River.  The river carried it to Lake Erie, where nutrients like phosphorus fueled oxygen-sapping algae blooms.  

As a consequence, DWSD has been cited on a number of occasions for violations of the Clean Water Act.  The problem has been so intractable that federal and state intervention was necessary for 35 years.

NEFCO has been in business since 1986.  It operates facilities adjacent to wastewater treatment plants large and small around the country.  

Under a 20 year contract with DWSD for nearly $700 million, NEFCO will operate a plant it is to construct on Jefferson Ave., opposite DWSD’s principal wastewater facilities.  The plant is expected to be completed in 2016.   It will produce pellets suitable for fertilizer or burning as a source of energy.

The project is intended to replace DWSD’s obsolete incinerators.  Planners anticipate that NEFCO will dispose of approximately 300 of the average 500 (so called) dry tons of sludge produced by DWSD daily.  Most of the rest will go to landfills.