The End Game

Pumpers grapple with diminishing options for liquid waste disposal

With increasing regulation in many states, pumpers’ options for septage disposal are on the decline. It used to be if you had a farmer friend, you could just land-apply and be done with it. But outbreaks of E. coli and other bacterial infestations have brought greater public awareness to the dangers of surface application. Similar restrictions are occurring with permits for subsurface injection, irrigation and landfilling.

For the average pumper, that leaves public or private treatment plant disposal among the dwindling disposal options. The bad news is that the law of supply and demand is driving tipping fees up, and many plants are now at or rapidly approaching capacity.

What’s a pumping professional to do? These operators share their strategies for handling waste disposal in an increasingly unfriendly regulatory environment.

Pauline Dube took over Pat Jackson Inc. three years ago after losing her husband, Eugene Dube. About a dozen years earlier, he had built a private treatment facility at their location. “He saw what was coming,” she recalls, “and got us started by installing some belt presses. These are used to process both septic tank and grease trap waste. Then, probably about eight years ago, he decided to add a dewatering box. It’s more cost-efficient than a simple screening process.”

The effluent from the dewatering process is sent through the company’s pump station to the City of Augusta. It is allowed to enter the public collection system as long as the company maintains an acceptable concentration of oxygen demanding pollutants, or BODs. Such monitoring is part of Jackson’s treatment process. Sludge is removed to a sludge pad that drains into a pad tank. The drained sludge is then put through a Green Mountain Technologies (www.compostingtechnology.com) CompTainer composting box.

“We add wood shavings and ‘cook’ it, then sell the resulting compost as a fertilizer product. I just put that into gear last year, and the product is really good. We have landscapers that get more than 60 yards at a time. I promote it by doing postcard mailings to all the surrounding landscape contractors.”

Dube says she has a land application permit, but prefers to make the waste into a saleable product. It’s a smart move that has turned a liability into a revenue stream she estimates now makes up between 5-10 percent of annual billings.

“Now it’s coming full cycle and more people are actually calling us to buy the compost.” She expects this trend will only grow with the new “green” movement, as more people become aware of the advantages of organic fertilizer.

Dube is thankful for her husband’s vision in installing the treatment equipment. Prices for plant disposal were getting out of hand at the time, or loads were being turned away due to over-capacity issues. With the in-house treatment option, Dube knows what to expect and therefore has a much better handle on realistic expectations for profitability.

Bob Lonier is semi-retired and not looking to grow, so he can live with his current disposal options. His choices for dumping septage loads include using a lagoon in Vance, Ala., and another lagoon at the municipal treatment plant in Brent, Ala.

For grease trap waste, Lonier offloads at the Tuscaloosa treatment plant, which has the necessary equipment to handle fats, oils and grease, or FOG. But he allows that pumpers either just getting started or in the middle of their careers might have some concerns about limited options and increasing fees.

Lonier has a three-hour, one-way trip to the Vance plant, and almost that long to Brent. Tuscaloosa is even farther, so any of these roundtrips eats up nearly a whole workday. This situation might be difficult for a busier and more heavily staffed company to operate profitably, since the need for billable hours would constantly be at odds with the need to make disposal runs.

Located in far southwestern Michigan, Burr Oak Septic has moved from strictly land-applying septage to also beginning to dump at public treatment facilities at Coldwater and Three Rivers.

“After this summer, it’s all going to the treatment plant,” explains Matt Wirtz. “They’ve told us they’re not going to renew our (land application) permit.”

The couple believes they’ll be OK for the time being, but worry about the plants maintaining sufficient capacity for the many pumpers forced into mandatory municipal disposal. “There’s no other choice,” he says. “They won’t allow us (pumpers who might want to build private systems) to build any new plants. Applications (to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality) had to be in before a certain date for them to be grandfathered in, and now it’s too late.”

Sarah Wirtz says capacity might not be the only issue at the treatment plants. “If the treatment plant breaks down, then they have to turn people away. That has happened. They might get shut down for a day, then we just can’t do any more jobs until we can offload.”

She says customers have been understanding when they had to reschedule pump-outs due to the shutdowns, because it’s only happened once or twice since they’ve been operating. But she wonders what will happen when there are a lot more loads coming in from other pumpers and plant capacity remains the same.

Right now, Matt Wirtz says, they’re just thankful they have two plant options, since chances are remote that both plants would be shut down at the same time.



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