Poised For Pre-treatment

Disposal regulation and rising costs at the treatment plant are forcing pumpers to look at their own dewatering operations

Pumpers everywhere are watching developments in disposal with a keen eye. Even those utilizing land application are wondering how long that mode of disposal will remain a valid, legal option. Others are already struggling under the pressures of dwindling land application opportunities and/or limited treatment facility volumes. Still others have no volume restrictions, but are plagued with higher costs at the treatment facility. And everyone has to deal with rising costs in time and labor to transport to their disposal sites.

Many have decided to get out in front of the disposal issue. They want the versatility to make decisions while they still have time and aren’t under the gun. These pumpers have instituted some sort of pre-treatment process — usually dewatering — for their septage. This either lessens the volume they must pay to haul and have treated, or balances treatment costs by creating a new revenue stream for the cake as a fertilizer product. We caught up with several contractors at the 2010 Pumper & Cleaner Environmental Expo, and here’s what they have to say on the subject:

Weaver’s Level Best Septic & Excavation owner, Steven Weaver, was intently shopping on the Expo’s exhibit floor. “We’re looking at the dewatering systems that are available at the moment to handle grease trap waste from our restaurant customers,” he said. “Right now, we’re having to truck it all out about 300 to 400 miles. We’re trying to come up with the alternative method.” His primary motivation is meeting state and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disposal requirements.

Weaver’s territory is in south-central Colorado, on the eastern edge of the Rio Grande National Forest. It’s fairly rural, and none of his competitors are doing any kind of pre-treatment. “Everybody’s either shipping out or land-applying everything they’ve got,” he says. “We’re in a large agricultural area, so it works out for everyone to land-apply septage, but we need some way to take care of the grease trap waste.

Regulations say if you compost it you can land-apply, but they really want you to put it in a landfill.”

Weaver is taking the long view in his search for a dewatering solution, doing his homework on potential pre-treatment systems. “What we’re trying to do is get something that’s going to be universal so if we have to start dewatering septage, we can.”

During the summer months, Sandhills Septic land-applies septage on nearby farms. It dumps waste at municipal public lagoons during the rest of the year. “I think the Feds are going to stop us from land-applying and push dewatering on us,” company co-owner Gary Thompson says. He believes that within 10 years, land application will be outlawed in his area, forcing pumpers to dewater and then truck the cake to landfills.

The trip to the lagoon can be up to a two-hour drive one way from the pumping site, so Thompson is interested in keeping those trips to a minimum. Despite the recent plateau in rising fuel costs, he knows the trend will continue upward in the long run.

With these two realities in mind, Thompson is thinking about setting up for dewatering at his yard. He’s not taking immediate steps to purchase a system, but the technology is on his radar, and he’s paying attention to how it develops. He thinks he’ll start out slowly when he does buy a system, perhaps with a small dewatering container. After that, regulations and business volume will determine how his dewatering effort develops.

Bill Artamenko already does dewatering in his septic pumping business, Envirotech LLC. “We started dewatering in 1995 — because our municipalities went from 7 cents to 12 cents per gallon for treatment at their facilities. So I needed to do something.” He didn’t see profitability in purchasing a dewatering system solely for his own use, and decided to find someone who also needed the service. This way, he could make the equipment pay for itself quicker.

He learned that to his north, Placer County’s wastewater management officials were looking for a company that could dewater septage that was creating too much of a load on their treatment plant. He approached them about becoming a customer if he were to offer dewatering services. “They were just about ready to start getting fined by the EPA, and weren’t able to take on any more volume. They were in dire need of someone to help, so they were very happy to see me.”

Artamenko did some research on the Web, located a manufacturer, and purchased a dewatering system. He made the deal with Placer County and went into the pre-treatment business. Now, dewatering has become a huge part of what he does, to the point where the company now designs and builds its own dewatering boxes and constantly experiments with new screening materials to increase productivity and efficiency.

He allowed the septic pumping side of the business to level out and built the dewatering side. Envirotech now serves about 15 pumping contractors with dewatering services, which bring in about the same level of income as the pumping services. The company continues to grow, which Artamenko credits to his decision to enter the dewatering business.



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