Brian Mittge, The Chronicle, 1/13/2001, The Chronicle
When all is said and done, at least one aspect of regional wastewater treatment appears likely to happen.
"Centralia's new facility plans call for state-of-the-art biosolid treatment capabilities, and Chehalis is eying that potential for class A biosolids."
"It may make a whole lot of sense to combine our operations in dealing with sludge byproducts, or biosolids," said Chehalis City Manager Dave Campbell.
"That is certainly an opportunity for the two communities to work together in the future on a consolidated regional basis", he said.
Both cities produce class B biosolids, which are hauled periodically to farmers in Eastern Washington at a cost to the cities of around $31 per ton.
Centralias Jim Fleming said his city's 265 dry metric tons of class B biosolids are enough to fertilize 18 acres of dryland wheat.
Class A biosolids, which Centralia's new facility will be able to produce, are much more valuable and easily disposable. People will buy the class A biosolids, rather than charging for them, as they do now.
Like biosolids, treated wastewater can be either an inconvenient item needing costly disposal or a valuable commodity.
Chehalis sees it as both.
"Wastewater, whatever we do with it, might become more and more of a resource, rather than a detriment", mused Campbell.
This is a resource the city is unwilling to pipe down to its neighbor, especially at an estimated cost of $25 million.
"As agricultural and industrial water rights become difficult to keep and even harder to acquire, highly treated wastewater could be useful in industry or elsewhere," Campbell said.
Possible uses include growing poplars and cottonwoods, which is the citys current plan to dispose of the water during the hot summer months, when no river discharge is allowed.
Campbell cites the possibility of industrial clients, such as Tractebel Powers proposed natural gas power plant, using the citys water.
"Chehalis Power could have used more (treated wastewater) than we could have supplied," Campbell said.
Tractebel, corporate owner of Chehalis Power, originally agreed to use 3 million gallons of treated Chehalis city wastewater, but recently dropped that plan and will now use around 200,000 gallons of regular city water in its operations.
Campbell also suggested the possibility of using the treated wastewater on a local golf course, with the possibility of retiring the water rights currently used to water the facility. He said this is only a possible use, and that the city hasnt spoken with any golf courses about the idea.
"We'd like to retain as much flexibility as possible in our future wastewater discharge. It appears, not only from a cost standpoint, that it would be best to keep our discharge point here," Campbell summarized.
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Brian Mittge covers municipal government for The Chronicle. He may be reached by e-mail at bmittge@chronline.com, or by telephoning 807-8237.
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