In my part of the world we’re able to send most of our organic stuff through the green cycling program, where it ends up being made into compost. Cedar Grove contracts with the City of Seattle to do this service. As you might imagine, this requires huge, multiple facilities to handle all of the organic material that comes through the system. And it’s not difficult to imagine that problems arise, especially in choosing locations for these sites.
I don’t know anyone who would welcome a large composting facility next to their neighborhood, and I sympathize with people who were living downwind of where these facilities were constructed. (People who moved there afterwards should have known what they were getting into.) But even worse is putting a facility in an environmentally sensitive area – like on an island.
On one hand, it might seem the perfect solution – put the facility on an uninhabited island to keep mainland neighbors happy. On the other hand, it’s an ISLAND – runoff is going to be a problem. So if such a site is chosen, then the company should be required to manage runoff and keep it out of the water.
Thus, I was most severely vexed to hear that Cedar Grove has asked to be exempted from the rules regulating phosphorus runoff into the adjacent slough. Unlimited amounts of phosphorus. The facility routinely exceeds the legal limit of runoff of phosphorus and occasionally other nutrients set by the state Department of Ecology. Citations, fines, and out of court settlements are nothing new to this company.
According to their spokesperson, Cedar Grove "cannot find a treatment that would work" to manage phosphorus pollution and need a waiver from the requirements. Somehow this has become the public’s problem and we should just absolve Cedar Grove of any responsibility to be a good environmental steward.
I don’t know what bugs me more: the fact that this corporation did not design an adequate facility to contain the runoff before it began operations, or that whatever governmental agency approved their plan didn’t require it.
Shut ’em down.
This reminds one of the Chiquita, Dole, United Fruit, moving their bananas from Hawaii to Central America, refusing to obey Federal Laws about phosphates and such.
Why would give permits to any corporation that will pollute soon or later?
But, but, but, compost is ALL NATURAL and works WITHOUT fertilizers!?!?
Right?
I suppose I can understand CG underestimating what it would take to control their runoff issues–they’ve grown a bit since starting. But to assume that they’re so important that they should be able to dump whatever they want just because they’re a “green” business??? Ridiculous.
The area in the southwestern deserts where you visited this past wintertime are going through the same problems with these so-called Eco-Sollutions. Big corporate Solar & Wind Energy behemoths with under the table secret dirty deals for approvals well before the public hearings take place are now common place. They aren’t even pretending to do things properly anymore. Both Mojave Deserts and NOW Anza Borrego State Park are now cannon fodder for big corporate profiteering. NONE of these concepts being implimented down there are sustainable. Big Horn Sheep killing has now been given government approval to remove them from the massive areas where transmission lines and thousands of acreage needed for these windfarms. Recently they added an excuse clause which allows the windfarms a get-out-of-jail free card for killing Bald Eagles & Golden Eagles down around the Ocotillo, Palm Springs & Tehacapi areas.
One wonders if their Everett facility, which employs a type of Gore-Tex technology, I believe, is easily replaceable? It has a sophisticated aeration system under enormous covered piles cooking the debris to 160 degrees or so. Are there others clamoring for the contracts? Asking for unlimited phosphorus limits is alarming, but your breezy “Shut ’em down” doesn’t sound practical.
Perhaps they have outgrown their sites. Is large scale composting in a metro area realistic? Pacific Topsoils in the same vicinity has also been in trouble with Ecology. Do all those trucks heading in and out go somewhere else, driving greater distances? This isn’t going to have an easy or inexpensive answer.
Tia, if this was a Scott’s fertilizer plant, would you be so accepting of their consistent failure to manage runoff of phosphorus and other nutrients? I think shutting a facility down is a pretty effective way of getting a corporation’s attention. It might not be easy or inexpensive to fix, but that’s what’s happened to many industries as our regulations for clean water and air have gotten more stringent. Environmentally responsible companies adapt.
Scott’s no longer has phosporus in their turf fertilizer besides their seed starter. Environmentally responsible companies adapt is right.
If a tiny urban nursery like us can develop runoff control strategies and even install bio-berms between our grow-space and the urban sidewalks and gutters around it to make sure excess nutrients are not ending up in the San Francisco Bay… it seems to me that a large scale composting company with a government contract could too. Sure I have more control of input than they do, but it is not rocket science, it is amazing what a few berms, water channels with the proper plantings will do for dealing with runoff.
Seattle’s trash is trying to find a new home: PacifiClean wants to open the biggest garbage composting plant on the west coast in a rural area full wildlife next to the clear wild Yakima river in the Kittitas valley. It would be between Cle Elum and Ellensburg. The company has been courting Ellensburg promising jobs and money for schools. They assure most of these plants have no problems with neighbors but I have never heard where those plants are. Online I only find grossly stinky plants across our nation and in Canada! The garbage/compost plant neighbors will be little communities of people that bought property in the wilderness not in an industrial zone. Thank everyone sharing, for info I use to fight this distructive plant. I have lived by the water in the woods for about 40 years. Others I believe will be harmed that also live near the water here are otters, newts, salamanders, beavers, frogs, the salmon (they are trying to reintroduce), the gentle rubber boa snakes, and trout. Birds that travel along the water: eagles, ospreys, blue herons, ducks geese, and more. Other animals live in the area and go to drink from the river like elk, deer, rabbits and more. Pacificlean says there is no communities nearby! There are many people and much wildlife. We don’t want Seattle’s stinky trash in our country area along our beautiful river!!!!!!