Crested Butte turning waste into compost

Two towns start new
program turning brown into green

There are a lot of people in the upper valley these days. Believe it or not, every single one of them produces biological waste. In other words, they all poop. Turning the hundreds of thousands of pounds of waste into something productive is the goal of a new program being conducted at the Crested Butte wastewater treatment plant. Think about literally turning crap into black gold that can help the local citizens do things like grow food and replenish soils.

The town of Crested Butte, in partnership with the Mt. Crested Butte Water and Sanitation District, is moving into the composting business.
“Mt Crested Butte and the town of Crested Butte produce about one million wet pounds of wastewater solids per year,” explained Crested Butte Wastewater System supervisor Shea Earley. “The idea is to end up with a nutrient-rich soil that is safe for human contact and is referred to as compost. We expect to eventually produce approximately 400 to 1,000 cubic yards of compost per year.”
The two town’s wastewater facilities will treat the wastewater generated from the community through a biological process called activated sludge. A byproduct of that process is wastewater solids, which are then mixed with woodchips to start the composting process.
“It is a biological process of decomposition in which microorganisms break down organic matter at high temperatures,” Earley said. “In this case, we use wood chips and the wastewater solids. The wastewater solids and woodchips are mixed together and piled in the form of a windrow that is 30 feet long by 16 feet wide and seven feet high. The decomposition process is what generates the heat in the pile, and, in turn, brings the internal temperatures of the windrow up to as high as 160 degrees Fahrenheit. This increase in temperature is what destroys pathogens. We are still getting the process dialed in, however; we expect that the entire process will take about two to three months and will take place both indoors and outdoors.”
It used to be that the sludge product produced after treatment would be transported to the Gunnison County landfill, but that turned out to be expensive, and in the minds of the local public works personnel, it was wasteful.
“We are trying to beneficially reuse wastewater solids, which is an inevitable byproduct of the wastewater treatment process,” Early explained. “We want to try to save the ratepayers money by reducing the costs of the handling of our wastewater solids. We want to reduce the amount of waste to the landfill, which was coming in at about one million pounds of wastewater solids per year. And that in turn will reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. This also allows us to use portions of the ATAD [Autothermal Thermophilic Aerobic Digestion] facility that have not been used since the deactivation of the ATAD process 12 years ago in 2002.”
The crew is still in the initial pilot phase of the program. The three-member crew is about 40 days into the first project. Once it is successful, the compost will be stored at the wastewater treatment facility. “Since we are in the pilot phase of the project, we still have not yet figured out all of the distribution details,” Earley said. “However, we know that we would like to sell the compost to the community once we go full-scale.”
Officials at the Crested Butte Wastewater System are hoping that full-scale system will be on track by next spring. There has been no determination about how to distribute the compost or what price to charge.
“Once the project gets on its feet, we would like to start accepting other forms of organic waste,” said Earley. “This could turn out to be a great project that benefits everyone up here.”