I’m hitting the ground early with my entry to the Most Boring Headline of 2017 Sweepstakes. Or hiding perhaps some gem of wisdom under a pile of dross and ordure. Anyway, as the sewage plant operator said, “It may be shit to you but it’s my bread and butter.” More on this later but first some general principles:

1) “Carbon release into atmosphere: BAD”; and its corollary: “Carbon Sequestration: Good.” I learned this on the SmartTrips website - dedicated as it is to getting people to drive less and walk/bike/carpool more to burn less gas and release less CO2 into the overheating atmosphere. And this leads to the second general principle:

2) As a society, we should reduce CO2 emissions and increase CO2 sequestration. Reduce our carbon footprint, in other words. I break this almost daily as I drive a car - it’s hard to defeat a systematic requirement - but I do plant a lot of trees, and look for other opportunities to sequester carbon (composting, e.g.) rather than releasing it into the atmosphere (by burning a burn pile, e.g.). The general principle is:

3) Where there is a choice, carbon footprint of the alternatives should be a major decision factor. The City of Bellingham already incorporates this onto its decision matrix on sewage sludge options:

“Evaluation Considers Multiple Objectives

-Economic, Environmental, Social, and Operational

With “Environmental” described as “Environmentally Responsible - meet air permit requirements, manage carbon footprint, and recover green energy.” Who can argue with that eminently sensible approach? Which is why it saddens me to to report that when it last came up, the city chose the highest carbon footprint solution, which is to incinerate the sewage sludge. I recommend you check out the presentation, which presents in some detail (while still accessible to a general audience) the options for dealing with sewage sludge. Here’s a key table which summarizes the meat of the decision:

Life Cycle Costs, Carbon Footprint, and Space Footprint

Anaerobic Digestion : $32M cap/$1.1M p.a. -1,500 22,000

Drying $38M cap/$1.3M p.a. 650 24,000

Gasification $36M cap/$1.3M p.a 2,100 5,500

Fluidized Bed Incin. $32M cap/$1.1M p.a. 700 3,500

(from Page 13 of the presentation)

The city chose to continue to incinerate, which was the least-cost approach, but had the worst carbon footprint. From a carbon footprint perspective, it would be better to send the sludge to a landfill. At least there, anaerobic decomposition would take place over the eons. From a purely practical perspective, in terms of extracting value, it would be better to use the sludge to fertilize forestry lands. I do not think the city considered either alternative. But either would be better than what we are doing right now. You know, cleansing the icky poo with fire.