Soil & Mulch Producer News Jan/Feb 2011

January / February 2011

Vol. V No. 1

Serving Soil, Mulch, Compost, & Biofuel Professionals

NEWS

Attention Readers !

Are you looking for Products, Equipment or Services for your business? If so, please check out these leading companies advertised in this issue:

Bagging Systems Amadas Industries – pg 18 Hamer LLC – pg 8 Rethceif Packaging – pg 7

Compost Cover Compostex – pg 17 ClearSpan – pg 4

Compost Mixers & Spreaders Roto-Mix LLC – pg 11

Compost, Mulch & Wood Waste For Sale Giorgi Mushroom – pg 9 Litco International – pg 6

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IN-VESSEL COMPOST SYSTEM Farmer Automatic – pg 4

Mulch Coloring Equipment/ Colorants T.H. Glennon – pg 15

Plastic Removal System Airlift Separator – pg 15

Shredders, Grinders, Chippers & Screening Systems Allu Group Inc – pg 6 Doppstadt – pg 5 EarthSaver Equipment – pg 12 Hogzilla – pg 11 Morbark Inc. – pg 2 Peterson – pg 13 REMU – pg 20 (back cover) Screen Machine Industries – pg 10 Screen USA – pg 12 Universal Refiners Corp – pg 8 West Salem Machinery – pg 9 Wildcat/Vermeer – pg 19

Transport Trailers & MOVING FLOORS Hallco Industries – pg 7 Travis Trailers – pg 16

Products on display at Lane Forest Products customer pickup area. (Inset) Susan and Oren Posner, President and Vice-president of Lane Forest Products.

Posners in Fast Lane of Forest Products

O

By P.J. Heller

ren and Susan Posner make customer shopping at their business as easy as ordering a meal at a drive-thru eatery.

Pull into their Eugene. Ore., retail location, place an order from the comfort of your car, and within minutes an enthusiastic employee will have the order loaded and you’ll be on your way.

Instead of selling burgers and fries, the Posners have built a successful business that sells, among other things, landscape materials including bark, compost, soil amendments and fertilizers, as well as wood pellet fuel and firewood.

What started as a one-man firewood business in the early 1980s known as Lane Firewood Forest Products, has grown into a business that employs some 130 people and operates all but four days out of the year.

Today, Lane Forest Products — the word firewood has since been dropped from the name to better reflect its offerings — has a far-reaching impact.

“We’re a retail company, a commercial company, a wholesale company and an industrial company,” Posner notes. “We do all those things.

From selling products in a five-gallon bucket to shipping by rail car, we provide materials all around Oregon and around the western United States.”

Those not familiar with the Lane Forest name may still be using its landscape materials, which are sold wholesale to some of the largest and best-known garden product companies and then blended into their offerings that are sold on store shelves.

“If you’re in the central valley of California, Continued on page 3

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Soil & Mulch Producer News  January / February 2011

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PUBLICATION STAFF Publisher / Editor Rick Downing Contributing Editors / Writers P.J. Heller Production & Layout Barb Fontanelle Christine Pavelka Advertising Sales Rick Downing Subscription / Circulation Donna Downing Editorial, Circulation & Advertising Office 6075 Hopkins Road Mentor, OH 44060 Ph: 440-257-6453 Fax: 440-257-6459 Email: downassoc2@oh.rr.com For subscription information, please call 440-257-6453.

Soil & Mulch Producer News is published quarterly by Downing & A s s o c i a t e s. Re p r o d u c t i o n s or transmission of Soil & Mulch Producer News, in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher is prohibited.

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Mulch Producer NEWS

Posners in Fast Lane of Forest Products

Continued from page 1

you are almost certainly putting our product on your land,” Posner says. “From Alaska to Los Angeles, there’s a really good chance our material is in the gardening products that people are using.”

To serve the California market after the railroad said it would no longer supply gondola cars to shippers, Lane Forest purchased its own cars. That sort of can-do attitude has been a hallmark of the company since it was founded in the early 1980s.

When Lane Forest couldn’t find truck equipment for blowing bark mulch and other yard products, for example, it designed and built its own truck blower boxes. In 2001, the company sold the manufacturing rights to the blower boxes to Peterson Pacific Corp., a Eugene-based manufacturer of whole tree chippers and debarkers and horizontal grinders.

Peterson is now part of Aztec Industries.

A similar approach was taken when Posner wanted to eliminate plastic from green waste composting.

“We have a pretty pristine site here,” he notes. “Plastic is just a plague.”

To alleviate the problem, the company designed a vacuum-type system that helps remove plastic from the compost. “It was so effective that we developed a new entity Hawker Corporation to market the Airlift Separator equipment to other compost facilities around the country”.

“In this industry, because it’s a relatively young industry, you can’t necessarily go to the store and buy what you need,” Posner says.

“You have to make it yourself. You need to adapt.”

Adapting is just what the company has been doing since it was founded. It grew from a business supplying firewood to one that produces, sells and delivers landscape supplies, offers blower services for mulch, soil amendments, planting soils and river rock, and has, since 1993, been handling urban wood waste and composting green waste.

The urban wood waste is recycled and then sold to particle board and hardboard manufacturers, paper mills and to biofuel plants.

The company also provides “brown field remediation” services, cleaning up non-toxic mill sites. One of those remediation jobs involved a $2 million contract with Weyerhaeuser.

Lane Forest operates from an 18-acre retail/ recycling/composting site in Eugene (it leases another 10 acres there as well). It also has a five-acre retail/recycling site in Springfield, about 10 miles to the east; a 50-acre compost site in nearby Junction City to the north, and a 20-acre production facility for landscape materials and

Steam rolling off a mountain of mulch at Lane Forest Products. supplies in Lebanon, located about 35 miles north of Eugene.

The Lane Forest compost facilities feature large windrows which are turned weekly with an excavator, then screened as well as run under the airlift separator.

“I started off with a pickup truck and a chain saw,” Posner recalls of his early days, noting that the impetus for that firewood business was simply, “I needed to feed myself.”

“It just created its own kind of momentum,” he recalls of the firewood days.

Prior to that, he had worked painting houses on his own.

He credits much of the growth in sales over the last two decades to his wife and business partner Susan, who he married in the late 1980s.

With a background in sales and marketing management she soon had the business moving fast forward.

“Since then, I’ve just held on and tried to keep up with what she’s done,” Posner says.

“She has a real good instinct for what makes people want to buy something. She has a very keen sense of what it takes both visually, verbally and esthetically . . . not just the way it looks but the ‘feel’ of the place.”

Products developed by Lane Forest now include such catchy titles as “PlayAway Fiber,” which is a wood chip designed to be used under playground equipment; “Frugal Planting Soil,” composed of loam, sand and garden compost, and “Blended Mint Compost,” a combination of sawdust and bark, sand, composted mint straw, horse/steer/chicken manure and garden compost. Lane Forest also custom blends soil amendments for their customers.

Susan Posner is president of Lane Forest and also runs a small business development division within Lane Forest Products helping like companies with marketing and branding.

Oren Posner is Vice president of Lane Forest.

The company has built a loyal following Continued on page 10

January / February 2011 Soil & Mulch Producer News

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Will Other States Follow Florida’s Lead Repealing Yard Waste Landfill Ban?

T

By P.J. Heller

he lifting of a long-standing yard waste ban in Florida landfills could prompt other states to launch or revive similar legislative efforts, much to the consternation of the composting industry and environmental organizations.

“Composting of yard waste material is environmentally preferable to landfilling,” insists the Missouri Recycling Association. “The advantages of composting yard material are well-substantiated by research and form the basis for public policy across the United States. Recently, however, some landfill operators have advocated lifting yard material landfill bans in order to increase methane generation and boost energy production at landfills. We should be concerned the environmental consequences and costs of lifting yard waste landfill bans significantly outweigh any potential increase in energy recovery.”

The U.S. Composting Council, which boasts some 700 members including compost producers, regulators and consultants, also opposes any repeal of the yard waste bans.

“The U.S. Composting Council is firmly opposed to landfilling yard debris and other source-separated organics when viable alternatives are available,” the organization states in a position statement on Keeping Organics Out of Landfills. “It is an inefficient way to use our organic feedstocks — wasting resources, reducing recycling and potentially increasing greenhouse gas emissions. “. . . We need to keep the bans and other policies in place and not allow yard trimmings to end up in landfills, bioreactor or otherwise,” it says. “The path to a sustainable society may be long and difficult, but composting organics is clearly a step in the right direction.”

Repealing the yard waste bans “is not something that we feel is a good idea,” agrees Wayne H. Davis, co-founder of Harvest Power, a company that develops, builds and owns and operates state-of-the-art facilities that produce renewable energy and compost from discarded organic materials.

“Lifting the landfill yard waste ban would represent a step backwards in the fight to curb greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the dangerous implications of human-induced global warming,” the Missouri Recycling Association adds.

An estimated two dozen states currently have bans on yard wastes at landfills, many of which have been in place for more than 20 years and were designed to preserve dwindling landfill capacity, an approach that has proven successful.

Continued on page 6

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Mulch Producer NEWS Will Other States Follow Florida’s Lead Repealing Yard Waste Landfill Ban? Continued from page 4 “. . . States or counties with landfill bans receive significantly less yard waste on a per capita basis than those without bans,” notes the Delaware Solid Waste Authority.

Attempts as late as last year by some states, including Missouri, Georgia, Michigan and Iowa, to overturn the yard waste bans in an effort to support green energy production have been unsuccessful.

The yard waste bans have helped spur the growth of the composting industry.

Stuart Buckner, executive director of the U.S. Composting Council, reports compost production is up 4,200 percent — from about half a million tons in 1988 to about 21 million tons in 2008 — since bans went into effect on yard trimmings in landfills. At the same time, there has been a 538 percent increase in the number of composting facilities, from about 650 in 1988 to some 3,500 in 2010, he says.

Many compost facility owners feel that repealing the ban on yard waste disposal could force some composting companies to close.

“It would put us out of business,” says Tom Turner, owner of Spurt Industries, a commercial compost processing facility and wood waste recycler in Zeeland, Mich.

Driving the move to lift the bans appears to be coming from garbage haulers, who would benefit financially by increased tipping fees, and landfill operators with methane collection systems, who could mix the yard trimmings with solid waste to generate energy in the form of landfill (methane) gas.

“While one would think that recycling organics into methane for gas consumption would make some sense, the conversion ratios are highly inefficient and it doesn’t really make good economic sense to overturn

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Continued from previous page

the whole structure of a system that’s built to return organics to the environment in lieu of a rather wasteful gas collection process,” notes Bob LaGasse, executive director of the Mulch and Soil Council.

LaGasse’s position echoes that of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which supports landfill bans for yard trimmings and opposes adding organic wastes to landfills in an effort to create waste-to-energy facilities.

“There are documented inefficiencies in landfilling yard trimmings to generate methane for energy,” the agency said in opposing lifting the ban in Georgia. “EPA strongly supports landfill gas collection systems, but they do not capture 100 percent of the methane generated inside a landfill.”

The agency estimates that only 60 percent to 90 percent of the methane generated is captured, with the rest being released into the atmosphere. “. . . These gases have the potential to impact our environment today and in the future. The methane gas produced by landfills has over 20 times the greenhouse gas potential of carbon dioxide generated by composting,” it says.

Buckner of the Composting Council concurs.

“No matter whether it is a conventional dry tomb or bioreactor landfill and no matter how efficient a collection system may be installed, some amount of the methane produced is released to the atmosphere,” he says. “. . . Even if all landfills were required to install conventional gas collection systems, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the methane produced by organic wastes would be completely missed (emitted to the atmosphere) due to the lag time between waste deposition and onset of gas collection,” the Composting Council contends.

“On the other hand,” it says, “diverting organic wastes from landfills can be a highly effective practice for avoiding methane emissions in the first place. The most common alternatives to the landfilling of organic wastes include composting, use as a nutrient source on agricultural land, and use as a renewable energy source for waste-to-energy facilities. Emerging

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Will Other States Follow Florida’s Lead Repealing Yard Waste Landfill Ban? Continued from page 7 technologies such as anaerobic digestion, gasification, and production of cellulosic ethanol are also likely to create additional demand for organic resources. All of these processes either avoid significant methane production or produce methane under enclosed and highly-controlled conditions where methane collection efficiency is, by design, close to 100 percent.”

The Earth Engineering Center of Columbia University, however, disputes the data on emissions.

“Unfortunately, opponents to landfill disposal too often do not differentiate between those practices that are helpful and those that are detrimental from a climate-change perspective,” writes Patrick Sullivan in The Importance of Landfill Gas Capture and Utilization in the U.S. “When landfills are reviewed on a life-cycle basis, the negative comments from landfill opponents do not accurately portray the greenhouse gas emissions from landfills in the United States, and data are often misused to suggest that landfills are collecting far less of the landfill gas than actually is occurring nationwide,” he said. “Recently, these opponents have urged policy makers not to support measures aiming to increase landfill gas capture and recovery. The main argument is that increased landfill gas capture makes composting less attractive than landfilling.

“Some landfill opponents claim it is better environmentally to control landfill methane by keeping organics out of a landfill rather than installing methane control technology at the landfill,” he adds. “Proponents of this position want to have it both ways. They want to discredit landfills as being methane emitters; however when landfills are able to effectively control and reduce methane emissions and recover energy from it, the same proponents of organics waste diversion are reluctant to recognize these reductions because, from a greenhouse gas standpoint, it diminishes their arguments Continued on next page

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Soil & Mulch Producer News January / February 2011

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Continued from previous page

in favor of landfill waste diversion.

“Organics diversion, composting, and/or other waste management options, which are sometimes viewed as alternatives to landfills, are more properly considered as complementary waste management tools,” he says.

“All such practices must be judged on their own merits, including costeffectiveness, environmental impacts and operational efficiency, and not on the back of unfounded negative statements about landfills or other management options. Progress in lowering greenhouse gas emissions is best achieved by a concerted, integrated approach that employs all available technologies and methods, including reuse, recycling, composting, wasteto-energy, and landfilling with capture of landfill gas.”

In arguing against lifting the 15-year-old yard waste ban in Michigan, opponents such as the Resource Recovery and Recycling Authority of Southwest County argued that such a change would negatively impact the state’s economy and environment while having an insignificant impact on energy production. “. . . It is clear that all landfills should capture their methane and generate electricity from it when feasible and safe,” the authority said.

“However, this can be effectively done without allowing yard clippings to be landfilled and the negative consequences of circumventing existing waste management practices far outweigh the minimal benefits.”

The Michigan legislation would only improve the state’s electricity generating capacity by about one-tenth of one percent, opponents said, adding, “The trade-off for this insignificant change is a loss of Michigan jobs, increased costs to Michigan businesses and cities, and increased pollution.”

The Mid Michigan Waste Authority agreed.

“Simply landfilling the material is a step backward that kills jobs and creates an insignificant amount of energy, while being harmful to the environment at the same time,” it said.

In Florida, however, legislators voted to lift a ban, in effect for approximately 20 years, to allow yard wastes in landfills where methane gas was captured and burned to produce electricity. The measure was subsequently vetoed by then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist.

“Although the bill requires landfills to capture and make beneficial use of methane gas to qualify to accept yard trash, it directs materials to landfills that would otherwise be recycled,” Crist said in his veto message.

“I have not been presented with compelling reasons to abandon this longstanding state policy that provides an opportunity to reach our recycling goals.”

The veto was met with applause by the composting industry and others.

“Floridians have a proud history of protecting the environment and looking for ways to recycle organic materials,” noted Tom Kelley of Harvest Power. “The Florida Legislature committed a huge error in passing this legislation, but the organics recycling industry joined together to communicate the environmental and economic impacts of yard waste bans.

The good news, Gov. Crist did the right thing — he vetoed this bill.”

Crist, out of office after running unsuccessfully as an independent for the U.S. Senate, had his veto overturned following the November elections.

Seven other bills he had vetoed were also overridden by the Republicandominated Legislature.

Rule-making efforts in Florida, including yard wastes in landfills, have since been put on hold by newly elected Gov. Rick Scott. He issued an executive order directing all state agencies to suspend all rule making and created an Office of Fiscal Accountability and Regulatory Reform to review proposed and existing regulations.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is “working closely with the governor’s office and the newly formed Office of Fiscal Accountability and Regulatory Reform in carrying out the provisions outlined in the executive order regarding both rule making and contracts,” a department spokesman said.

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Posners in Fast Lane of Forest Products Continued from page 3

over its 30 years of operation. Posner says he has followed a simple business philosophy during that time, by providing the best price and best service.

“We take care of business,” he says. “We have good products at good prices. We’re here seven days a week. We make it very easy for you to order here. If we do something wrong, we make it right. We give people very little reason to not want to buy from us.”

The business closes on only four public holidays each year, “If we were closed more than that, people would start to get irritated,” Posner says, comparing the business to a utility company.

“We try to make it user-friendly for

everybody,” he adds. “We try to be open and be here for people.”

In addition to its longtime customers, Lane Forest has longtime and loyal employees, some of whom have been with the company for more than 20 years.

The Posners hesitate to describe themselves as environmentalists but it is clear that many of their business decisions are based on environmental factors.

“We’re business people but we choose to do our business in an environmentally friendly field and in an environmentally friendly way,” Posner explains. “We are very principled people.

We look at things, and we are very interested in whether they are right or wrong, appropriate or

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inappropriate.”

One area of growth, for example, involved a request to take their grinders into the woods to grind slash for biofuel plants.

Before agreeing to take on the project, they researched how much energy would be expended to grind the wood compared to the amount of energy that would eventually be generated. They found that overwhelmingly, more energy would be generated.

They also compared the amount of pollution that would be generated by burning slash in the woods — as was typically being done — versus the particulate emissions from a biofuel plant. Emissions from open burning would be 100 times greater than from a boiler, they discovered.

“So environmentally it’s beneficial,” Posner says of the wood grinding. “End of story. We still do it.”

As for what’s ahead for Lane Forest, Posner says there are plans to expand in the future. At the same time, he doesn’t sound like he’s in too much of a hurry to have it happen.

“There’s been, and there still are, opportunities for us to grow the business in a dramatic way out of the area and we’ve chosen not to do that so far,” he says. “There comes a point at which you decide what you want your life to be like and what you want your relationships with others to be like. And for me, I already have 130 employees and I don’t have as close a relationship with a lot of them as I would like to have or that I’ve had in the past.

“As you grow and start to have multiple locations, it becomes a different type of relationship, a different type of company,” he adds. “We could do that. It wouldn’t be hard to do. I don’t have to and so far I’ve chosen not to.”

As to the current success of the landscape products business, he has a ready answer.

“Everything just grew kind of organically,” he says, then adds quickly, “No pun intended.”

Photos courtesy of Lane Forest Products.

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First-ever US Anaerobic Biogas from Food Waste Facility Planned for Portland, Oregon

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ortland, OR–Columbia Biogas plans to build a facility in Portland, OR, that will be the first in the U.S. to use anaerobic digestion to turn commercial food waste into methane gas for electricity generation, reports oregonlive.com. Byproducts include a fiber soil additive, liquid fertilizer, fairly clean water and heat. The project would be a franchise approved by the Portland Metro Agency.

Company president John McKinney, an entrepreneur who has financed and managed renewable energy projects for several years, notes that the plant will use food waste that would otherwise be hauled long distances to a landfill. It will transform 194,000 tons of solid and liquid food waste from commercial and industrial sources annually, but no residential food waste or yard debris. Through a bacteriabased enclosed fermentation process, the plant will make about 5 kilowatts of electricity daily, the amount needed to power about 5,000 homes.

The plant will generate heat that can be used by nearby industrial uses as a form of “district heating” promoted by the city.

Columbia Biogas will charge restaurants, groceries and other food establishments less than other trash haulers to collect their food waste, which it can make up for by selling the electricity generated to the grid as well as selling fiber and liquid fertilizer. It hopes to soon have PacifiCorp as a client. The operation of the plant will reduce the amount of trash going to Metro transfer stations and the landfill, reducing revenues and slightly increasing residents’ costs.

Columbia Biogas will contract with Veolia Water North America-West, which operates 400 water and wastewater facilities under agreements with 265 municipal agencies, to operate the plant. Area businesses are backing the plan, as are the City of Portland and community groups. The Washington Environmental Quality Commission recommended approval during a hearing last month, and Metro officials called Columbia Biogas qualified, saying the proposal would not have a negative impact on the neighborhood.

But neighbors are concerned, due to early 1990s experience with a composting plant, Riedel Municipal Solid Waste Composting, that generated smells but nothing marketable. They fear noise, stench and added truck traffic.

McKinney notes many differences between the Riddle facility and the biogas plant: Riddle was an outside composting facility, with no workable odor control, while the biogas plant will be completely enclosed, with negative air pressure used to keep air inside, while biofilters clean any air exiting the facility.

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Urban Gardeners Should Watch for Lead Levels

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ndianapolis-Geochemist Gabriel Filippelli, Ph.D., professor of earth sciences at the School of Science at Indiana UniversityPurdue University Indianapolis, says, in the midst of an urban gardening renaissance, that urban soil may be contaminated with lead and warns gardeners to test soil before digging.

Surface contamination in urban settings is from harmful metals, especially lead, from automobile exhaust, degraded paint, tire and vehicle debris, industrial emissions or other technology. He encourages urban gardeners to determine potential soil contamination risk by proximity to major roads, dilapidated painted structures or older industrial facilities. High phosphate fertilizer can immobilize metals like lead in low risk areas. In medium risk areas, tested at 200-500 ppm, he says to cover the soil, plant in raised bed settings, and mulch between beds to reduce the risks of tracking soil onto the plots or into the home. For gardens with lead levels of over 500 ppm, he counsels proceeding with caution and concentrating on taller fruit plants rather then root vegetables and leafy greens like lettuce and kale.

Filippelli and School of Science students are analyzing lead levels in multiple soil samples from an initial 25 urban gardens to determine the level of concern. (Source: Sciencedaily.com)

Info Request #163

San Francisco Uses Educational Campaign to Boost Recycling and Composting Law

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an Francisco-San Francisco authorities are using a Chinatown restaurant as an example to boost a mandatory recycling and composting law, which went into effect last October for both residential and commercial establishments, reports sfappeal.com. The café owner said he has saved $18,000 a year by recycling materials and composting food scraps.

Officials said they hope an educational outreach effort, through multilingual mailings and doorstep visits, will convince residents and business owners that financial savings can go along with environmental conservation. The company also offers free services about how the program works and how to set it up, as well as training in English, Chinese, Spanish and other languages.

Recology SF, the city’s recycling company, discounts services based on the volume of materials being diverted to recycling and composting. Non-complying residents can be fined up to $100 and businesses up to $1,000, although no fines have been issued. The city has seen a 22% increase in recycling and composting since the ordinance went into effect. According to the city’s Department of the Environment, citizens divert 77% of their trash away from landfills through recycling and composting, the highest rate in the nation. The goal is 100% diversion by 2020.

Slaughterhouse Waste Composter Opposed by Neighbors

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Info Request #105 12 Soil & Mulch Producer News January / February 2011

amloops, BC, Canada – A $465,000 slaughterhouse waste composting facility near Salmon Arm, BC, Spa Hills Farm, is worrying neighbors concerned about smells and lowered property values, with 150 signing a petition to oppose it after a twoyear battle, reports kamloopsnews.com. It is ready to accept waste from regional facilities, and owner Jake Mitchell has all the approvals necessary to begin composting. Rick Adams, a regional manager at the Kamloops Ministry of Environment, said the Spa Farms facility falls under the Organic Matter Recycling Regulation so no government permit is needed.

But operators must meet the rules, and Adams said Spa Hills has been inspected, is compliant with regulations and is now registered. It will be inspected after it begins operation.

The completed facility is considered low to moderate risk and was built with nearly $200,000 of government money. Waste will be mixed with wood chips so bacteria can break down material and turn it into Class A compost that is safe for use on food.

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Peterson Introduces New Area Manager

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2011 Southeast Recycling Conference (SERC) Conference: March 6-9, 2011 Trade Show: March 6-8, 2011

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eterson Pacific Corp., an Oregon based manufacturer of forestry, recycling and landscaping machines has hired Steve Patton as the regional sales manager for California, Arizona, and Nevada.

Patton has extensive experience with industry associations, contractors and OEM equipment sales. Prior to joining Peterson, Patton had his own consulting firm advising clients on green waste recycling, biomass solutions, and training on best practices for the industry. Patton will be based in Modesto, California, and can be reached at 541-912-6805 or at steve.patton@petersoncorp.com Peterson specializes in the development and sales of delivery and processing equipment that turns low-grade organic materials into high value products.

EPA Cites Upstate New York Composting Plant

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INGSBURY, NY–The Environmental Protection Agency is citing a sewer sludge compost facility, Washington County Sewer District II composting plant, in Washington County, New York, for not meeting temperature guidelines necessary to reduce pathogens and fecal coliform in the compost, which is used by the public, according to the poststar.com. The EPA also said the facility did not comply with fecal coliform limits in samples collected from January 2007 to April 2010.

It is proposing a fine of $75,000. Aging equipment is partly to blame, but more problematic is the fact there were no records of where the failed product ended up. The composting agent is used by commercial landscapers, schools and individual homeowners.

Biosolids from area municipal waste water treatment plants in Kingsbury, Fort Edward, Hudson Falls, Lake George and Granville take 51 days to become compost for soil through heat and decomposition. To meet requirements, the compost has to stay at 131 Fahrenheit for three consecutive days and then reach another temperature for 14 consecutive days. The facility failed to meet the 131-degree requirement from October 2006 to September 2009, but complied with the 14-day temperature requirement from March 2006 through May 2010.

Washington County did not contest the penalty or violations, but it says it has had trouble marketing the product and the fine would be difficult for its budget, which allows $2.08 million in 2011 to run the Sewer District II and plant. The district is working with the EPA to reduce the fine.

Wood-to-Waste Moratorium Puts Evergreen Project in Jeopardy

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lympia, WA–A $14 million project at Evergreen State College is in jeopardy due to the Thurston County commissioners approving an emergency one-year moratorium on new woodwaste-to-energy projects in the county reports thenewstribune.com. The initiative will be decided February 7.

Five such projects are underway in the Olympic Peninsula, including a $250 million waste-burning power plant in Mason County, but Thurston County citizens are concerned about them saying that they are not truly sustainable and wasteful. The moratorium is expected to give commissioners time to study biomass energy issues, including air emissions from wood-burning and gasification plants.

Evergreen State College officials do not say how the moratorium will affect their project, which is partly funded by a deadline driven federal grant. The college expects to decide by mid-March whether to proceed with the project.

Meanwhile, the Olympic Regional Clean Air Agency staff engineers have recommended approval of a permit that governs air pollution from the Adage wood waste-burning power plant in Mason and recommended a 40-day public-comment period on the permit. The project would burn more than 600,000 tons of forest wood debris annually to generate enough electricity to power about 40,000 homes.

14 Soil & Mulch Producer News January / February 2011

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Commercial Food Waste Composting a Hit in Missouri

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t Louis Composting, Inc. in St. Louis, MO, is putting food waste to use with a new commercial food and organic composting program, aided by Washington University, Frito-Lay, the National Guard, Wal-Mart, and the Missouri Botanical Garden. According to perishablenews.com, the firm is now composting more than 100 tons of expired food and food processing by-products per week. Composting waste from restaurants, grocery stores and businesses, and supplying the compost to local farmers helps increase produce yields. Recyclables include fruits and vegetables, breads and cereal, dairy, coffee grounds, filters and tea bags, compostable service ware and even some soiled paper goods.

Jonathan Harley, facilities operation manager at Frito-Lay, says that the initiative reduces the company’s landfill waste. “Since partnering with St. Louis Composting, we have diverted more than 10,000 pounds of food waste from area landfills,” he says. Composting and other recycling programs reduced Frito-Lay’s landfill waste from 60% in 2009 to about 2% by year end 2010.”

“Composting our food scraps along with compostable service ware allows us to enlist nature’s process of decomposition to transform what was previously a landfill-bound waste product into usable nutrient rich soils,” said Deborah Frank, vice president, sustainability at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

St. Louis Composting is the largest composter in the St. Louis region and maintains a four-acre transfer station in Maryland Heights, Mo. and an additional composting and retail facility in the City of St. Louis. It also operates a 52-acre composting and retail facility in Belleville, IL. St. Louis Composting can turn food and organic waste in six months into all-natural Seal of Testing Assurance-certified compost.

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January / February 2011 Soil & Mulch Producer News 15

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Food Scrap Recycling on the Grow in California

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an Rafael­, CA–Marin Sanitary Service is considering rolling out a residential food scraps composting program this spring if local governments give it the necessary approval reports marinij.com. The program would offer a weekly collection of food scraps and green waste in San Rafael, Larkspur, Ross, San Anselmo and several other areas. A pilot program in Fairfax, Sleepy Hollow and a few other communities began last spring, and it has been very successful after a slow start.

Marin Sanitary Service must by law provide weekly service in food scrap pick up, although it now generally provides biweekly service. The added service increases rates an average 10.89%, so a San Rafael resident with a 32-gallon bin would see an increase from $24.95 to $26.83 per month if food composting is added. The company must double its truck fleet to 10 and hire four new drivers and a customer service representative to staff the pickup.

Marin Sanitary Service will compost the waste 90 miles away in a Zamora facility, of which it owns a quarter interest, as its Redwood Landfill can’t handle that number of food scraps. It hopes to start a commercial food scrap composting program in mid-2011 or early 2012, and that waste would go to the Central Marin Sanitation Agency.

Food scrap recycling in Marin is now done at Mill Valley, Tiburon, Corte Madera and Belvedere and in several special districts. Novato is considering the option. Encouraging home composting, using smaller trash cans and a tiered rate system are moves being made to encourage less waste.

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New Jersey Wood Recycler Faces Lawsuit for Odor Violations

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ersey City, NJ-Reliable Wood Products, LLC, is a nine-acre wood-chip processing plant that recycles wood waste into mulch and serves as the headquarters for the company, which operates 10 other processing facilities around New Jersey. According to jerseycityindependent.com, Reliable recycles up to 100 tons of leaves and wood each day at the Jersey City facility, aging it outdoors and sometimes dying it.

Residents of the neighborhood have been complaining about Reliable’s noxious odor since 2005, and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in 2009 fined Reliable more than $400,000 for air pollution and solid waste infractions that occurred between October 2004 and December 2007. It called for the recycler to modify its practices, including reducing material stored on site by 30%, placing a 20-foot cap on the height of mulch piles and forcing a 60-day limit on uncured material on site.

However, neighbors were still upset by the smell, so the city has filed a civil lawsuit in Hudson County Superior Court against Reliable on the basis that its odor constitutes a “public nuisance.” a theory of law that an industry or company cannot engage in activities that disrupt surrounding residents. The lawsuit hopes to force the company to decrease the size of their mulch piles and further change its dying process.

Reliable executive vice president Eugene Ciarkowski says Reliable serves the community by reducing organic material and wood waste in landfills, by providing jobs, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate taxes and creating useful product. He also says that the odor problems have not been verified by industry inspectors.

B u t t h e H u d s o n Re g i o n a l H e a l t h Commission, which is designated by DEP and contracted by Jersey City to document odor violations, has found 388 odor violations related to Reliable’s operations since January 2005.

The mere presence of an odor is not a violation unless it unreasonably interferes with someone’s enjoyment of life and property. Plus, the complaint process is cumbersome and involved, so not all odor situations get reported.

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If so, please complete the Equipment Locator Service form located between pages 10 & 11 and fax to 440-257-6459.

Info Request #162 16 Soil & Mulch Producer News January / February 2011

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Florida Biomass Efforts Will Take Time But Promise Results

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ainesville, FL-Alan Hodges, a University of Florida agriculture economist, says it will take years for the state to achieve its full potential in biomass, even though two-thirds of the state’s renewable energy generation comes through burning wood waste to boil water and producing steam to power turbines. This is even more potential for the Sunshine State than solar, he says, and can be a good thing for the state’s timber industry as a fuel source. Hodges says about 32 state power plants use biomass fuels, the majority in a cogeneration. Standalone biomass facilities include a 20-megawatt plant near Tallahassee and an 80-megawatt plant in West Bay. Hodges calls for a policy to boost renewable energy in the state by creating demand. Because the U.S. market for renewable energy has slowed down, due to the federal cap-and-trade legislation’s demise and EPA’s carbon emissions stalemate, the state must pursue renewable portfolio standards to mandate that utilities power 20% of their grid using renewable power by 2020. Gov. Charlie Crist proposed such legislation, but it failed to pass the House in 2008. The Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulatory agency, now requires non-municipal utilities to buy the cheapest source of electricity.

In the works are a $200 million Hamilton County biomass plant

by Adage LLC, a joint venture between Duke Energy Corp. and Areva Inc., which is working to land a contract with a utility, and American Renewables’ planned $500 million, 100-megawatt biomass plant. The facility is expected to be completed in late 2013, and Gainesville Regional Utilities says the 30-year contract is expected to receive state and federal approval by the end of the year. The utility expects to save between $212 million and $492 million on the energy market through the biomass contract if carbon emission regulation is passed.

Biomass Having a Hard Time in Ohio

Call Toll Free: 877-406-2398 Website: www.cvcompost.com Info Request #158

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olumbus, OH-Ohio companies had plans to burn wood instead of coal at nine of their power plants, but this began to turn around in November, when FirstEnergy determined it would be too costly to convert its Shadyside R.E. Burger coal-fired power station to a “biomass” plant, reports dispatch.com. Instead, Burger will operate only during peak hours. After that start, all of Ohio’s major utilities began to backpedal on eight other proposed biomass projects, which would have powered over a quarter million Ohio homes.

Duke Energy has backburnered three power stations along the Ohio River meant to meet a 2008 state mandate that power companies produce 12.5% of their electricity from advanced and renewable sources by 2025.

And Columbus-based American Electric Power says it will still conduct biomass tests at its Muskingum River plant but cannot find wood or plant fuel at a competitive price when compared to solar and wind power projects.

AEP supports wind and solar power projects but has also proposed burning biomass at Picway and Conesville.

The state supports the movement, with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency offering a permit for Dayton Power and Light to burn biomass at its Killen plant, though several issues, including “securing a consistent and reliable source of fuel,” need resolution. Only a proposed South Point Biomass Generation plant is moving ahead, with the company having wood-waste agreements with approximately 30 independent companies, local businesses and municipalities.

The latter is key. Environmental groups asked if wood could be found to fuel all the projects, saying the Burger plant by itself would have used more than 3 million tons of wood a year, double that produced by the 1.7 million tons the state logging industry makes each year. All of the projects combined would have used 351 square miles of cleared forest annually. The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel added that if wood was so in demand, power companies would have to pay more for it, under laws of supply and demand.

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January / February 2011 Soil & Mulch Producer News 17

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OEFFA Announces 32nd Annual Food & Farming Conference

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he Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association’s (OEFFA) 32nd annual conference, Inspiring Farms, Sustaining Communities, will take place February 19-20, 2011 in Granville, Ohio. OEFFA’s annual conference is Ohio’s largest organic/sustainable agriculture gathering.

This event will feature nationally recognized keynote speakers Joan Dye Gussow and Klaas and Mary-Howell Martens, over 70 workshops, a trade show, organic and locally-sourced meals, a kids’ conference, on-site childcare, and Saturday evening entertainment.

Conference registration is now open. To register or for more information about the conference, including maps, directions, workshops, speakers, and a schedule, go to http://www.oeffa.org/ conference2011.php or contact Renee Hunt at 614-421-2022 Ext. 205 or renee@oeffa.org.

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http://www.amadas.com Info Request #142 18 Soil & Mulch Producer News January / February 2011

Oregon Companies Receive Tax Credits to Create Green Jobs

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acific Northwest­-Ecotrust CDE, a forprofit subsidiary of the nonprofit Ecotrust that invests in forest businesses, has allocated more than $60 million in New Market Tax Credits to Northwest businesses creating green jobs in struggling lumber communities reports oregonlive.com. It believes that over 300 direct jobs and 500 indirect jobs will be created or saved. Congress recently renewed the New Markets Tax Credits at $3.5 billion a year for two years as a way to provide financing for opening businesses.

All investments go to areas that the U.S. Census Bureau has designated as economically distressed. The four businesses that received the tax credits are NewWood Corp., to reopen a plant in Elma, WA to make a plastic-wood composite from waste plastic and waste wood; Ochoco Lumber Co. to refinance debt, expand a sawmill and build a wood-fuel mill; ZeaChem Applied Technology to build a $40 million plant in Boardman to convert wood waste from a nearby poplar mill into ethyl acetate to produce products such as ethanol; and Garibaldi Forest Management, to acquire and restore Northwest forestland, remove invasive species and enhance habitat.

Worms Seen in Two South American Studies as Effective Hazmat Processors

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abudare, Venezuela-South American research is showing that earthworms can be used to process hazardous material containing high concentrations of heavy metal for the bioremediation of old industrial sites, landfill and other potentially hazardous areas. The International Journal of Global Environmental Issues article says that the common earthworm, Eisenia fetida, could play a role in decontamination, says Lué Merú Marcó Parra of the Universidad Centro Occidental Lisandro Alvarado in Cabudare, Venezuela.

Two feasibility studies showed that vermicompost was a successful adsorbent substrate for remediation of wastewater contaminated with the metals nickel, chromium, vanadium and lead. The second used earthworms directly for remediation of arsenic and mercury present in landfill soils and demonstrated an efficiency of 42 to 72% in approximately two weeks for arsenic removal and 7.5 to 30.2% for mercury removal in the same time period. (Source: Sciencedaily.com)

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Info Request #141 January / February 2011 Soil & Mulch Producer News 19

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Inside This Issue Posners in Fast Lane of Forest Products PAGE 1 Will Other States Follow Florida’s Lead Repealing Yard Waste Landfill Ban? PAGE 4 Urban Gardeners Should Watch for Lead Levels PAGE 12 Wood-to-Waste Moratorium Puts Evergreen Project in Jeopardy PAGE 14 Worms Seen in Two South American Studies as Effective Hazmat Processors PAGE 18

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