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### Planners approve facility to burn sewage sludge BY JAMES BURGER , Californian staff writer jburger@bakersfield.com | Friday, Nov 12 2010 01:53 PM 

### Last Updated Friday, Nov 12 2010 01:53 PM Kern County planning commissioners appr oved a Kern County company's plan to burn the sewage sludge and green waste it currently uses to make comp ost, generating 13.5 megawatts of power. The project would add a power plant to the existing facility where Libert y Composting currently mixes sewage sludge and greenwaste to make a soil amendment. Commissioner Pete Belluomini said buffalo chips were used for power generation a long time ago. Now, it's just a little more complicated, he said. "This is recycling to make energy," Belluomini said. "I think this kind of fits the direction we're going." Commissioner Chris Babcock said the larg e amount of fly ash that will be a byproduct of the process needs to be recycled as part of concrete or on farmland. But he also supported the project. The power business, Liberty Energy, would be built next door to the composting facility on a spot about 10 miles northwest of Lost Hills. The two facilities would share the sa me "feedstock," around 700,000 tons a year of treated human and industrial waste and an additional amount of greenwaste. Leaders of the Liberty businesses acknowle dged that there is a lot of local sensitivity about the issue of sewage sludge, which is also called biosolids. "This project is involved in an em otional product -- biosolids. Kern Count y has been the hotbed of biosolids controversy for 14 years now," said Wilson Nolan, speaki ng for Liberty Energy. "We see this as an answer to Measure E. We feel this is a way of taking the biosolids off the land." Steve Ketler of Liberty Energy said the change in business model was dr iven by a new San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District regu lation that limits the size of outdoor composting facilities. The goal of the regulation is to reduce the release of vol atile organic compounds, a greenhous e gas, said air district spokeswoman Brenda Turner. With the San Joaquin Valley facing fines and other pe nalties for failing to meet federal pollution-reduction standards, "We've got to ge t reductions anywhere we can get them," Turner said. Ketler said the project would reduce VOC emi ssions from the project by 98 percent.

### The sewage sludge would be kept in s ealed silos and transferred through pipes into the combustion chambers of the three proposed turbine buildings. There, according to county reports, the sludge and greenwa ste would be heated to produce gases that would be burned to create steam, which would power an electrical power generator. Nolan said the company had the choice of making a large investment to build an enclosed composting facility that would consume a large amount of power -- or buildi ng a facility that woul d actually produce energy. Tom Frantz of the Association of Irr itated Residents was the only person w ho spoke out against the project. "You're going to allow them to bring more sewage sludge here ," Frantz said. "This is simply a disposal facility for biosolids."