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ready ls aouwork q Local farming o on looks for f ti 1 i 1 By SCOTT HOWARD; Press Staff Writer One of the most basic services "ifs#just lik R a city can provide is getting rid ` of and processing its residents' aluminum Can, y0U waste. don't just to thro Now, we're not talking about it away an n, garbage that goes to the dump, „ we're talking about the stuff �,. ��It• washed down the drain and, y flushed down the toilet. �tll'b e.4 Cloreetcx' Each. dw. Tracy residents,,, businesses generate from E Y V i.. 1 to 60,000 gallons of lige e' Nand send to the Corral Hol waste. All of it flows into the Landfill. city Waste Water Treatment But after environmental st Plant in north Tracy. dards stiffened for landfills But for the past three years, 1987, the city found it could city officials have been working make its sludge "clean". on a way to recycle the waste to take to the dump. ' sediment, which ends up in the Since then, the city form of dried sludge after pro proved its method of tread F fix , { cessing. sludge and could take it to { Called the Sludge Manage- landfill_ However, with the ` ` ment Program,gr the city is work- sure of the landfill set for J' ing on a pilot program to take uary 1993, the city is looking its treated sludge and let a local a longterm solution that ave :.w farmer use it to fertilize and con just throwing it away, Ba dition about 800 acres of soil. said. "It's excellent as a soil So, sitting in chest-high piles " amendment," said John Baker, in the rear of the treatment city utilities city Utilities Department direc- plant property, are three years Director John tor. of dried sludge or about 6,000 to Baker (left) Baker explained that treated 9,000 cubic yards, Baker esti- holds a hand- sludge has excellent nitrogen mated. "ful of treated and phosphate content and other The sludge has been treated dried sewage organic materials that work well for the removal of any pathogens ; to revitalize tired soils after bar- — disease causing organisms — sludge. The ' vest primarily through a drying pro- City hopes to And, he added, it would be a cess at the plant's 16-acre use the shame to waste such good sludge-drying beds. Sludge as fer- sludge. The piles are not overwhelm tilizer. Above, 'It's just like an aluminum ing the property yet, but Baker sludge i S can, you don't just to throw it said it's just as well the city has dried by the away and not recycle it," Baker a plan to get rid of it as soon as ;.sun and wind said. it can. at Tracy But that's just what the city The city is waiting for final had been dein until about 1987. approvals from regional re ula Waste Water , g for agencies so it gan begin ak T r e a m e n t After running the treated y g sludge through an expensive ing the sludge to the property Plant. belt-press process to squeeze out around the city-owned New Je- -- Photosby as much water as possible, the rusalem Airport, located eight E nrique Gutierrez sludge was loaded into trucks (See SLUDGE, page A8)