Program to Use Sludge for Local Fertilizer Begins
Opening a new chapter in waste disposal practices, the city of Los Angeles on Monday began trucking up to 100 tons a day of thick, black municipal sewage sludge to the distant Antelope Valley for reuse as farm fertilizer.
The program, nearly two years in development, marks the first time the city has made such use of its sewage sludge within Los Angeles County. Since 1987, when the city was banned from dumping the waste into Santa Monica Bay, the mud-like sludge has been trucked to barren areas of Arizona to be used as fertilizer or cover at BKK Landfill in West Covina.
The first three 25-ton truckloads of the waste made the 90-mile trip without incident from the city’s Hyperion sewage treatment plant in El Segundo to a remote farm about 10 miles west of Lancaster.
The Antelope Valley program is part of the city’s efforts to find closer and cheaper disposal sites for some of the 1,350 tons of sludge produced daily.
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