Squeezing out excess water from dead bugs is helping save Manteca ratepayers $480 a day.
It is the end result of a state-of-the-art bio-solids dewatering facility at the wastewater treatment plant that is saving the city $175,200 a year. That translates into a cost avoidance of $7.01 per year for the city’s roughly 25,000 sewer customers and avoids the equivalent of 59 cents per month increase in city utility bills.
The city has gone two years without rate increases for sewer service due to staff inspired innovations as well as employee groups agreeing to reduce compensation.
The dead bugs are spent bacterial organisms that are essential to the breakdown of food and waste material in wastewater and converting them into carbon dioxide, more bacterial organisms, and water.
Manteca now on a typical day creates 15 tons of dead bugs or sludge that has to be land-filled. Without the new process, the tonnage would be significantly higher and would cost $870 to landfill as opposed to the $390 a day the city now pays.
The city is working on a plan that ultimately would wipe out the landfill fees and save the city $142,350 upfront. It involves combining sludge with collected green waste to produce fertilizer that the city would use for parks and landscape maintenance districts. That could result in overall savings in excess of $200,000 a year if not more.
The city is also looking at a solar farm at the treatment plant and a cogeneration plant to harness methane gas in a bid to wipe out most of the $1.2 million annual electrical bill to run the treatment plant.
It is the end result of a state-of-the-art bio-solids dewatering facility at the wastewater treatment plant that is saving the city $175,200 a year. That translates into a cost avoidance of $7.01 per year for the city’s roughly 25,000 sewer customers and avoids the equivalent of 59 cents per month increase in city utility bills.
The city has gone two years without rate increases for sewer service due to staff inspired innovations as well as employee groups agreeing to reduce compensation.
The dead bugs are spent bacterial organisms that are essential to the breakdown of food and waste material in wastewater and converting them into carbon dioxide, more bacterial organisms, and water.
Manteca now on a typical day creates 15 tons of dead bugs or sludge that has to be land-filled. Without the new process, the tonnage would be significantly higher and would cost $870 to landfill as opposed to the $390 a day the city now pays.
The city is working on a plan that ultimately would wipe out the landfill fees and save the city $142,350 upfront. It involves combining sludge with collected green waste to produce fertilizer that the city would use for parks and landscape maintenance districts. That could result in overall savings in excess of $200,000 a year if not more.
The city is also looking at a solar farm at the treatment plant and a cogeneration plant to harness methane gas in a bid to wipe out most of the $1.2 million annual electrical bill to run the treatment plant.
