At Thursday’s regular meeting for the board of the Monroe County solid waste management district (MCSWMD), county commissioners Penny Githens and Julie Thomas raised concerns about the way that a waste-to-energy feasibility study has been approached so far.
An agreement to share the study’s $129,220 cost between MCSWMD and the city of Bloomington utilities (CBU) was adopted in the first part of 2022.
The study is being done by Energy Power Partners, and is supposed to be complete by the end of January or sometime in February, based on discussion at Thursday’s meeting.
EPP’s work is supposed to cover scenarios involving the generation of biogas by using anaerobic digestion of primary sludge from the Blucher Poole wastewater treatment plan, adding FOG (fats, oil and grease) and food waste as feedstock from various large waste generators, and the workability of private-sector partnerships for construction, operations and maintenance—among other possibilities.
But at Thursday’s meeting, Githens read aloud a statement that sketches out a number of objections, including the fact that the focus of the study has shifted from CBU’s Blucher Poole wastewater treatment plant to the Dillman Road facility. Continue reading “Potential sludge now stirring for city-county cost sharing on waste-to-energy feasibility study”
