Sewage plant turns muck into moolah

Plant removes phosphorus, produces commercial fertilizer

By STOVER E. HARGER III

Pamplin Media Group, Jul 9, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

JAIME VALDEZ / Pamplin Media Group

Ahren Britton co-invented technology that recovers phosphorus and other nutrients from wastewater and recycles them into commercial fertilizer.

A sewage plant in the tiny city of Durham was already honored as the nation’s best-operated and maintained wastewater treatment plant, by the Environmental Protection Agency back in 2005.

Now the Washington County plant is the first in the world to use a cutting-edge technology that recovers phosphorus from wastewater and recycles it into sellable fertilizer.

“You now have indispensably the best-operated and the best-functioning sewage treatment plant in North America,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent environmental lawyer who attended the facility’s June 10 unveiling.

Wastewater treatment companies struggle to remove phosphorus before releasing treated sewage into waterways, because it fosters algae blooms that cut oxygen levels and harm aquatic life. Phosphorus from sewage sludge is often incinerated or dumped in landfills.

With the new $2.5 million Pearl recovery facility in Durham, a city sandwiched between Tigard and Tualatin, the phosphorus will be turned into a slow-release pellet fertilizer sold to gardeners and nurseries around the country. It’s the first fullscale commercial operation in the world to use technology developed by Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc. of Vancouver, B.C.

The Durham Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility is operated by Clean Water Services, the Washington County sewage agency that serves 500,000 urban residents. The plant cleans more than 20 million gallons a day of wastewater that flows into the Tualatin River.

Many hope the Durham project will inspire wastewater treatment facilities around the country to follow in its path.

An EPA-commissioned study in 2004 estimated that the global supply of mined raw phosphorus ore – the most common way of acquiring the essential fertilizer ingredient – will be depleted in less than 250 years.

That’s one of many reasons why the new facility should be heralded, said Kennedy, who has sued many sewage plants, and also happens to sit on the Ostara board.

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