Flush

Here’s something to think about (or not) the next time you’re in the shower. You are paying approximately eight-tenths of one cent for every gallon of water that comes out of that shower head which is a fantastic deal when you consider the average price of bottled water in the United States is $1.22 a gallon. That’s right, bottled water is slightly more than 154 times more expensive than tap water. But also think about this while you’re in the shower: that water you’re paying for is only with you for a fleeting second. It comes out of the shower head, where most of it hits your body, bounces off and immediately flows right down the drain. Not only that, you’re paying another four tenths of a cent for each gallon of water that goes down the drain. In fact, your water bill is based on the assumption that the water that comes out of your kitchen or bathroom faucets, into your dish or clothes washer, or is used to flush your toilet is only there momentarily. Check it out: the number of gallons you are charged with using each month on your water bill identically matches the number of gallons listed for your sewer use.

Hey, somebody has to think about these things.

Somebody also has to think about what happens when that water that flowed through your life with all the speed of a lightning strike leaves your domicile. It flows through
a portion of the City’s 199 miles of sewer pipes, eventually winding up at the wastewater treatment plant located at the end of New Ridge Drive in East Kyle. According to the City’s website, the plant treats about 3 million gallons of wastewater per day and part of that treatment includes separating the solids found in that wastewater from the liquid. Under normal conditions, 3 million gallons of wastewater will produce around 33,000 gallons of solids. I’m not saying that’s the amount of solids produced daily at Kyle’s plant. That’s a general industry average.

Normally those solids are then sent to a biosolids management facility where bacteria is introduced to the solids that kill most of the disease organisms found in those solids. That process usually takes up to 60 days. This further reduces the volume of the solids and then those solids are pressed again to remove whatever water is left. The product you are left with at the completion of all that is known as sludge.

Which brings me to Item No. 12 on tonight’s City Council agenda which is an item to "approve a contract with SHERIDAN ENVIRONMENTAL DBA SHERIDAN CLEARWATER, LLC, and the City of Kyle for wet handling and disposal of biosolids from the wastewater treatment plant at a cost of $76 per wet ton, estimated annual cost of $350,000."

I had a bunch of questions about this item and received answers to some of them from the city’s staff. I was hoping to get the answers to the rest of them at tonight’s City Council meeting.

One of the questions is the typical Butch Cassidy one: Who are these guys? I Googled Sheridan Clearwater LLC and that search produced a comparatively small company (1 truck, two drivers) located on FM 973 in East Austin between the toll road and the Colorado River just south of Long Park. One of the questions I had was if this was the same Sheridan Clearwater LLC referenced in the agenda item. City spokesperson Kim Hilsenbeck confirmed it was but also wrote me that "Our Division Manager (for) Water Operations, Jason Biemer, does not know the size of the organization or number of vehicles it operates," a revelation I found somewhat dismaying.

I also wondered whether the City’s biosolids management facility was located at the wastewater treatment facility or someplace else. I didn’t get an answer to that question or exactly what stage in the sludge evolutionary process the city’s biosolids are in when they are hauled away from the wastewater treatment plant.

I also know that this sludge, when combined with composting, can produce soil that can be sold at a nice profit. I wondered whether Sheridan Clearwater LLC had the ability to do this and whether that profit could be applied to the price we are paying for the hauling company’s services. I got a possible partial answer to that question (see full quote in the next paragraph) when Hilsenbeck referred to Sheridan Clearwater’s facility as a "composting site." I received the rest of the answer following the Council meeting when Council Member Shane Arabie told me the $76 per wet ton rate was arrived at after computing the Kyle’s contribution into what Sheridan Clearwater sells.

Then there was a story on the front page of Monday’s Austin-American Statesman, the lead (or first paragraph) of which said "Austin’s sewage sludge might soon be headed to ranchland 70 miles southeast of the city, near the Colorado River, in eastern Fayette County." I have also queried the City of Austin to obtain an official reaction to its desire to take its sludge way out of town while Kyle is planning to dump its sludge inside the Austin City limits less than 1,500 feet from the Colorado River. However, somewhat on that very subject Hilsenbeck wrote me "We believe the composting site is also located at the above mentioned office location, which is where the sludge would go. The sludge is going to their permitted and approved facility. The Texas Commission for Environmental Quality is responsible for permitting those disposal facilities as well overseeing the operators of such a facility with regular inspections of the site and its records, therefore the location and the controls at that facility was approved by the state before it could go into business."

I also wondered how many sludge trips emanate on a monthly basis from Kyle’s wastewater treatment plant. Hilsenbeck replied: "The number of trips can vary considerably from month to month and week to week. It all depends on the amount of solids in the water stream coming into the plant during that time. In May, there were 22 trips out from the plant." Using that industry average I mentioned above, that would come to 45,000 gallons per trip. There’s a formula for converting these gallons to tons, but in order to execute that formula I need to learn the total solids content of the sludge being hauled. I was also hoping to get that answer, perhaps even tonight.

The reason why the total solids content is important is this: Would it be worth it for the City in the long run to invest in more sophisticated equipment that would further reduce the amount of water in that sludge and thus reduce the number of trips, reducing the costs to the taxpayer for this type of contract. I think these are questions worth asking.

So, I marched off to tonight’s City Council meeting hoping to get some clarification on all of this. And here are some of the things I learned.

1. What Sheridan Clearwater is being hired to haul away is not sludge; it is, as the agenda item aptly describes, untreated "biosolids from the wastewater treatment plant." The City doesn’t have its own biosolids management facility. So all that introduction of the bacteria as well as the final pressing takes place at the Sheridan facility in Austin. The question thus becomes when does it become economically feasible for Kyle to construct its own biosolids management facility and no one seemed to have the answer to that question but both City Manager Scott Sellers and Council Member Arabie told me the City is awaiting the results of a water/wastewater management study that should address that issue. Watch this space.

2. Technically, the Sheridan Clearwater facility, although it has an Austin address, is not located within the City of Austin. It is located in Austin’s ETJ on land under the jurisdiction of Travis County. And Austin’s locator places it in a completely different place than Google maps. Austin’s locator map has it south of Highway 71 near the northeast corner of the Austin Bergstrom Airport. It also worth noting that the location identified by Google is also in Austin’s ETJ, although a lot closer to the Colorado River.

3. The City did not Choose Sheridan Clearwater as its partner in this endeavor as much as it inherited it, a realization that made me even more concerned about Hilsenbeck’s statement that "Our Division Manager (for) Water Operations, Jason Biemer, does not know the size of the organization or number of vehicles it operates." The City purchased the water treatment plant from a company called Aqua Texas last year and it was Aqua Texas that first established this relationship with Sheridan Clearwater. This is merely a continuation of that same relationship.

4. Public Works Director Harper Wilder said the company hauls away about 14 tons per load, but that of course is untreated biosolids, not sludge. At $76 per ton, that comes to $1,064 cost to taxpayers per trip. Although Wilder confirmed the number of trips in May was 22, he said usually the city averages a trip each day. Averaging 22 trips per month would mean the total yearly cost of the contract would be in the neighborhood of $281,000, significantly less than the $350,000 annual cost specified in the budget item. However, a trip a day comes to $388,000, a tad above the specified amount.

5. The aforementioned Jason Biemer told the Council all this talk about tonnage was not entirely accurate anyway because only sludge can be measured in tons. Because what is being dealt with here is primarily liquids, using gallons is more appropriate and he said the City sends off between 50,000 and 60,000 gallons of this liquid daily to Sheridan’s biosolids management facility. There’s an industry accepted formula that’s used to convert those gallons into tons but it’s impossible to apply that formula without knowing the solids content of the material. Biemer claimed that what is shipped out is 15 percent solids which I find impossible to believe because, according to a recent study from Iowa State University, "Typical solids concentrations in raw primary sludge from settling municipal wastewater are 6%-8%." So there’s that.

At any rate, the Council unanimously approved the item just as it unanimously approved every single action item on tonight’s agenda during what turned out to be the second straight historically short Council meeting, this one clocking in at one hour and 28 minutes and that included a phenomenally short 17-minute executive session (which, in reality, is the length these sessions should be). The other items approved included:

• The appointment of Brandon Vasquez to the Library Board.
• The second reading of an ordinance to install four stop signs in the Amberwood subdivision.
• A service agreement to hire what I found to be a rather nondescript rock band called the Midnight River Choir to be the "headline" attraction at the Kyle Hogwash Festival Oct. 21-22. In my estimation, an old-time fiddler’s competition would have been more appropriate, but who am I to judge these things. You can have a listen to the Midnight River Choir yourself right here.
• In what had to be the easiest slam dunk of the night, the Council authorized the City’s Finance Director Perwez Moheet to save taxpayers $1.1 million in interest costs by refunding three series of outstanding Certificates of Obligations. I would have personally demanded impeachment proceedings against any council member who voted against this item.
• After debating who should own and maintain a public restroom (the Council decided it should be the Homeowners Association), it approved a development agreement for the development of a 126-acre subdivision on FM 150 that will be known as Cool Springs.