Supervisors’ Plan Aims to Solve Sewage Sludge Disposal Crisis

San Diego County is in desperate need of sites other than the Otay Landfill for dumping sludge--the product left over after water is removed from raw sewage at treatment plants--Supervisor Brian Bilbray said Tuesday.

Disposers of sludge should be assessed a surcharge and the funds raised should be used to find and equip additional sites for dumping sludge, Bilbray proposed.

At Bilbray’s request, the Board of Supervisors agreed to a plan aimed at relieving the burden on the Otay Landfill as the county’s only dump able to accept sewage sludge.

The board voted 4-0, with Susan Golding absent, to order Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey to return by Jan. 13 with a report on Bilbray’s proposal.

Hickey was asked to:

- Determine what would be needed for all municipal landfills to accept sludge, including permit requirements, physical changes in the landfills and the cost of providing systems to handle the sludge.

- Develop a fee schedule for a surcharge on agencies dumping sludge at Otay.

- Notify the sewer agencies now disposing sludge at Otay of the need to find new disposal sites in North County.

- Alert the Regional Water Quality Control Board of the need for quick processing of permits for sludge disposal sites.

- Require periodic testing of all sewage sludge dumped at Otay to ensure that none of the material contains hazardous waste.

- Temporarily refuse new requests for sludge disposal at Otay because the dump is now taking all the sludge it can handle.

- Set a date at which all sludge will be turned away from Otay except that which the landfill is able to use as part of its operation.

Bilbray said his plan was prompted by a recent request from the Encina sewage plant in Carlsbad to deliver an average of 40 tons of sludge daily to the Otay Landfill. Although the county has refused to accept the sludge, approval is expected to be granted as soon as county officials are shown that the material lacks hazardous waste.

Once that sludge begins arriving at Otay, the landfill will be accepting all it can, since state regulations require that a certain amount of solid waste be mixed with each gallon of water content in the sludge.

“Everyone has said the people of North County and East County and South County do not want to have to use the Otay Landfill for the disposal of their sludge,” Bilbray said. “But because there isn’t another legal facility in the entire county, they and we continue to look to Otay for that as the only option.”