New Uses for Sludge Earn Award From EPA
Nearly two years after Los Angeles was ordered to stop dumping its sludge into the ocean, Mayor Tom Bradley accepted an Environmental Protection Agency award Friday for finding a beneficial use for 85% of the sewer by-product.
Among the new uses found for the 1,500 tons of solid material extracted from the city’s sewage each day is injecting the sludge underground for use as fertilizer in desert areas outside Yuma, Ariz., and in Los Angeles and Riverside counties.
EPA spokesman John Walker presented Bradley with a plaque during a City Hall news conference, where he praised Los Angeles for going beyond the federal court consent decree in which the city agreed to stop dumping sludge into Santa Monica Bay by Dec. 31, 1987.
“The city’s highly environmentally responsible actions have resulted in the capture and beneficial use of 50 tractor-trailer loads per day of sludge, which just over a little while ago was disposed in the ocean,” said Walker, an EPA scientist.
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