City to Buy Farm for Sludge Disposal
The city’s plan to make cash out of trash moved forward Tuesday when officials approved the purchase of 1,150 acres of farmland in Kern County to grow crops fertilized by Oxnard’s sewer sludge.
The Oxnard City Council passed the $1.38-million land purchase and project unanimously. Under an eight-year partnership deal, Oxnard will pay USA Transport Inc., a Springville-based trucking company, to ship the sludge to the farm near Wasco, where it will fertilize non-human consumption crops such as feed corn, cotton and alfalfa.
USA Transport will truck the sludge and run the farm, but the city and the company will share the profits from agriculture evenly once Oxnard starts recouping its investment.
Oxnard hopes to save more than $136,000 annually by sending all the byproducts from its waste-water treatment plant to the farm at a cost of $23.50 per ton. The city now sends its sludge to the Simi Valley Landfill and a sludge recycling project in Buttonwillow, where the city does not earn agricultural revenues.
According to Mark Norris, Oxnard’s waste-water superintendent, the city hopes to gross $150,000 to $350,000 a year from the farm by selling the crops, including corn and barley silage, to markets such as large dairies.
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