OT begins leachate pilot study for Red Shield

December 21, 2006
By Greta Sproul

             The first three deliveries of leachate from the Juniper Ridge landfill arrived at the Old Town wastewater treatment plant last Wednesday. The deliveries were the initial step in an eight-week pilot plan that will determine whether the plant can continue to treat the leachate for Red Shield, the new owners of the former Georgia-Pacific mill.

“The agreement allows them to send three trucks the first week, six trucks the second week, and six trucks the third week,” Gary Stetson, plant superintendent said. “We’ll be taking Christmas off, and then we’ll be accepting six to eight trucks for the last two weeks (of the study).”

As part of the pilot study, samples of leachate will be taken from two trucks each week. The trucks will be selected at random and Red Shield will not be notified before the sampling is done.

Red Shield is paying for the study, which will follow a civil engineering proposal from the Topsha-based company, Wright Pierce Engineering. The cost for the study is not to exceed $38,000.

“Some of the things we’ll be testing for are soluble BOD, ammonia, sulphate, sulphite, and arsenic,” Stetson said. “We’re also testing to see if the leachate is going to cause corrosion in our piping and pumps.”

Stetson says that G-P asked the waste water treatment plant three years ago to take their leachate, but “we told them that we needed to know more about it. The idea has been sitting on the backburner (since then).”

G-P never followed through on the required testing and continued to take their leachate to Brewer, despite the higher costs involved in the process.

“It’s obviously cheaper and more convenient (for Red Shield) to bring their leachate here,” Stetson said. “But even if we do end up taking it, there are still some questions about where we’ll put it, whether it should be here or on a remote site. We’ll also need some tankage. It takes 65-80 minutes for the trucks to dump the leachate. We can handle 10-100 gallons a minute. (As) another part of the agreement, they’re not allowed to haul in anything when it’s raining or the pilot study will be shut down.”

Once the eight-week study is completed, Wright, Pierce will evaluate the results and report back on their findings. From that point, the process would shift into the hands of the Old Town city council, who would vote on whether to allow Red Shield to enter into a permanent arrangement with the wastewater treatment plant.