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THE
KENTUCKY POST
SATURDAY, JULY 4, 1998
Dry
Creek plant getting new filter
By Crystal Harden
Post staff reporter
The
Dry Creek sewage treatment plant is undergoing more
than $12 million in improvements that include a special
filter to reduce odors.
Neighbors
in Villa Hills have complained for years about a burnt-chemical
odor from the plant on the Kenton-Boone county border.
Villa Hills Mayor Denny Stein said sanitation district
officials talked to him last year about the possibility
of new technology to get rid of the smell.
"I
do think this is a great thing", he said. "You never
know when it was going to stink. You couldn't predict
it based on the weather. Sometimes I'd out at I-275
on I-75, and you could smell it up there. It's difficult
to describe. It's a really odd smell. Sometimes it's
bad. Sometimes, we'd smell it up to the city building."
Reducing the odor will become even more important if
a coalition of city and county governments is successful
in developing a park in the Dry Creek valley, Stein
said.
The
smell comes from a process that cooks sludge - what's
left after solid materials are removed from sewage.
The
plant takes the sludge through a high-temperature heating
and vacuuming process that produces a cake-like substance
that is trucked to a landfill.
The heating process creates the burnt chemical odor
that neighbors find offensive, said Jeff Eger, general
manager of the sanitation district.
As
the equipment that heats the sludge needs to be replaced,
officials had to decide whether to stick with the same
treatment process or install a different kind.
Installing
a new system would have doubled the cost to the sanitation
district, so officials decided to keep the same treatment
process.
The
district will upgrade two heating units for sludge and
will buy a tird one for a backup system. The $12 million
price tag at the 20-year old plant also includes new
boilers and air conditioners, a new sludge storage tank
and other new equipment.
At
an additional cost, sanitation officials are contracting
with a firm to build a special biofilter to alleviate
the smell.
"We
know, as a good neighbor, we have to address this,"
Eger said.
Plant
manager Mike Kendall said he has tried to reduce the
odor with chemicals but has only been able to mask it
a bit.
"From
the early 1980s we've tried different things, but we
still have the problem," he said. "We saw this as our
chance to try to do whatever it takes to try to minimize
it."
A
University of Cincinnati chemical engineering professor,
Rakesh Govind, contacted the district about installing
a biofilter using a synthetic material that should reduce
the amount of odor coming from the plant. PRD Tech,
a company Govind directs, is designing the filter.
A
conventional biofilter, which uses wood chips, would
take up a large amount of space, cost $1.5 million and
require costly upkeep, Kendall said.
Govind's
compact biofilter will cost $500,000 to $800,000. He
built a prototype for the district and ran tests to
see whether it could reduce odors at the plant. The
district ran its own tests, and the biofilter eliminated
most of the smell, officials said.
The
district wants to build two additional treatment plants
because Dry Creek is expected to reach capacity in 2003.
The
district has land available around Dry Creek, but most
of it is hilly. Officials say trying to build another
plant at Dry Creek could add nearly $30 million to the
costs of a proposed $65 million plant to serve Boone
County and parts of Kenton County.
Instead,
the district is looking for land in Boone County and
expects to make an announcement by August. The new plants
will use a different treatment process for sludge, partly
to try to avoid complaints from neighbors. The new treatment
process would produce a material that could be used
for fertilizer.
"We're
not sure we have a market for it, but could give it
away," Eger said.
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