biosolids

Young Meeta wanted to work in the airline business and travel the world.  She had dreams of ensuring the safety and comfort of passengers with her gracious attitude and winning smile as a flight attendant.  Eventually, this dream changed and Meeta knew her destiny was to become a doctor, but not just any doctor. Fate would have it in 2008 when her Masters advisor asked the magic question that cemented her future, “do you know what biosolids are?”  From that point on there was no looking back, Meeta earned her doctorate in soil science doing her dissertation work with biosolids. 

By Sally Brown, University of Washington

Abstracts of these resources are available in the searchable Information Portal offered to Northwest Biosolids members.

Regulations Corner

Proposed Biosolids Project in Yelm

The proposed biosolids land application project in Yelm (WA) has a coordinated anti-biosolids community group. The land owner for the proposed project recently cancelled their involvement.

Among the community group's efforts, Preserve the Commons has: 

By Andy Bary, Washington State University-Puyallup

Harvest Pierce County supports 82 community gardens representing over 15 acres of land, the majority of which use Tagro products to grow food for family, friends and food banks.  Between the Farm program and the Garden program – 67,000 pounds of food was grown for donation to school cafeterias and food banks.  That’s not counting all the food from the gleaning program harvested from fruit trees and farms. This is the kind of work that Kristen McIvor, Urban Agriculture and Local Access Program Director, gets to be a part of at Harvest Pierce County.  

By Sally Brown, University of Washington

Abstracts of these resources are available in the searchable Information Portal offered to Northwest Biosolids members.

1. Fipronil pesticide as a suspect in historical mass mortalities of honey bees
   https://nwbiosolids.org/resource/fipronil-pesticide-suspect-historical-mass-mortalities-honey-bees

By Sally Brown, University of Washington

Abstracts of these resources are available in the searchable Information Portal offered to Northwest Biosolids members.

1. Environmental Engineering fo the 21st Century: Addressing Grand Challenges
   https://nwbiosolids.org/resource/environmental-engineering-21st-century-addressing-grand-challenges

By Sally Brown and Sally Landefeld, University of Washington; Dan Eberheardt, City of Tacoma-TAGRO and Juan Carlos Hernandez, Monroe Correctional Facility

Olympic Ag LLC is 16 miles up the Wynoochee River Valley just north of Montesano, Washington.  As a recently permitted Beneficial Use Facility (BUF) and land application site that provides winter storage of biosolids, Olympic Ag is providing an alternative for local biosolids generators in Western Washington that typically must travel long, and often treacherous routes to transport their biosolids to BUFs in Eastern Washington. In the spring the stored biosolids will be land applied to the surrounding 100 plus acres of farm land.