In Edmonds, $26M goes to a cleaner way to get rid of poop [View all]

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EDMONDS — If you live in Edmonds, whatever you flush down the toilet will soon be a little better for the world.

The city’s new Carbon Recovery Project has a fancy name for a dirty job: reducing the carbon footprint of sludge.

Yes, it’s time to talk about what happens to poop.

First, the solids are separated from the liquids. Then, at least for the past 30 or so years in Edmonds, the solids have been incinerated and reduced to ash, which is then trucked to a landfill. That process has some unfortunate side effects, said Edmonds Public Works Director Phil Williams.

“You’re taking all that carbon, all that organic material, and you’re just burning it, and it just goes right up the stack and into the atmosphere,” he said.

The incinerator in Edmonds has been used almost a decade beyond its intended life and has fallen behind the current emissions standards for wastewater treatment, per federal regulations. The time has come to replace it.

At $26 million, the estimated budget for the carbon recovery project sounds expensive, but, Williams said, it actually comes in a couple million dollars cheaper than what a new incinerator would cost. The Edmonds City Council approved $14.4 million in revenue bonds last October to pay for it. The rest will come from Mountlake Terrace, Shoreline and the Olympic View Water and Sewer District, which serves parts of unincorporated Snohomish County. Those three sewer districts send their wastewater to the treatment plant in Edmonds.

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/in-edmonds-26m-goes-to-a-cleaner-way-to-get-rid-of-poop/