New sites open for disposal of hauled liquid waste
You’ve seen the tank trucks out on our roadways, bearing names like Boss Pumping and Drain King. Chances are these trucks are headed for new and improved hauled-liquid-waste disposal sites operated by Metropolitan Council Environmental Services (MCES).
In January, MCES opened this new hauled-liquid waste disposal facility in Fridley.
In January, MCES opened new facilities in St. Paul and Fridley for disposal of hauled liquid waste from septic tanks, holding tanks, portable toilets and a variety of industrial sources. At these and several other MCES disposal sites, the waste is discharged directly into MCES wastewater treatment plants or into regional sanitary sewer pipes that lead to the plants. Pollutants are then removed and clean water is returned to the environment.
Improvements to the disposal sites resulted from the “Systemwide Septage Management Study” conducted in 2003-2004, in which MCES evaluated the 12 disposal sites scattered about the Twin Cities area and developed plans to address several problems:
- Odors
- Sewer pipe corrosion
- Excessive buildup of sediment downstream of disposal sites
- Lack of controlled access and security at many sites
- Inadequate means for verifying discharge volumes and load contents
Facilities sited for geographic balance, environmental safety
The recently opened disposal sites in St. Paul and Fridley were built from scratch to incorporate such features as security and access control, and truck scales or flow meters to determine the actual volume of discharged loads (in contrast to reporting on an honor system). MCES also took a similar approach when constructing a new hauled-liquid-waste disposal site at its Empire Wastewater Treatment Plant in Dakota County in 2006.
A Lashinkski Septic Service truck discharged a load recently at the Fridley site.
"When we studied how to improve our hauled-liquid-waste disposal facilities throughout the metro area, we looked at upgrading existing sites where possible and building new facilities where needed, but we also had to close some problematic sites,” said Leo Hermes, manager of MCES’s Industrial Waste and Pollution Prevention Section.
"We tried to balance the need for improving our network of sites with how it could increase hauler driving times and distances, and how that could impact their costs and the costs to their customers,” Hermes said. “We believe we’ve achieved a reasonable distribution of sites around the metro area, while also addressing concerns for the environment and for our wastewater collection and treatment system.”
Two new disposal sites opened, site upgrades on the way
The Fridley disposal site started several years ago as a private-sector project, but faltered from financial difficulties late in construction. MCES purchased the facility and most of the equipment, and made minor changes to better suit its needs. The facility includes equipment that removes rocks, grit and trash, which will reduce maintenance needs on downstream sewer pipes.
The St. Paul disposal site was constructed at MCES’s Metropolitan Wastewater Treatment Plant to replace the most heavily used disposal site in the system. The latter site is about a half-mile east of downtown St. Paul, in an industrial area that the city has focused on for redevelopment.
MCES has a hauled-liquid-waste disposal site at its Blue Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant in Shakopee. Upgrades on the order of what was done at the Metro and Empire Plants should be completed by mid-2010. MCES also has plans in the works to upgrade an existing disposal site in the city of Chanhassen, subject to the city’s approval.
Six problematic sites closed
Liquid-waste haulers use a key pad to enter information about the contents and volume of their load, then receive a receipt from the facility attendant.
Opening these new disposal sites has allowed MCES to close six problematic sites in Coon Rapids, Plymouth, Forest Lake, Brooklyn Park, Minneapolis and White Bear Township. Some of them included only a discharge manhole above a regional sewer located just off of a roadway, with haulers reporting their discharges on the honor system. Another site was on a suburban dead-end street that was slated to become a through-street to serve a new office development.