Posted on 04/28/2010 12:58:22 PM PDT by Scythian
“...and fill your pickup up with Milorganite.”
I guess I should be surprised but I’m not.
It’s called Milorganite. It’s from the Milwaukee sanitary sewer system.
Sludge is cancined and sold in dry 40 pound bags.
Composting animals waste would be fine....unless it came from the sewer. On my family farm ,we've used cow manure as compose for centuries(literally) Very good in fact.
But then we don't inject out farm animals with lead, mercury and female hormones....
Class “A” solids do really well in the Pacific NW. So many greenies here, sounds like your plant didn’t do so well in the marketing of the product. It is however cheaper to give it away than to pay to land apply.
I know someone here in the Pacific Northwest who has gotten some overtime hours hauling sewer sludge from the city plant to a field out of town, but I believe where it is spread is a fenced off field with a sign warning of hazardous waste-stay out. I grew up in an area where everyone had a pipe running from their house direct to the creek out back to discharge “waste”. Fished that creek like crazy all summer—never thought about it then.
As has been previously noted, Milwaukee has been drying/sterilizing it's 'activated sludge' for decades (at least 50 yrs). They screen it and bag it and have sold it in the past as 'Milorganite' but you're right, it's barely 5 to 6% nitrogen with no measurable phosphorus or potassium. The only good thing about was it was near free but it didn't do much for your lawn and the bag warned you about using it in a vegetable garden.
In the town where I grew up a city employee applied activated sludge right (ripe!) from the digester to his lawn just before the first frost in the fall. All winter long that nasty mess festered below the snow cover to be released with the spring thaw. It smelled so bad (just like you'd have thought it might) that he never repeated the experiment.
Regards,
GtG
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