{"id":1596,"date":"2011-02-13T11:24:51","date_gmt":"2011-02-13T16:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1596"},"modified":"2011-02-13T11:29:09","modified_gmt":"2011-02-13T16:29:09","slug":"finally-recycling-nyc-sewage-for-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1596","title":{"rendered":"Finally: Recycling NYC Sewage for Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Mireya Navarro, NEW YORK TIMES, February 8, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a> New York City\u2019s sewage presents a daunting and costly challenge: it creates foul odors and often contaminates waterways.<\/p>\n

But the city is now casting its sewage treatment plants and the vast amounts of sludge, methane gas and other byproducts of the wastewater produced by New Yorkers, as an asset \u2014 specifically, as potential sources of renewable energy.<\/p>\n

For the city\u2019s Department of Environmental Protection<\/a>, which is to issue its strategy on Wednesday, it is a shift. Until now, the agency has mainly played the role of water utility and environmental steward rather than energy producer.<\/p>\n

But like other cities around the country looking to reduce both the costs of sewage treatment and disposal and the heat-trapping greenhouse gases emitted in the process, New York is beginning to look at its waste as an untapped resource.<\/p>\n

Heating fuel can be extracted from sludge and butanol, an alternative fuel to gasoline, from the algae generated by wastewater. Sewage treatment plants could sell methane gas to provide power to homes. Such projects represent a more sustainable long-term approach to managing a wastewater treatment process that costs the city about $400 million annually, not including capital investments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing in here that\u2019s pie in the sky,\u201d Caswell F. Holloway, the city\u2019s commissioner of environmental protection, said of the plan. \u201cWhile we\u2019re early in the process, it\u2019s real.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Yorkers currently produce some 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater daily. The agency is seeking vendors to find uses for the resulting daily yield of 1,200 tons of sludge, a residual that is currently sent to landfills in Suffolk County, N.Y., and Virginia.<\/p>\n

City officials, who hope to have a contract by 2013, said the solid could be harvested for gases that produce clean energy and could be used in more traditional ways, too, as fertilizer or as paving and building materials.<\/p>\n

The biggest potential source of energy, officials said, is the methane gas from sewage treatment plants\u2019 digesters. About half of the methane produced by the city\u2019s plants is already used to meet about 20 percent of the energy demands of the city\u2019s 14 sewage plants, whose electric bills run to a total of about $50 million a year. Now the city wants to market the other half, which is burned off and wasted. [Read rest of story]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Normally sent to landfills, the sludge, methane gas and other products left after New York City treats its wastewater are going to be processed, reused and even sold, reducing costs and greatly reducing our wastewater’s environmental impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17,69],"tags":[969,968,970,967,973,972,971,194],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1596"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1602,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions\/1602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}