Pinetop Lakeside Sanitary District

The Pinetop Lakeside Sanitary District is located in the eastern mountains of the great state of Arizona, USA. The District incorporated the Bedminster digester into our wastewater treatment facility as our main sludge disposal process and to my knowledge is the only existing unit built as an extension of a wastewater plant.

Operational: 1991
Amount MSW, tpd: 10
Amount Biosolids, tpd: 5
Number of Composting Drums: 1

It was constructed in 1990-91, utilizing an old (1973) test digester, ten feet in diameter and seventy feet long. We have maintained the production of a class A compost sold, (under contract) to D & D Development located locally. Waste Management delivers 10-12 tons of residential MSW daily (under contract) and 5-6 tons of de-watered aerobic digested sludge is added for the nitrogen portion of the equation.

The organic fraction is compiled beneath a sixteen foot long, one and one quarter inch trommel and placed on an aerated header floor in piles representing one week. The piles are moved with a front-end loader weekly down the header floor for ten weeks until reaching the one-quarter inch trommel where pieces of glass and plastic are removed. The resulting compost is a beneficial, marketable commodity in the arid southwest of the USA.