A representative of the Metropolitan
Water Reclamation District, Robert F. Kennedy Jr has said that
a new technology planned for the Stickney Water Reclamation Plant will remove
nutrient pollution from wastewater and convert it to pellets to be sold as
fertilizer for crops and lawns, NaijaAgroNet reports.
Kennedy Jr made this assertion at the Water Environment Federation’s 86th
Annual Technical Exhibition and Conference at McCormick Place and stressed that
the technology which was developed by
Canadian-based Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technology, Inc., will be installed and operational in 2015 at
an estimated cost of $30 million and a payback time of as little as three
years.
NaijaAgroNet
learnt from the late son of late Sen. Robert Kennedy and member of Ostara’s
board of directors that “Crystal Green, Ostara’s fertilizer company will
purchase the product at $400 per ton from the water reclamation district and
use the advanced nutrient recovery technology not onlyreduces nutrient load but
to protect precious area waterways that are part of Mississippi River basin, while
producing approximately 10,000 to 15,000 tons of fertilizer annually.
Ostara’s Chief
Technology Officer and company co-founder, Ahren Britton explained that Crystal
Green will bag the fertilizer and sell it to consumers ranging from farmers to
gardeners to golf course managers, while the revenue would be used to offset
the operation costs of the facility.
NaijaAgroNetrecorded
from Britton that the wastewatercontaining phosphorous and nitrogen in the form
of ammonia,enters Ostara's reactor where it mixes with magnesium, driving the
chemical reaction that crystallizes the nutrients between five and 10 days
which could remove up to 90 percent of phosphorous and 40 percent of the
ammonia.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the
major source of nutrient pollution which includes agriculture, wastewater and
storm water causes algae blooms in lakes, rivers, killing off fish and other
aquatic wildlife, devastating the ecosystem and also responsible for a dead
zone larger than Connecticut in the Gulf of Mexico, where virtually nothing can
live.
It was further revealed that the crystal form of the
Crystal Green fertilizer is a case of one man’s waste is another man’s
fertilizer as it helps to combat nutrient pollution, rather than quickly
dissolving in water, breaks down slowly in response to acids produced by the
plant as it grows which in turn reduces leaching into groundwater and runoff of
excess nutrients, and that means fewer fertilizer applications are necessary.
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