Chicago turning river pollutants into fertilizer

Chicago turning river pollutants into fertilizer

By Michael Hawthorne•Contact Reporter
Chicago Tribune

May 25, 2016, 5:54 PM

Chicago officials boast of having the world's largest sewage treatment plant, but that also means the metropolitan area produces massive amounts of wastewater that pollutes rivers all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Stickney Water Reclamation Plant, which handles the waste of 2.3 million people in Chicago and the Cook County suburbs, is the biggest single source of phosphorus in the entire region that drains into the Mississippi River. Combined with other sewage plant releases and farm runoff, the pollution triggers algae growth that kills fish, makes drinking water taste sour and contributes to a Connecticut-sized dead zone in the Gulf every summer.

Scientists, regulators, lawyers and advocates have been debating how to tackle the problem for years. Now a private company is promising to scour some of the phosphorus from the Stickney plant's effluent and turn it into slow-release fertilizer — a project local officials contend is a model for other communities in the region.

The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the taxpayer-funded agency that operates the Stickney plant, agreed to finance the Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies project while facing court challenges from environmental groups that want more stringent legal limits on the district's phosphorus releases into local waterways.

More:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-chicago-phosphorus-pollution-met-20160525-story.html