Assessment of odor and land application impacts of disposal of Westside municipal biosolids

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Municipalities and industries rely on biological treatment processes to treat organic pollutants in wastewater. However, one of the drawbacks of the biological treatment processes is high residual sludge generation. Treatment/disposal of residual sludge is a bottleneck in plant operation in both developing and industrial countries due to more stringent quality requirements for landfilling, ocean disposal, and incineration. It is only in recent years that much more wastewater sludge (biosolids) is beneficially used as soil amendment after conventional or advanced sludge treatment processes (i.e. composting, aerobic/anaerobic digestion). Although land application of biosolids has been accepted as a cost-effective waste disposal method that provides other benefits (i.e. recycling nutrients to improve soil quality), it can also carry some environmental risks, especially in the long-term. Odours, pathogenic microorganisms, heavy metals and other anthropogenic micro-pollutants, such as hormones, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), brominated flame retardants (BFRs), are the major contaminants with emerging concern when it comes to assessing the environmental impact of land application of biosolids. In order to evaluate the long-term sustainability and public acceptability, this project will study the environmental impact of land application of municipal biosolids generated by the Westside Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant in the District of West Kelowna (BC, Canada). The project will focus on three different but interlinked aspects; (1) monitoring of odours as a result of biosolids treatment/transportation, (2) assessment of biosolids piles during storage/curing at the land application site, (3) quality assessment of soil and effluent from the water treatment plant at the site before/after land application to analyze the downstream impact on the Trepanier Creek watershed. With the help of this study, our municipal partners will obtain valuable information on the efficiency of their sludge treatment trains and the environmental impact of their land application. Health Canada and the BC Ministry of Environment will obtain additional knowledge on the fate of their prioritized list of emerging compounds in biosolids.