(Oct 10, 2023)
Danielle Thomas works with the Energy Recovery Section of Solid Waste Management for LA County sanitation districts. Their mission is to protect public health and the environment with cost-effective wastewater and solid waste management to produce recycled water, energy and recycled materials. Effective sanitation is considered to have been the most important health milestone in the past century, with improved sewage disposal and clean water supply to reduce epidemic infections such as cholera.
Los Angeles County has many separate sanitation facilities. For the South Bay area, she showed a map of active and closed landfills (such as the former Palos Verdes landfill under the Botanic Garden, and the Puente Hills landfill closed in 2013), energy facility, recycle and transfer stations, and compost facilities. There is a transfer station in Southgate, recycling and transfer facility in Downey, and a materials recovery facility in Puente Hills. Some plastics and metals can be recycled for materials resale. Waste is transferred on the Union Pacific Railroad from LA into Imperial County, past the Salton Sea to the Mesquite Landfill near the Mexican and Arizona borders. (This will also eventually fill up).
The Tulare Lake Compost Facility takes biosolids and amendments, mixes and covers them into aerated piles, then screens the output to produce high-quality compost. solid and water waste and refuse are digested to produce 23 MW for district facilities and 52 MW for electrical power sales. Danielle showed photos of energy recovery facilities, including the Calabasas and Puente Hills Landfills gas-to-energy facilities. Processed and unprocessed food waste goes through anaerobic (oxygen-free) digestion to produce methane biogas for electricity, heating, and vehicular fuels. Post-treatment solid waste becomes compost for fertilizer.