NuTerra Breaks Ground On State-Of-The-Art Haines City Organics Recycling Facility

First aerated static pile (ASP) facility in Florida provides most economical approach

NuTerra, a trusted project and service delivery partner to the wastewater and biosolids management industry, recently announced the groundbreaking of a new organics recycling facility that initiates the second phase of Haines City’s plan to produce a high-quality compost product to be offered to residents and surrounding communities for lawns, athletic fields, golf courses and agriculture. In his remarks at the groundbreaking, NuTerra CEO Aaron Zahn credited Haines City for its environmental leadership. “As one of the few municipalities with state-of-the-art wastewater treatment and composting facilities, Haines City is demonstrating its environmental leadership. The new facility will be the first of its kind in Florida, providing the most economical and environmentally friendly approach to organics recycling.”

Using NuTerra’s proprietary process control system, the facility continuously monitors and automates the composting process. This streamlined approach eliminates the need to reposition probes and avoids disruption of the process from exposure to rain, humidity, and other factors that impact the active composting and curing processes. NuTerra’s facility design ensures a high-quality end product and minimal odor nuisances for nearby neighbors.

Haines City Utility Director Mike Stripling said, “NuTerra is making it economically possible to live up to our States’s high environmental standards. By recycling and reusing biosolids, yard waste, and other organic waste, we’re reducing disposition costs with far fewer trips to the landfill and mitigating nutrient and ground water pollution. The facility will provide surrounding communities an economically and environmentally advantageous outlet for their organics waste. In addition, offsetting the use of commercial fertilizers with compost by our local athletic fields will result in superior water retention properties and allow for the slow release of beneficial nutrients.”

NuTerra designed the new facility and will build, operate, and maintain it at the wastewater treatment plant’s property site. Haines City will own the building, which will blend residents’ yard waste with wastewater treatment biosolids and other organic waste accepted from surrounding communities and commercial interests. NuTerra will market the resulting compost product for unrestricted reuse locally and in surrounding communities.

Haines City’s City Manager Jonathan Evans said, “The partnership with NuTerra and BCR Environmental has already delivered numerous measurable and verifiable economic and environmental advantages to the City. Developing the Haines City Organics Recycling Facility is the logical next step of our partnership aimed at benefiting Polk County and the central region of Florida.”

Phase one began in 2012 when NuTerra helped Haines City meet its financial goals and produce a Class AA/EQ product by upgrading wastewater treatment from aerobic digestion to BCR Environmental’s Neutralizer system. The city avoided capital expenditures of $2.75M for digester rehabilitation and dewatering equipment, reduced annual biosolids treatment and disposition costs by approximately $133,000 for 20 years, reduced energy costs for biosolids treatment by approximately 97 percent, and created a virtually odor-free operation.

About NuTerra
NuTerra designs, builds, and assumes full project accountability for long-term sustainable wastewater treatment/organic waste and biosolids management solutions that deliver municipalities on average savings of 40-plus percent in operating costs and 90-plus percent in energy consumption. In the industry’s most collaborative public-private partnerships, NuTerra efficiently addresses capital and operating expenses, regulatory compliance, public sentiment, and environmental issues (i.e. noise, odor, material handling, physical footprint, greenhouse gas emissions) solutions. Its “progressive” project delivery method is the most cost-effective approach for addressing population growth, urban encroachment, and failing infrastructure with a dramatic reduction in facility size. NuTerra further reduces investment and risk by using the industry’s only before-and-after models based on real/verifiable operational and financial data, feasibility analysis, and approved advanced technologies. The company can help obtain financing for projects to address escalating capital requirements that are typically underfunded, and offers municipalities total waste reutilization as a source of revenue by recycling nutrients into high-value, marketable end products that address diminishing disposal outlets/landfill capacity, escalating unit costs, increasing environmental regulations and rising energy costs.