Pictured: Meyer and Stephanie Hoff stand in front of a Metrogro applicator.
The price of fertilizer is on the minds of many as we move into the planting season. And it just so happens that fertilizer is always on the minds of those at the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District.
MMSD offers a unique service for farmers as it cleans water from 380,000 residents around the region. The majority of material comes to the plant through sewer lines. Septage haulers also bring material in to the facility. The plant gets roughly 12,000 rural residential septics brought to the treatment plant each year.
When wastewater leaves a person’s home, it travels into a series of smaller pipes and goes to the larger district pipes, explains MMSD Communications Manager Amanda Wagner. These pipes continue to get larger until the wastewater gets to MMSD. Then, the sewer runs through a series of screens to take out matter that shouldn’t go down the drain — plastics, baby wipes, etc. MMSD uses a biological treatment to clean the water — a faster version of what nature does. Microbes — beneficial bugs — in the water eat the organic matter and get scraped out, and then the water goes through a clarifier and a sanitizer before being released to streams.
MMSD Watershed Program Coordinator Kim Meyer explains the dead microbes that have eaten the organic matter and nutrients in the wastewater go into a digester, which creates both methane gas (energy) and a liquid fertilizer. The liquid fertilizer is ‘de-watered’ and stored in tanks on site as Metrogro.
The DNR oversees distribution of the fertilizer. MMSD cannot apply Metrogro on fields close to wells, with separation to bedrock or elevated water tables. MMSD also checks soil types to make sure the soil can hold the fertilizer.
And Metrogro is free to the farmer. Wagner explains the district prioritizes resource recovery, such as Metrogro, and giving those resources to the community. If MMSD didn’t give it to the farmers, the plant would have to pay to get rid of it either through incineration or the landfill. And Metrogro is a way to return phosphorus back into the food system.
The Metrogro program has 17 trailers that are pulled by contract truckers. They do four sites at one time, so Metrogro needs four equipment operators to run the applicators that MMSD owns. Meyer says just like any other industry, they’ve had issues getting enough people to run the specialized equipment for the long hours required.
If you live in the Madison area, it’s this time of year you’ll start seeing the Metrogro trucks leave MMSD via the beltline.
In the interview with Mid-West Farm Report, Meyer also talks about how farmers can take advantage of dollars within the Yahara WINS program, an initiative to help achieve clean water goals for the Yahara Watershed, of which MMSD is a partner.
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