Published December 2003

Composting company eyes Smith Island site

By Eric Fetters
Herald Business Writer

Composting doesn’t seem like a high-tech process. Indeed, transforming decomposing plant and food materials into enriched soil occurs in nature without the help of anything but worms and microscopic organisms.

But putting a huge Gore-Tex blanket over a compost pile can speed up the process, which is important when you’re dealing with tons of yard and food waste.

That’s essentially what Cedar Grove Composting is doing at its large facility in south King County, and it plans to use the same innovation at a new site on Smith Island in Everett.

A composting plant in Snohomish County would save Cedar Grove time and money spent on transportation. At present, the composting company hauls yard waste collected here by trash hauler Waste Management Northwest to Cedar Grove’s plant and headquarters in Maple Valley. The composted soil then is hauled back to this area for sale at local nurseries and other businesses.

“We’re spending too much time on the road, hauling stuff down here and hauling stuff back,” said Jerry Bartlett, general manager for Cedar Grove. “The drive is just killing us.”

The new composting facility would be on the northwest side of Smith Island. Cedar Grove has an option to purchase 109 undeveloped acres there, with about 30 acres of that planned for the facility. The rest of the usable land could be developed for other uses, Bartlett said.

Additionally, the company is proposing to build a public walking trail along Steamboat Slough in the areas that cannot be developed because of environmental rules.

The Smith Island site would mark a return to Snohomish County for the company. In 1997, Cedar Grove bought out Phoenix Composting in Arlington, but closed and sold that property in 2000. Ironically, Cedar Grove felt that site was too small for its old composting methods.

“That site probably still would be fine if we knew about this technology,” Bartlett said, referring to the Gore-Tex covers.

In use in Europe since 1995, the covers only came into use on this continent last year, said Ed Schneider, spokesman for Delaware-based W.L. Gore & Associates Co., which makes Gore-Tex. Known for its water resistance and breathability, the fabric is widely used in outdoor clothing, medical equipment and industrial devices. That’s the heart of the Gore’s compost covers.

“The technology is the same,” Schneider said. “It’s the same principal applied for a different use.”

Cedar Grove adopted the Gore-Tex covers after looking for ways to compost leftover food, Bartlett said. That required covering the material to kill off disease-causing organisms.

As it turned out, the specialized covers, in use since May at Cedar Grove, do much more. Because they help the compost piles reach temperatures of 170 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit, the natural breakdown of the materials is speeded up. Those temperatures also are high enough to kill off weed seeds and potentially harmful organisms.

In addition to holding in heat and moisture, which is beneficial, the covers hold in more than 90 percent of odors from the composting process. They also protect the piles against the weather.

To keep oxygen flowing through the pile, relatively small fans push air from vents placed in the concrete pad on which the pile rests. That takes much less energy than the older system, which basically sucks air through the compost pile.

Electronic probes stuck into the compost piles and connected to computers monitor the air flow and temperature and can control the fans.

“This system is about 95 percent more efficient than the old system,” Bartlett said.

The result is that, using the covers, Cedar Grove can produce mature compost in 10 to 12 weeks, compared to a year using uncovered methods.

So far, Cedar Grove’s Maple Valley facility is one of only three in North America using the Gore-Tex covers, Bartlett said.

Assuming the Smith Island facility is approved by the city of Everett, construction could begin this winter and composting could start by April or May, Bartlett said. The facility would employ four or five people initially, not counting truck drivers coming to the site, he added.

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