Keith Matheny

Detroit Free Press

As a $143-million facility to convert human waste from the Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant into marketable fertilizer prepared for start-up last year, Great Lakes Water Authority CEO Sue McCormick touted it as "environmentally sound, proven technology."

But that biosolids dryer facility — operated by a private, for-profit company in partnership with the water authority — has exceeded its permitted emission levels of harmful sulfur dioxide since it began operating last April, according to data reviewed by the Free Press. Smokestack-monitoring data shows the facility exceeded the one-hour emission standard for sulfur dioxide more than 2,500 times from April 5, 2016, through Feb. 28.

That means the plant is adding harmful emissions to an area that already has the most polluted air in metro Detroit.

Read more:

Venomous brown recluse spider may be in Michigan to stay

Air Force snubs Michigan law on tainted well fixes

It's particularly problematic in neighborhoods around the facility, off West Jefferson in southwest Detroit The area is already considered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in "non-attainment" of the federal Clean Air Act's air-quality standard for sulfur dioxide.

Residents in the area face a polluting gauntlet of steel mills, coal-fired power plants, a major garbage incinerator and factories — and it shows in their respiratory health. Detroit’s hospitalization rate for asthma is more than three times the rate for Michigan as a whole, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.

Short-term exposures to sulfur dioxide can harm the human respiratory system and make breathing difficult, according to the EPA. Children, elderly people, and those who suffer from asthma are particularly sensitive to its effects. High concentrations of sulfur dioxide in the air also lead to the formation of other sulfur oxides, which in turn can react with other compounds and form small particles, contributing to particulate matter pollution. These tiny particles can penetrate deeply into sensitive parts of the lungs and cause additional health problems.

When the biosolids drying facility showed excessive sulfur dioxide emissions as part of its initial, operational compliance check, the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) did not work to force its shutdown until the problem was fixed. Instead, a consent order between the agency and the facility's operator, the New England Fertilizer Co., or NEFCO, allows until Jan. 1, 2018, to resolve its permit noncompliance.

Adding excessive sulfur dioxide pollution to the air for up to two years is too long for Elizabeth Milton, a certified asthma educator and advocate with the nonprofit Detroit Alliance for Asthma Awareness.

"They are taking the risk with our lives, and that I cannot bear — especially in a community that is overburdened with toxic pollutants," she said. "The residents of this area cannot bear one more excessive polluter."

Some don't see a problem

Suzanne Coffey, interim chief operating officer for wastewater with Great Lakes Water Authority, characterized the issue differently, calling the sulfur dioxide exceedance and the efforts to bring it under control a "natural part" of getting "a large, new facility" up and running properly.

"We are going through a typical performance testing period," she said.

"We are not the only discharger of SO2 in the area. ... We're not feeling like this is a significant environmental impact."

NEFCO is continuing to work to bring the facility's sulfur dioxide emissions to acceptable levels, Coffey said.

"We fully expect NEFCO to meet these requirements," she said.

The facility, the largest of its kind in North America, takes human waste — poop — sludge processed through the wastewater treatment plant that was historically incinerated and instead dries and processes it. The facility can produce up to 420 dry tons per day of fertilizer pellets, a nutrient source used by farms on their fields or as an alternative, renewable fuel source for facilities such as power plants or cement kilns.

More than 30,000 dry tons of the fertilizer pellets developed by NEFCO were spread on farm fields in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Ontario in the 2016 fiscal year, according to a company Power Point presentation made to the Michigan Water Environment Association last year.

The City Council entered into a 20-year contract with NEFCO for $683 million in 2013, seeing the biosolids-to-fertilizer concept as a means to resolve chronic violations for excess sludge at the wastewater treatment plant. The dryer facility also enabled the plant to cease operation of six, 50- to 70-year-old sludge incinerators that required major, expensive upgrades to comply with toughened air emissions standards taking effect in March 2016.

"It's a significant element of environmental stewardship for us," Coffey said. "It's a beneficial re-use of the (sludge). For us, it was more about sustainability and cost savings for our customers."

What state has, hasn't done

As the plant readied for operation, it was required to demonstrate to the DEQ that it met emissions standards. That test, in January 2016, showed one of the four dryers in the facility, Dryer D, exceeded sulfur dioxide requirements, said Jeff Korniski, assistant director of the DEQ's Air Quality Division's Detroit office.

The dryers were re-tested in February 2016, and Dryer D was within permitted SO2 levels — but Dryer C showed sulfur dioxide emissions that were too high.

The DEQ suggested, and NEFCO officials agreed, to install continuous emission-monitoring systems on the dryer facility's four smokestacks to measure emissions continually as the company tried to solve its sulfur dioxide problem.

"It was in response to our concern that they didn't have a handle on why the sulfur was going up or down," Korniski said.

It was that continual smokestack monitoring, which began in early April 2016, that showed more than 2,500 violations of the one-hour sulfur dioxide emissions standard between then and the end of February 2017. The violations came to light in the smokestack monitoring data, obtained in a state Freedom of Information Act request to the DEQ by the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center.

"That was particularly alarming to us, just based off sulfur dioxide being a big problem in that area — a big problem for public health; a big problem for residents," said Nicholas Leonard, a staff attorney with the law center.

"Here we have a facility that's having continual problems with its SO2 emissions, and MDEQ wasn't really doing much about it."

Korniski said the smokestack monitoring data was intended only to identify trends in the sulfur dioxide emission numbers as NEFCO tries a variety of solutions to bringing them down. The company is adding ferric chloride to the wet sludge before drying, a binding agent that should lessen sulfur dioxide emissions.

"They're doing this, and they need to do it to figure out what is going on," Korniski said. "But they are not doing it to show continuous compliance with the emissions standard."

But the DEQ still could — and should — use the data it has in-hand, Leonard said.

"We know it's not legally required, but you can still enforce these exceedances," he said. "You can still use this data to enforce. That was something (DEQ) didn't want to do."

Going the consent-order route, essentially an agreement between the facility and the DEQ about how to resolve an issue, is less time- and money-consuming than a lengthy contested case in court that allows environmental problems to go unaddressed for potentially years, Korniski said.

"The consent order is, basically, we think they are along the right path," he said. "This incorporates enforceable time lines, to make sure they stick with what they said they were going to do."

NEFCO said it believes the amount of ferric chloride to add to prevent excessive sulfur dioxide emissions has been determined, "but we don't have enough data yet," said Majid Khan, director of wastewater operations at Great Lakes Water Authority.

"It's certainly improved," he said. "But we still need to perfect the solutions to meet the permit requirement."

In the meantime, the excessive sulfur dioxide goes into the sky.

"Shut it down, give them the time to correct the situation," said Rhonda Anderson, senior organizing representative for the nonprofit Sierra Club. "We don't want it to stay shut down forever; we just want it shut down until it's corrected."

That a private company is turning a profit off a product it's obtaining from the publicly funded wastewater treatment plant, as that company pollutes, is particularly outrageous to Milton.

"Why MDEQ and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services are not doing all that they can to protect these vulnerable communities, these disenfranchised communities, these African-American communities, I'm not sure," she said.

Contact Keith Matheny: 313-222-5021 or kmatheny@freepress.com. Follow on Twitter @keithmatheny.