By BJ Austin, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-823429.mp3
Dallas, TX – We scoop it, we bag it, we bury it, we flush it. But now the city of Dallas is collecting it and turning it into energy. KERA's BJ Austin has the story of what she calls Dallas' scoop on poop.
At the Dallas Zoo, visitors delight over the animals: from a brightly colored tropical bird to a 10 thousand pound elephant. Less delightful is what those animals create everyday: six TONS of waste. All of that is hosed down, shoveled up, and sent to the landfill: at a cost of 47 thousand dollars a year. Dallas City Council member Linda Koop says the city is working on a "green" solution.
Koop: We're trying to figure out a way to turn zoo poo into energy, electricity.
A ten thousand dollar federal EPA grant got the project going, but it will cost about a MILLION dollars to get the Zoo Poo power plant up and running. The plant will burn the waste at extremely high temperatures and capture the methane gas produced. It's the gas that then runs a generator that produces electricity to power Zoo buildings. A zoo official promises there won't be any SMELL coming from the bio-gasification process.
Eric Griffin, head of the Dallas Office of Environmental Quality says the program at the Zoo is cutting edge.
Griffin: In this case, from what I understand, we would be the first, and this would be a model for other zoos to follow. And maybe we'll come up with a better name before we get to that point
Councilmember Koop disagrees
Koop: I like the name. Instead of green energy, it's zoo poo energy. I wasn't privy to any of those discussions, but there's probably some funny stories to be told about it.
But Koop says Dallas is very serious about its commitment to the environment. She says the city's looking at an even bigger source of bio-fuel to convert to energy. At the Dallas Southside Wastewater Treatment Plant, Richard Wagner says they're planning to make "electricity" using the human "solid" waste that's flushed and routed to the plant.
Wagner: We found a company that specializes in taking biogas, building a facility to generate electricity, which they're going to sell back to us at a price that's about 40% less than what we're getting from the electric provider currently. We're going to have savings of 1.5 - 2 million a year in energy costs.
Wagner says the company Ameresco is building the plant at no cost to the city. The company makes money selling the converted methane gas.
Both of these alternative energy projects follow one of the oldest in the state - at Dallas' McCommas Bluff Landfill.
The landfill manager, Ron Smith jumps in his pickup to take me on a bumpy ride along - what he calls - the "road" winding thru and over the landfill. He can manage the ruts and big dirt clods with one hand on the wheel pointing out the more than 300 methane gas wells with the other
Smith: The little small thing on the hill just to your right is one of the wells.
For more than 10 years, the wells have captured the methane created as microbes "eat" the mountains of trash. The gas is siphoned off, and piped to the nearby "Clean Energy" plant owned by Dallas billionaire T. Boone Pickens. He pays the city about half a million dollars a year in royalties for the methane.
Smith: The gas plant puts the entire system under a vacuum and it draws the methane out of the landfill and the gas plant purifies it. And they clean it to pipeline quality gas. And then they put it in the Atmos Energy pipeline and it's sold. It's auctioned off just like any other commodity.
Now, think about this that pot roast that filled the kitchen with such a mouthwatering aroma might have been cooked with gas from the city landfill.
At City Hall, Eric Griffin says Dallas is working hard to be a leader in green energy and environmental management.
Griffin: We are an internationally-standard certified organization for environmental management. We want to look at our entire footprint. How do we impact the environment, and that got us into the mindset of thinking about these creative ideas like zoo poo.
There is no timetable for completion of the Zoo Poo power plant. Griffin says it depends on money. The Wastewater Treatment Plant bio-gas project should be up and running in January. And MORE gas wells are planned at the Dallas landfill.