Covered Compost Operation and Stormwater Improvement Project
In the early morning hours of today (Friday, November 16), a major concrete pour was completed for half of the slab in the new covered compost area at our Materials Diversion Facility. Using two of the largest concrete pumping trucks in California, crews placed 200 cubic yards of concrete per hour for a total of 1,100 cubic yards! To give you an idea of how much concrete that is, the City’s sidewalk program installs about 1,200 cubic yards of concrete per year! Approximately 500,000 pounds of rebar was used in the slab. The other half of the slab will be poured the week after Thanksgiving.
This phase is part of the $10-million construction project to install a covered aerated static pile compost system and stormwater improvements at the City’s Materials Diversion Facility. Pipes are under the concrete floor of the compost bunker with the small pipe embedded up into the floor with the top flush with the floor surface. Each bunker is 300 feet long by 90 feet wide with these air pipes spaced every 5 feet along the length (60 total air pipes in each bunker!). Compost will be placed 9 feet high in each bunker with up to a 1 foot biofilter layer of finished compost on the top to absorb emissions and odors. The air system from below and an irrigation system on top are automated to provide optimal conditions for the active phase of composting for 22 days. Then the product will be moved to a curing pile. The system will accommodate commercial food waste collection and provide more efficient composting with reduced emissions from our current operation. Overaa Construction is under contract for the project and is on schedule to have these bunkers completed in early 2019.
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