Environmental experts — including state air quality regulators – have praised Manteca for combining the methane gas produced in the wastewater treatment process with food waste to fuel the city’s solid waste collection trucks.
Words like “cutting edge” to “extremely green friendly” have been showered on the process that allowed the city to stop burning off methane gas into the atmosphere and burying food waste.
Methane gas has long been considered a high priority to reduce given it is a major source of greenhouse emissions.
It is why the state is investing millions of dollars in finding ways to reduce flatulence produced by dairy herds.
And while the solid waste trucks that are powered by CNG fuels are slightly pricier than those using fossil fuels, they are less expensive than electric trucks.
Sacramento has now mandated shifting to all-electric trucks.
By 2035 half of all heavy trucks — that includes solid waste vehicles — sold in California must be fully electric.
Peni Basalusalu, who oversees the city’s solid waste division, noted the city will be allowed to make its case that using methane gas to help power garbage trucks instead of burning it off into the atmosphere where it adds to greenhouse gas issues accomplishes what the state wants done.
Manteca’s situation demonstrates how environmental solutions attacking one specific concern — fossil fuels or methane gas — can often be at odds with each other.
Basalusalu said the city is making it a priority to document the effectiveness of eliminating the greenhouse gas source from the wastewater treatment plant to power solid waste trucks with compressed natural gas.
Natural gas engines have near zero-emission technology. They produce fewer nitrogen oxide emission than the cleanest burning diesel engines.
That said, currently fossil fuels are used to generate a chunk of the electricity California uses that ends up powering EVs.
In the course of power shortages when California imports power, it can be electricity generated by fossil fuels if the state is caught in a pinch.
Going forward, the city expects it can make the case that eliminating the methane from the treatment plant being released into the air while more than cover the shortfall of the natural gas powered vehicles not quite being 100 percent zero emission.
There are now less than a handful of wastewater treatment plants in the western United States that have the ability to prevent almost all of the methane gas generate from having to be released into the atmosphere.
Manteca has one of them.
The solution was pursued due to Manteca being a full-service city.
That means it doesn’t contract municipal services out including solid waste collection.
City engineers took heed of state warnings about the direction they were heading with both reducing garbage being buried in landfills and addressing methane gas to come up with a holistic solution.
As such they were able to wed technology to produce compressed gas with replacement work for major components at the wastewater treatment plant to bring overall costs down.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
