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LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
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| Cedar Grove Composting’s Vice-President Jerry Bartlett and Business Development Manager Denise Foland (backs to camera) face a raucous gathering during the June meeting of the Wilkes Community Group held at the Teamsters complex in Joe Edgar Hall. Bartlett and Foland were making a presentation to build a food composting plant in the Wilkes neighborhood. |
| MEMO PHOTO: TIM CURRAN |
Headquartered in Everett, Wash., Cedar Grove wants to set up a food waste composting facility on a 19-acre tract on Northeast Marine Drive at 169th Avenue. Since January 2005 Cedar Grove has contracted with Metro to provide this service for Portland as part of a Metro plan to reduce food waste in landfills.
Currently, wastes are collected from users of the Metro program - a growing list of local restaurants, hotels and institutions - taken to the waste transfer station in North Portland, then trucked 150 miles to Cedar Grove Composting’s existing facility. Providing a processing plant in the Portland area would drastically reduce the cost of the process, Cedar Grove’s Denise Foland told a crowd of more than 100 people at a meeting of the Wilkes Community Group last month. They are looking at several sites in Portland for three small-scale operations.
Cedar Grove Composting Vice President and co-owner Jerry Bartlett said the company has an option to purchase the property on Marine Drive, but that there is a lot of due diligence that needs to be done before this is decided. “We wanted to get to the public early.” Foland added, however, “We need a site of a certain size that’s industrially zoned, and not many are available. If it’s further out, it means the haulers have to drive further and use that much more gas.” Bartlett said they didn’t want a ‘brownfield’ site with existing pollution problems.
The crowd included many people from the McGuire Point Marina floating home community across Marine Drive from the proposed plant. They expressed concern about the water contamination, traffic, odors, visual pollution and noise the operation might generate. Some remember a Riedel International composting operation attempted in the Cully neighborhood years ago that proved to be an environmental disaster.
Foland said the facility would generate 20 to 30 truck trips a day. The noisiest operations would take place within a structure, and the noise they generate when operated in the open would meet Portland’s residential noise standards, she said; moreover, operations would take place during traditional weekday working hours and perhaps a half-day on Saturdays. Water associated with the operation would be treated before it entered the Columbia Slough, she said.
Composted materials would be stored for 45 days in piles nine feet high under laminate membrane covers that would contain 98 percent of odors, she said. Cedar Grove would provide a natural buffer around its operation, she said.
Regarding the Riedel site, Lee Barrett of Metro said that operation used a very different technology. Riedel “took on all kinds of composting and garbage; it failed from the beginning. Here they’re taking only organic materials; it’s a totally different process.”
Bonny McKnight, Chairwoman of Russell Neighborhood Association, was part of a delegation that viewed the Everett operation.
“There was a slight odor; I’ve smelled worse in some neighborhoods,” she said. “These people are willing to do more than a general industrial operation would do. They’ll add vegetation. They’ve demonstrated concern. Elsewhere, the slough is a ditch with water in it.”
Most of those present were unimpressed. Nearby property owner Tim Warren said he too had visited the Everett site. “There was some odor, less than I expected,” he said, but he added that here there would be a higher component of food wastes. “I was surprised at how much noise there was, and it’s a real issue,” he said. Regarding its appearance, Warren said, “Marine Drive is a scenic highway. There’s nothing you can do short of a 100 foot wall that will block it.” He concluded, “You’re a good company with a good product, you’re just in the wrong location.”
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