News Agribiz Going to waste: Muskegon seeks industrial users for wastewater facility
Going to waste: Muskegon seeks industrial users for wastewater facility
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By Kym Reinstadler | MiBiz
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MUSKEGON — Jonathan Seyferth has returned home to Muskegon County to look for dirty work. Lots of it.
Seyferth, 33, joined Muskegon Area First in October as business development manager. His primary charge: increase flow to the county’s wastewater management system, where average daily flow dipped to 28 percent of capacity in 2010.
Muskegon County commissioners hiked sewage treatment rates 45 cents per 1,000 gallons in September. Attracting more industrial users would make the system more efficient and could prevent future rate increases, said Ed Garner of Muskegon Area First.
Attracting new business users to the area is Muskegon Area First’s preferred way of increasing flow through the system because that would also result in bringing in new jobs to the area, Garner said.
As recently as 1996, the 11,000-acre ground filtration site straddling Moorland and Egelston townships was operating at 75 percent of capacity. Since then, Muskegon County’s primary wastewater producer, Sappi Paper, has ceased operations locally, leaving the facility woefully under-used.
“There’s no silver bullet out there,” said Seyferth, whose family has been prominent in Muskegon County’s business community for three generations. “There aren’t many businesses that use as much water as a paper company.
“But,” Seyferth continued, “the cleaning process we use is really suitable and marketable to a lot of different industries. A combination of different things will probably be the ticket, although it will take time.”
The county may have to look farther afield if the facility is to achieve 100-percent utilization of its capacity because so many commercial and industrial users have taken “green” steps to reduce consumption and to reuse water, he said.
“The system really could go regional because its capacity is so large,” Garner said.
Because of the facility’s close proximity to U.S. 31 and M-46, Seyferth considers the facility convenient to West Michigan food producers who may want to truck in wastewater.
The excess capacity could come in useful since some West Michigan communities are approaching capacity of their water treatment plants. It might prove to be more cost-effective to extend the lines to Muskegon or to truck or ship wastewater there than building new facilities in the communities themselves, Garner said.
It is also possible that sewage could be transported for treatment by boat, because Muskegon is the deepest water port along Lake Michigan’s Michigan shore, Garner said.
Coincidentally, the former Sappi site does have a dock on Muskegon Lake. Melching Inc., a Nunica-based demolition company, now owns the 119-acre former mill site. The company has hopes of redeveloping that site for industrial use, since residential and commercial development is unlikely due to environmental issues related to the century-long paper mill operations at the site. According to published reports, Melching plans to market the site for industrial uses.
About 70 percent of Muskegon County residences and businesses are already using the wastewater system, which ranks among the most economical in the state, even after the rate hike this fall. Some non-users are in rural areas too remote to make hooking up affordable.
Seyferth devoted his first two months on the job to studying the problem and developing marketing strategies to lure additional users.
A committee of Muskegon County Wastewater Management System users will take December to review and give input to the plan. Seyferth expects to present a synthesized marketing plan to members of the Muskegon County commission in January.
Seyferth is reluctant to share specifics before his plan benefits from the internal vetting process, but he disclosed that Muskegon Area First has already done a direct mailing touting the system to food processing companies.
He’s also working with the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Michigan State University Product Center to explore what it would take to establish the site as an Agriculture Renaissance Zone, which would allow new agribusinesses to operate there tax-free for a period of time.
The massive system, which began operations in 1973, is unique in its effectiveness at filtering biological debris without diminishing the oxygen content, Seyferth said.
It includes aeration and settling basins, holding ponds and cropland. Gray water is used to irrigate the corn, alfalfa and hay fields on the site during the growing season. The county sells the crops as livestock feed to offset energy costs of the operation.
Cleansed water is returned to Muskegon Lake or Lake Michigan.
The West Michigan city of Hart uses a similar wastewater treatment process, but on a much smaller scale, Seyferth said.
