Lystek International says they are a key provider of support to Northern California’s wastewater utilities
by CM Staff
The reported production capacity at Lystek allowed these utilities to continue to operate without the stress of insufficient outlet options.
FAIRFIELD and CAMBRIDGE — In the winter of 2022-2023 the Northern California region experienced some of the most intense storms and rainfall of the century. The atmospheric rivers that pounded the area over the course of three months dropped record amounts of rain and snow over a vast area. Record flooding and significant damage to regional infrastructure elements, such as transportation corridors and agriculture sites, were caused by a total of twelve storms. The heavy rainfall greatly affected the wastewater industry as some treatment plants had to redirect extra sewage flows to storage ponds for future processing. This impacted not only wastewater treatment but also the management of residuals and biosolids, which required constant outlets.
Lystek International was a key service provider for many utilities in Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area in their efforts to provide environmentally secure options for their residuals production. Lystek operates a large regional residuals and organics processing facility in Fairfield (Solano County) – the Fairfield Organic Materials Recovery Center (OMRC) – located halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. This facility, which opened in 2016, has been growing steadily as wastewater utilities look to diversify their approach to resource recovery and utilization of the valuable residuals generated by wastewater treatment technologies. Lystek accepts these municipal biosolids as well as other organic by-products and uses the patented Lystek THP® technology to manufacture a high-nutrient Class A quality biosolids fertilizer (branded as LysteGro®) for sale to farmers and ranchers in the region.
The past winter caused the usual seasonal volumes delivered to Lystek to spike as more wastewater plants had increasing residual volumes to manage and could not use traditional outlets for reuse. The reported production capacity at Lystek allowed these utilities to continue to operate without the stress of insufficient outlet options. Following the increased demand in 2022 the Fairfield OMRC added four additional municipal customers to our growing roster of utilities serviced in the region.
“As we continued to get calls from Facility and Operations Managers in distress looking for additional outlets or additional volumes to be processed at our OMRC, we quickly ramped up operations to respond to this growing request. By extending our operating hours to 24 hours a day and increasing our onsite processing capabilities, we instantaneously scaled to meet the regions demands. We are proud to have successfully scaled to receive and process more than twice the volume of residuals during peak periods, processing an average of 35% more residuals in 2022 than in the previous year,” Jim Dunbar, General Manager, Fairfield Organics Material Recovery Center.
