Town still cooking gardener's gold

La Conner locals who love getting free compost from the bin on Chilberg Road will be pleased to know that the program is going strong after 17 years.

The Town Council recently approved a two-year contact to process yard waste from Mount Vernon at the La Conner water treatment plant.

The mutually beneficial deal helps support the program that allows the public to grab some free soil amendment for their yards and gardens.

“It reduces Mount Vernon’s costs and decreases what we have to spend on buying woodchips,” said plant manager Kelly Wynn, of Water and Wastewater Services.

Wynn originally began the free compost program as a way to get locals interested in composting, he said, and to avoid the costs of shipping biosolids — the sludge left after wastewater is treated — for disposal across the state the way some other facilities do.

“We’re keeping it in the community and using the product as a resource,” he said. And it’s free as long as you load it. The compost bin outside the treatment plant is “a very popular place,” he said.

So popular, said plant lead operator Jake Hamlin, that they see two or three people stopping by on days when the weather’s bad, and a non-stop stream when the weather’s nice.

Despite the continuously high demand, they’ve never run out of compost.

Currently, the mixture is one-quarter biosolids, one-quarter wood chips and saw dust, and half ground-up yard waste, Hamlin said.

The contract with the city of Mount Vernon will allow them to move away from using wood chips in favor of yard waste, which Wynn said will result in an even higher quality product from the branches, grass, leaves, weeds and yard clippings.

La Conner was awarded the Mount Vernon contract over other cities because they bid the lowest; a maximum payout of $35,000 per year for Mount Vernon’s waste.

Composting is a good business for La Conner: The entire composting program brings in $60,000 to $70,000 dollars per month, Wynn said. The program is not only self-sustaining, but also provides some revenue for other town programs.

All this talk about “biosolids” ― sewage and wastewater ― could make some people squeamish. But the end product is free of pathogens. Hamlin says the roughly 45-day process that turns the mixture into usable, rich compost addresses any health concerns.

The multi-step process involves PVC pipe aeration and adding microorganisms that “eat anything that’s bad,” he said. The process produces intense heat, cooking the piles to more than 150 degrees for 14 days, topped off with a 72-hour period that is even hotter, plus 30 days in a curing pile.

And if anyone is still concerned, anything the plant releases to the public must first be tested by the Department of Health, which screens for organic pesticides, fecal chloroform, and pollutants and establishes nutrient information such as pH and nitrate levels. Only after the curing and testing process can the members of the public get their hands on the compost.

But there is a limit to the free compost deal — don’t come with a tractor and a dump truck to scoop up the entire compost pile. Because that has happened, the compost bin outside the treatment plant has been modified to make large-scale hauling difficult.

The free compost “is designed to help out homeowners who just want to get a truckload or a bucketful,” Hamlin said. “Twenty-four hours a day, anyone with a shovel can come.”