Why a problem processing your poop is costing Baltimore millions a month

A problem with processing sewage sludge at Baltimore’s largest wastewater treatment plant has driven one of its operators to ship local sewage out of state at a cost of millions of dollars a month to the city.

Synagro Technologies, a company that dries sludge from the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant into fertilizer, stopped processing it last August, city officials said at a recent City Hall meeting.

As a result, Department of Public Works Director Matthew Garbark said after the spending board meeting last week, processing that typically costs Baltimore about $3 million a month has ballooned to $5.6 million.

Synagro believes Back River’s waste may be laden with flammable compounds known as hydrocarbons that could damage the industrial dryers it uses for processing. The facility experienced an explosion and fire in March 2023 and another fire last September.

A third-party engineering report published last month said the latest fire was possibly due to hydrocarbons in the sludge.

The increased cost has stressed the city’s sewage management budget and was one reason market analysts downgraded the city’s wastewater debt last month, Garbark told the Board of Estimates.

While Garbark expressed confidence that his department will have a fix soon, the agency expects it will need to cover costs by boosting revenues from the region’s ratepayers. That could mean further hiking water and wastewater rates on customers already facing large increases to pay for pricey contractors and modernizations to the aging regional system.

A Public Works spokesperson declined to answer questions about the cause of the problem at Back River and deferred comment to Synagro.

In an email, a Synagro spokesperson who declined to share their name provided a brief statement on behalf of the company and the city. The issues relate to the compatibility between the biosolids and the drying process, the statement said, and the two parties are discussing and working on potential solutions.

Synagro’s Back River operation is essential to keeping the Back River treatment plant running. Baltimore leaders voted to extend the city’s contract with Synagro last year for another four years and $53 million.

One of the leading waste sludge processors in the country, Synagro has operated out of a corner of Back River’s Essex complex since 1991 and handles roughly 70% of the plant’s solid waste.

Synagro dries the sludge into pellets that it sells as an inexpensive alternative to chemical fertilizers, a business model that has made the company the subject of heightened scrutiny in Maryland and around the country in recent years. Wastewater can contain human-made toxins known as “forever chemicals,” and Synagro’s product may lace them into cropland.

Forever chemicals such as PFAS are found in numerous products from nonstick pans and waterproof jackets to firefighting foam, but they don’t break down in nature and can lead to birth defects and cancer. They’re now found throughout the ecosystem, including in sewage.

Should federal regulators or Maryland leaders decide to crack down on forever chemicals — a point of debate this session in Annapolis — city officials worry that wastewater processing could get a lot more expensive, further straining costs.

This isn’t the first time Back River has had to go without Synagro’s machines. After the 2023 explosion, Garbark said Synagro’s driers went offline for around six months.

Garbark pointed to curtailments of a process called digestion at Back River as the primary driver of Synagro’s concerns. This process is designed to remove harmful nutrients from waste after it enters Back River, but, as part of ongoing improvements to the plant, public works officials have taken much of the digestion process offline.

Because of local restrictions regarding disposal of sewage sludge in landfills, Garbark said Baltimore has faced higher costs to transport and dispose of the waste in landfills in other states.

Public Works officials, Garbark said, have had “some very, very good” discussions with Synagro and believe they have settled on “a plan of action.” He said DPW and Synagro officials meet on the Back River site “nearly every day” and expect to have about 30% of digestion in operation next month — a step Garbark hopes will allow Synagro to resume its processing.

Alice Volpitta, a water quality watchdog for Blue Water Baltimore, said hydrocarbon contamination has caused problems for the city’s wastewater treatment plants before. For now, Volpitta said the lapse in Synagro’s processing hasn’t posed problems with the water discharged from Back River, but she called the issue one of the “big red flags” DPW needs to address to avoid bigger environmental issues.

At last week’s spending board meeting, City Council President Zeke Cohen expressed concern about the recent decline in the debt rating and the prospect of future rate increases. The city hiked wastewater rates 15% last year and still fell short of its revenue targets.

City Administrator Faith Leach told Cohen that DPW shares concerns about customer costs and is exploring “additional strategies” to raise revenues. She suggested the city could bring in new revenues by cracking down on major users that neglect to pay their water bills — a multimillion-dollar problem that Baltimore has attempted to tackle for years.

The Banner’s Emily Opilo contributed to this article.