Construction of waste pit to begin within weeks

Pit will hold food processing waste, not manure

The new owners of 80 acres of farmland off Bethel Church Road hope to soon begin construction on a concrete pit that can hold as much as 1.4 million gallons of food waste.

The farm is in both East Vincent and East Coventry townships, but the pit will be located on 25 acres in the East Coventry portion.

The food waste, which court decisions have ruled is a legitimate fertilizer for farm use, will be used for exactly that by the new owners, Spring City Acres, LLC.

The partnership is connected to a Lititz-based company called Nolt Trucking, which will truck the mostly liquid waste in from food processing plants when the plants call for a pick-up, according to a consultant with the company.

It will consist mostly of “sugar water” and “chocolate water” and will not contain any meat products or human waste, according to Bill Rogers with A.E.T. Consulting Inc., which was hired by the farm owners to prepare the “nutrient balance plan” for the storage pit.

In addition to being built out of concrete, the 120-foot wide, 16-foot deep pit will be built on top of a plastic liner designed to keep any leaks from getting into the groundwater or streams, he said.

The liner will have a manhole with a leak-detection system that will be checked weekly to ensure there are no leaks, said Rogers, adding that “in all the 25 years I’ve been involved with these, I’ve never known one to leak.”

The plans also call for the pit to have at least one foot of unfilled space from the top, so that a rainstorm cannot cause it to overflow. It will be surrounded by a fence. Should a spill occur, sawdust and, in a worstcase scenario, heavy equipment will be used to create earthen berms to contain the spill, according to the plan, which was provided to MediaNews Group by East Coventry Township Manager David Kraynik.

The “very diluted water” has “a high nutrient value” when spread on farm fields, said Rogers. Those fields will be used to grow crops and there will be no farm animals kept there, according to the plan.

Although the pit will not emit the smell of manure, it will have an odor. “Agriculture stinks,” Rogers said. “There will be an odor, but it will not be the same odor as a dairy.”

On its website, Lloyd Z. Nolt Trucking describes itself as a “2nd and 3rd generation now managing the business but is still holding up the excellent name and service of the past. We now farm over 700 acres of ground, growing corn, wheat, and soybeans. We also have a methane digester at our swine feeding operation that we add food waste sludge to.”

The site indicates the company has “a fleet of over a dozen trucks.”

EVAN BRANDT — MEDIANEWS GROUP A view of a portion of Spring City Acres farm where a storage pit for food waste to be used as fertilizer is set to be constructed. Bethel Church Road can be seen at left.