COMPOSTING YARD TRIMMINGS, BIOSOLIDS, MANURE, AND SPECIAL WASTES – TEXAS STYLE!

Garden-Ville (GV) and Texas Organic Products (TOP), the composting divisions of Texas Landfill Management, L.L.C. (TLM), produce a wide variety of compost, mulches and organic soil mixes for the retail and wholesale horticultural markets. TLM is part of the Texas Disposal Systems family of companies, which have been in the solid waste transportation, disposal, and recycling businesses in Austin, Texas for over twenty four years. TLM operates a Type I municipal solid waste landfill, two (2) solid waste transfer stations, and two (2) composting divisions. The composting divisions process a wide variety of feedstocks, including: brush and yard trimmings, animal manure, food processing wastes (both solid and liquid), dead animals, and most recently, biosolids from the San Antonio Water System (SAWS).TOP is located adjacent to the TLM Type I municipal solid waste landfill which is approximately fifteen miles south of Austin. The thirty (30) acre facility was constructed on clay soils excavated from previous landfill cell expansions, and operates under the authority of the “notification tier” of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission's 30 TAC Chapter 332 Composting Rules. The facility processes over 30,000 tons of source-separated materials, including: yard trimmings, paper products (phone directories, for example), liquid materials such as beverages and dairy products, food processing wastes from grocery stores and prisons, and dead animals. The facility operates on the conventional windrow method, and end-products are marketed in the Austin and San Antonio areas.GV, the San Antonio composting division, has been in business since 1957 and was acquired by TLM in December 2000. GV operates a twenty-six (26) acre static pile composting operation and primarily processes horse stable bedding from a local race track and vegetative materials from local food processors. Also, yard trimmings and brush are processed at the facility. GV produces a wide variety of compost and organic gardening supplies. The primary materials produced are compost, mulches, and compost amended soil products such as landscaping soils, gardening mixes, rose soil, etc. The division also produces organic fertilizers from various materials including heat dried biosolids from the City of Houston, and liquid gardening products as well. There are four (4) GV retail outlets in the San Antonio area, and GV products are distributed throughout Texas.The newest operation in the TLM family of composting divisions is a conventional windrow biosolids composting operation located at the SAWS Leon Creek Water Reclamation Center south of San Antonio. This facility processes approximately 20 dry tons of anaerobically digested and dewatered biosolids daily along with ground yard trimmings, brush and clean dimensional lumber as bulking agents. The operation also processes source-separated special wastes as is handled at the TOP operation in Austin. SAWS compost is marketed as a 3/8” screened biosolids compost, and it is also incorporated into many of the GV soil products such as lawn dressing and turf mixes.This paper presents an overview of these three operations with a focus on the processing and marketing of end products.