Moving Towards a Sustainable Biosolids Program: Part I – Implementation Status of the 2003 Long-Range Biosolids Management Plan

The definition of a successful biosolids management program depends on who you ask. More and more people are looking towards “sustainability” as the ultimate yardstick of success. The Orange County Sanitation District's (OCSD) biosolids management program defines success as being able to maintain environmentally-friendly, socially-acceptable end-uses for biosolids at a reasonable cost.The year 2003 was a very important one for moving towards a sustainable biosolids management program at OCSD. Creating sustainability was OCSD's vision as it finalized our Long-Range Biosolids Management Plan that year. Five years into the implementation of the Long-Range Plan is a good time to assess how far the program has come towards achieving OCSD's goal of sustainability.This paper will provide the reader with the Long-Range Plan's background, key concepts (e.g., diversity of management technologies, locations, and contractors; local use of biosolids; and utilizing “merchant facilities”), status implementation of long-range management options (e.g., two out of three are online), discuss course corrections, and what the future may hold.See Part II for the five-year retrospective of OCSD&s biosolids management system (Biosolids EMS). The final 2003 Long-Range Biosolids Management Plan can be downloaded from ocsd.com by searching for keyword “LRBMP.”