City of Oxnard, Jan Hauser (Wastewater Division Manager)

Like many other jurisdictions in California, the City of Oxnard is interested in evaluating the feasibility of co-digesting food waste at their wastewater treatment plant in an effort to maximize biogas production and meet the landfill diversion and greenhouse gas reduction requirements of Senate Bill (SB) 1383. For this purpose, the City applied for and obtained an EPA grant and selected Carollo to develop a feasibility study and Dr. Matt Higgins (Bucknell University) to conduct a bench-scale study involving bench-scale co-digestion of the City’s sludge and food waste from the City’s Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). This project is unique in that a bench scale study was conducted and its results will be used to refine the design criteria and operational assumptions used in the feasibility study. The City and the Carollo/Bucknell team hope that this study can serve as an example to other WRRFs interested in evaluating food waste co-digestion.