Dive Brief:

• The Board of Public Utilities in Santa Rosa, CA is accepting proposals from four firms interested in a new composting facility located on city-owned land near the Laguna Road wastewater treatment plant, as reported by The Press Democrat.
• The four firms are BioMRF, Sacyr, StormFisher and Renewable Sonoma. Proposals from those firms must be submitted by Jan. 16. Those firms were selected from a larger pool of proposals the city solicited earlier in the year. A final decision will be made by the county's Waste Management Agency board, as reported by KSRO.
• The city has not released details about how large a composting operation at the location would be, or what type of composting city officials are considering. Officials said the details of the proposals will remain confidential. There are 26 acres the city may lease for a composting facility. 

Dive Insight:

Santa Rosa and Sonoma County have been without a large-scale composting operation since 2015 when a facility was closed down due to runoff pollution in a nearby waterway. Residents with curbside organics pick-up have been footing the extra cost of having organic waste hauled out of the county, totaling "millions of dollars."

A compost facility next to a wastewater treatment plant would be a good match anywhere — biosolids could be further processed at the facility without accruing high transportation costs. Santa Rosa already composts about a third of the organic waste that is processed by the wastewater plant each year, so a compost facility right next door could make it easier for the city to process more.

The move to revamp composting in Sonoma County tracks with broader goals in and around California — a state which is already a leader in composting. The state has a goal of 20% food recovery by 2025, and reintroducing a large composting facility in one of the most-populated northern counties could make a meaningful dent in that goal.