A MOTION acknowledging receipt of King County organics market development plan prepared in accordance with 2019-2020 Biennial Budget Ordinance, Ordinance 18835, Section 102, Proviso P2.
Thank you. By your vote, we've given a do pass recommendation in motion 2019 429. And can we put that in consent? We'll put that on the consent agenda for at the regular course. That takes us to our next item, which is about how the county can play a more active role in expanding and enhancing the market for compost that is produced using the organic materials generated by the county within the county. This report was required as part of the 2019 2020 budget. And again here Rose is here to brief the item as well as. I am still here. Tomorrow's Council staff propose motion 2019 0353 What is the chair noted acknowledge receipt of the King County Organics Market Development Plan in response to a budget proviso. The materials for this item begin on page 335 of your packet, but I'm actually going to start on the following page on 336. So as I noted earlier in today's committee's meeting committee meeting, the Solid Waste Division is responsible for the disposal of waste generated in the 337 partner cities and the unincorporated area under the county solid waste system. Partner cities manage curbside collection of garbage, recycling and organics within their jurisdictions and in general contracts with private haulers to provide that service. While garbage is transported directly to the Cedar Cedar Hills Regional Landfill for disposal, recyclables and organics are taken directly to processing or compost facilities where materials are prepared for sale to manufacturers and other users. And I will just note that in order for mature materials to be effectively recycled, there must be a market for the end product. Approximately 1.03 million tons of organic materials were generated in King County, Snohomish County in Seattle in 2018. And this refers to things such as yard waste, food waste, wood waste, and 55% of that is attributable to King County, according to a consultant report requested by the Solid Waste Division. There are three composting facilities that accept and process organic material from residents and businesses in the region Cedar Grove, composting in Maple Valley and in Everett and Lenz Enterprises. So in the 2019 2020 Biennial budget, the council risk restricted $500,000 to be expended, only to develop a plan to expand and enhance the regional market for compost that's produced during using the county's organic stream. And to pilot the recommendations in the plan and also included in the budget is a linked proviso that withholds $250,000 until the executive transmits the plan to the council. And it also required Salt Waste Division in the development of the plan to consult with other county agencies and to consider best practices, procurement policies use in development and site rehabilitation projects and agricultural subsidies. Moving ahead to the analysis portion of the staff report on page 337. So in response to the budget proviso, the executive transmitted the proposed motion in front of the committee, which would acknowledge receipt of the King County Organics Market Development Plan. The plan notes that the division contracted with Cascadia Consulting Group for Market Assessment and Best Practices Research hosted two full day organic summits and consulted with county agencies to inform the recommendations in the plan. The proviso requires the executive to include a set of recommendations, and these are divided into three areas in the plan. One Enhance and expand the local market for compost to reduce wasted resources and contamination. And three, expand regional organic material processing. Table one on page 338 provides a description of each of the recommendations in the first area, which seeks to increase the purchase of compost in the region. And the plan notes that at this time only recommendation one B, which can be found in that table, would need new budget authority and that all other efforts will be paid using existing appropriations. The transmitted supplemental omnibus under consideration by the Council includes funding. Four to support recommendation one B moving ahead to page 340. Unless there are. Questions at. Table two on page 342 provides a description of the single recommendation and the second area of the plan, which seeks to minimize contamination. When plastic and glass are disposed improperly in organics collection bins, the resulting compost can become contaminated if processors are not able to remove the plastic and glass fragments. And the plan notes that contamination reduces compost quality and can hamper market marketability and impact value. The recommendations in Area three seek to aid in the development of additional composting processing infrastructure, and the plan indicates that in 2018, the King County and Snohomish County public health agencies permitted organics facilities to process 530,000 tonnes annually, but that they only process an estimated 470,000 tonnes, which represents an 85% which represents 85% of permitted capacity. The current plan notes that in order to reach the county's zero waste goal adopted in the Strategic Climate Action Plan and the 2019 Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan, more processing capacity will be needed in the future. In addition to divert more organics from disposal at the landfill. Table three on page 341 provides a description of the recommendations in Area three, and I will conclude my remarks in just noting that with the transmittal of this plan, the funds encumbered by the proviso can be released if motion 2019 0353 is approved by the Council. That concludes my remarks. I'd be happy to take any questions. We also have executive staff present. Questions. Council Member Dombrowski. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the excellent and easily understandable staff report. Tara, I really appreciate it. I wanted to start, Ms.. Chair, by thanking the Solid Waste Division for their strong work in preparing this report. It's comprehensive and responsive on this important area of county business, and I think it identifies some really important goals for us, including making sure we have adequate capacity to handle this waste stream and the importance of the waste stream in terms of keeping it out of the landfill or whatever disposal method we end up eventually going to . Councilmember Lambert I had one question, Mr. Chair, and that was, I think, in the proviso, if memory serves me correctly, in addition to asking for the study to for capacity and uses and there's some great creative uses in here that are very pro-environment and environmentally friendly. But we also asked them to actually pilot some work by acquiring a product and putting that to use. And I maybe I missed that, but did they do that and how did that go? Yes. So I would refer you to page 338 of your packet. Okay. The first recommendation noted there is to provide technical assistance to King County agencies to increase compost use in county projects. And included in that effort is the intent to have a universal compost purchasing contract that agencies could then pull from. So does that answer your question? That sounds like a go forward method, but I believe of the of the restricted funds, we wanted some of those to actually be put to use today, you know, currently to acquire product and put it to use in the field. And I'm wondering if and I see Pat nodding his head, maybe would he be the guy to ask for more detail on that? Or I would just note that many of these are in various stages of sort of planning and implementation and of course specific questions. Executive. Yeah. I wonder if. Mr. McLaughlin if the chair permit would have any examples of any early successes for putting this product to use in the field. And he's bringing back up. Yeah. And I'll have to go there. Probably not. That's that's a softball. I have no idea what the answer is. So I think that's been being I think the project being put to use. But I am truly curious as to how it's going. Yes. Thank you again. For the record, Pat McLaughlin. It's my honor to serve as your director of Solid Waste. And I'm accompanied with Josh Marks, who's really been our project manager on this feat. And we have indeed experimented with some materials that I'll I'll let Josh speak to this to not just to consume more material, but to actually find complementary ways to manage the environmental impacts of of managing waste. And I'll let Josh talk a little bit about the materials and the impacts of the pilot testing, which has led to a funding request because we see an opportunity to actually expand it. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Josh Mar, for the record for the Waste Division. Yes, we've been engaged in a number of activities to develop the plan to buy more compost. To date, we haven't actually purchased piles of compost. We've been working to create programs and partnerships, so we've been working with many of the agencies within the county. So the Parks Department and. Roads, as well as the permitting agency to develop different approaches so that we can purchase compost. And as was mentioned in the staff report, we had a summit where we sought input from a number of stakeholders from the region. And really the two takeaway messages from those summits were that King County government could and should be doing more to purchase compost. And so we need to figure out what does that mean. We don't currently have universal material specifications for compost and there's limited and lack of awareness among project managers about opportunities for compost. So we need to build those relationships, develop those opportunities before we actually are on the ground buying compost. And as I mentioned, we do have a project to study the the benefit of using compost in the sense our waste division operations and that's applying compost to closed landfills and attempting to or measuring the GHG benefits of doing so so that we are going to be doing. But we as was mentioned in the staff report, we need additional funds that are in the omnibus. And so the last sentence of the ER number two says the pilot must include a program whereby the solid waste agent purchases compost for county use. So we haven't done it yet, but we we are doing it. Is that how we're complying with this? Yes. So our intention. With with. Funding provided would be. That we would go after we actually, I think a request about $560,000 that would help support the application of some of these materials on some of our closed landfills to model greenhouse gas emission sequestration. There is some pretty interesting study and there's a great video on it with respect to greenhouse gas sequestration and working compost into ag lands. And I would encourage you to work with the department, National Resources and Parks Farmland Preservation Program to see if we could pursue that as an area of cooperation. Yeah, we've we have actually done some onsite testing. We've in partnership. With Cedar Grove. Have. Applied some of their what they refer to as overshoots, maybe reject material that they don't have a market for. And we've been able to apply that up at Cedar Hills and do measuring and comparative results to other types of cover materials to understand the potential benefits. And we'll continue to explore those those options going forward. So if I may. Mr.. I'm still a little confused, less concerned about why when we aired 500,000 and said that it should it must include a program whereby the division purchases companies for county use. How is it that we are releasing these funds without them? The notion was there use some of the money to buy to test the stuff but that that hasn't yet been done and understand you are going to ask for some money to do that. But I mean, help me understand. And we project. That we will have that again. With funding. Appropriated. We'll have that complete by the end of the biennium, consistent with the proviso. Okay. So we're on a path. Absolutely. That okay. And just if I can, I'll be done then. Mr. Chair, the comment was made well, not just to, you know, buy it for buying sake or something like that, but one of our challenges is that the region is producing so much of this compost. Folks are really good about not putting it in the garbage bin. One of the thrust of this work was to have some demand created and to actually buy it so we don't have it piling up in Councilmember Dunn's district and the issues that arise from that. So we are trying to create a market to increase demand, to keep it out of the landfill and put it put it to use. And that's why I'm excited about some of the work you've done here in the proposals. And I just want to give you my encouragement to keep going in that direction, because I think it's a pretty exciting opportunity for the county to expand its role and make this market work thing. This Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So the compost. Also gives us nothing. So how are you going to capture the methane that's being put off by the compost? Well, the private sector manages composting currently, so Cedar Grove manages in a rollback condition. And so there is no methane or very limited methane production in anaerobic condition. So that's anaerobic. So why does smell so bad then? Are the neighbors complaining about this now? Well, I would just say that the degradation of organic material is has odor. That is correct. But most that odor doesn't it come from methane production? The methane isn't that partly what creates the smell? I don't have a scientific explanation for that councilmember. And then also in number one, A, so there's a lack of uniformity in the specifications. So when you're looking at using these facilities, this compost in different places, having a lack of uniformity will make a difference whether it's going to be used in the roads or the parks or at your top parts of your landfill. So how are you going to get a more uniform specification out of this? So in partnership with the Sustainable Purchasing Program, we're developing specifications and we're using in the Department of Transport, the Washington State Department transportation specifications as well as others to to develop specifications that are that are used in different kinds of applications. Thank you. For the discussion. Council upthere. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And this is following up on Councilmember Dombrowski is kind of getting my head around the the difference between the expenditure restriction and the proviso. But, you know, it's it's been a while. I understand that the expenditure restriction was on the development of a planned 250,000 and there is a separate section in the budget that had the 500,000 and it said that's for developing recommendations and piloting. Did the development, the recommendations cost 500,000? Did all that five per k get eaten up before actually implementing a pilot? I don't say that like a bad thing necessarily, but is is how much of that 500 K has been spent and I don't have a number of time how much was spent. We can provide that to you. We did spend significant dollars working with the consultants to develop the reports. But again, I think to address the question of why or why not. And we purchase complex. We need a place to put compost, right? I mean, there's always division isn't hasn't been in the business of of using this amount of compost. So we need to develop those markets. And that's what the initial efforts are all about, is trying to find those markets with our partners. And once we've developed that and there's confidence and willingness to use it, then that material can be applied. I mean, it's expressing a little nervousness that if the appropriation said here's half a million dollars to develop some recommendations and go pilot them, and then if it comes back, okay, we spent most of that just on developing the recommendations. Please appropriate more money to pilot it than either we got our budget way off or in terms of our estimates in advance of how much to appropriate for that or maybe it hasn't been spent. So I'd be interested in seeing this sort of a rough we can provide some greater clarity over the financials to address that concern. Are you are these folks back in? Are you at the SA Waste Division because you're shaking your head like you've got some knowledge or are you just commenting that they had check? Oh. Okay. All right. Yeah. I want to echo, if I can. We're going to go to the notion. The reason that language is there is and we put it in the SA Waste Division because we couldn't put it in another, you know, function. But the notion was start, bind some hysteria, deploy it, test your test, test the markets, put it in those stormwater cleaning facilities to save the salmon, get out there and do it. I we would never spend $500,000 to prepare a study, and I know you didn't. At least you better tell me then. Okay. I'll look forward to that same information that comes more up to go ask more in terms of the breakdown. Councilmember Lambert So how are you going to go about removing the contamination that is in the collected organics? And as you know better than anybody, China said that they won't accept any. Any impurities over 2.5% and our garbage is at 10%. So organics that you probably have a lot of, you know, garbage that have been thrown at it because you can put in your pizza things and such. So how are you going to remove the contaminants? And many countries are moving away from composting to an anaerobic digestion. So like for instance, Germany, which I happen to think is ahead of us environmentally, I know that some people don't think so, but I happen to think so. So do the contamination. They are not finding people wanting to purchase their compost. The report, very well done by our staff does talk about the costs of the equipment on order to do that. And the only way that I know to capture the methane is an enclosed facility, and this is not an enclosed facility. So your answer earlier that you don't really have to capture it because it's not there is confusing to me. So anyway, I think I think there's a lot of things that we need to continue to look at. Thank you. Colleagues. Are we comfortable moving the subcommittee committee today? Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I moved a proposed motion of a 2019 0353 be given a do pass recommendation. Councilmember Cole was moved to give a DU Pass recommendation to motion 2019 353. See no further discussion. Would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council Member. Belted Chief Council Member. Dan Vasquez. Councilmember Dunn. Councilmember Gossett. Councilmember Nancy. Council member of the Borough Council member Ron, right there. Mr. Chairman. All right, Mr. Chair, the vote is 790 noes to excuse. By your vote, we've given a do pass recommendation the motion 2019 353. And we'll put that on the record. Of course, we'll put that on consent on the back of the course of action. That takes us to item seven in today's agenda. Our final item is regarding the county's 2020 legislative agenda. The county, as the other three, the state are, is a creature of the state and therefore often issues we wish to address or work on behalf of on behalf of our constituents are impacted or on some occasions even limited by state policy.