Zoning may bar compost site proposal
EAST BRIDGEWATER - A waste processing company that helped Nantucket achieve the highest recycling rate in the nation - an amazing 92 percent - has approached East Bridgewater with a proposal for a facility that would convert yard and commercial food waste into high-grade compost.
But local interpretation of the town’s zoning for such operations is presenting a major hurdle that may ultimately bar this project from moving forward.
Peninsula Compost Group has targeted 8 acres off Franklin Street, owned by local businessman Jon Ridder, for a facility where yard and food waste, instead of rotting in a landfill, would be converted, over eight weeks, into high-quality compost that is certified organic.
Ridder, who also owns a golf course in town, runs stump-grinding and gravel operations and a waste water treatment plant on his property’s 110 acres. But while the area is zoned industrial, it does not lie in the town’s overlay district for solid-waste processing, which is across town in the area of the former Browning-Ferris Industries landfill.
East Bridgewater building inspector Ed Gardner says Peninsula’s compost proposal is not an allowed use on the targeted site - a definite snag since the company will need a building permit to construct the facility.
And the Planning Board, which will be asked for site plan approval and a required special permit, may agree with the building inspector’s interpretation of local zoning.
The compost operation would take in 80,000 tons of waste a year for processing, and transport to and from the site would add about 35 truck trips daily down local roads.
The compost process begins with dumping and sorting the waste inside a 9,000-square-foot building equipped with filters to contain odor. The yard waste and food products, including any cardboard crates they come packed in, are then shredded and sealed into heated rows for the next several weeks under flexible covers that contain odors emitted during breakdown.
The material, once converted, will be shipped out to commercial lawn companies like Scott, according to Peninsula partner Charlie Gifford.
Pests, odors, and noise complaints often accompany organic recycling ventures, but Gifford says the Nantucket operation hasn’t drawn a single complaint over odor in the last year and the operation is virtually pest-free. “We’re processing this material at a temperature they can’t survive,’’ Gifford said. Regarding noise, he described the blowers at the plant as less noisy than a household fan.
“As landfills get more scarce, they should be reserved for items that have to be landfilled,’’ Gifford told the Planning Board at a meeting on Monday. “Burying and burning is the past, and this technology is the future.’’
Gifford said the building inspector’s written opinion, which stated that the compost operation is a use restricted to the solid waste overlay district, was somewhat misguided.
“The state takes the position that this product isn’t solid waste: It’s compostable material,’’ he said.
East Bridgewater’s bylaw defines solid waste as material that is “spent, discarded, or useless,’’ and it classifies garbage as such. But Gifford countered, “Ours is not useless. It will be rebagged and sold.’’
Planning Board chairman Roy Gardner (who is not related to the building inspector) said the operation, in his opinion, constitutes solid-waste processing, and it is therefore not allowed in the proposed location.
“It’s kind of hard to say the materials they are taking in aren’t part of the solid-waste stream,’’ Roy Gardner said Tuesday. “I think the restaurants that want to get rid of it would argue that it is waste.’’
During Monday’s meeting with Peninsula, Gardner said the town established a solid waste overlay district in 1989 on the advice of the state, which said communities that lacked such districts could end up with solid-waste processing facilities in places they didn’t want them. “It’s kind of like the adult entertainment district,’’ Gardner said.
Planning Board vice chairman Steven Belcher agreed with Gardner’s classification of the operation as solid-waste processing. “You will be handling what will be part of the solid-waste stream,’’ Belcher said.
The Planning Board continued the hearing on the compost proposal until Nov. 30 to give members time to check out the operation on Nantucket.
Ridder hopes local officials approve the proposal. “I think it’s a real good idea,’’ he said. “And we’ll use some of the compost on our golf course.’’
Christine Legere can be reached at christinelegere@yahoo.com. 
