The City of McCleary has an unpleasant problem — it’s becoming more and more difficult to get rid of its solid waste.

In the past, the city had departed with residents’ solid waste from the sewer treatment plant by drying it and sending it to farms, most recently, a farm on the east side of the state, where it’s spread on fields as fertilizer.

But lately, the city has had to pay to have the solid waste dumped at a landfill. It’s an expensive and frowned-upon solution to a serious problem.

It was about mid-year in 2016 when the city first noticed its solid waste, when prepared, was not passing quality tests. That was after years of consistent test results.

“We passed in 2014 and 2015 and until July 2016,” McCleary public works director Todd Baun said during a council meeting on Feb. 22. “In 2016 in July, I don’t know what changed, but something changed in the treatment plant process or something changed in the bugs or something — I don’t know exactly what — but we have tried several different options and we haven’t had a consistent test.”

In order to be disposed of in fields, the solid waste must be tested and rate as “class B.” (For perspective, “class A” solid waste can be bagged and sold to the general public for lawn fertilizer.)

Some adjustments at the McCleary sewer treatment plant saw the solid waste pass one or more tests, however, it could not consistently be rated as class B. Without a consistent class B rating, farms on the east side of the state no longer will take solid waste from the city.

Taking the solid waste, also referred to as sludge, to a landfill will cost the city $69,000 per year. Additionally, the state Department of Ecology will not allow the city to keep disposing of the waste in that manner for long.

“Ecology doesn’t like that option anymore,” Baun explained. “They basically told us we would have to create a class B solid again or start hauling it to a different plant (in Shelton) so they could treat it to a class B solid, and that makes our costs go up a lot — basically three times, almost four times.”

To treat the solid waste to class B, improvements will be necessary at the McCleary plant. City engineer, Jon Hinton, as a representative of Gray and Osborne Inc., said his company could provide an analysis to present the council with any feasible solutions.

Currently, Hinton believes the solution will involve refurbishing an abandoned digester owned by the city of McCleary to add to the storage time.

“What you want to do is get longer storage to get the biological action to get the fecal coliform count down,” Hinton said.

The plant has enough capacity to “digest” sludge for two weeks. With the added digester, the plant could meet the necessary drying time for the solid waste to consistently receive a class B rating, estimated at 60 to 90 days.

The plant was built for a drier, which results in a shorter drying time before sludge is ready, but due to costs, the city opted to not install one, Hinton said. That option is still beyond the city’s financial means.

And while the conversation about dealing with human solid waste at the sewer plant was met with puns and chuckles, Hinton and Baun also faced tough questions from the council, led by Councilman Ben Blankenship.

Blankenship asked why, if in July 2016 the plant started failing tests, the council was just now hearing about it.

Despite the council noting that the plant had had issues passing tests on solid waste in the past, Baun reiterated that the solid waste had been testing as a class B consistently until July 2016, and despite many efforts, it wasn’t until recently the city realized it couldn’t make it test consistently as a Class B again.