Wearing gloves and dressed for the cold, the men walk slowly, dropping red worms into the soft dried-out sludge that was spread out before them.
McCloud Community Services District workers are carrying out a sewage-eating, cost-saving plan devised by general manager Wayne Grigsby.
The large growing Eisenia foetida worms, according to the plan, will eliminate unwanted waste from McCloud’s Pond 3 and create compost.
Earlier this year, the sludge was moved from Pond 1 to Pond 3, and Pond 1 was repaired.
Grigsby’s red worm plan is designed to save the cost of hauling the sludge away.
“The state mandates the removal of sludge from the sewage ponds every two years. So, in two years I will go down to I-5 rental and rent a portable power screen for a week,” Grigsby said. “We will get about three products out of screening the sludge. It will separate the plastics and composts, and I will get the worms separated out in a third pile. I can reuse the worms into another pile of sludge that will accumulate from the other pond. The plan is to sell the mulch for people’s gardens to recoup the cost from this. We can also sell the worms.”
Grigsby bought the worms from a Florida company called Vermitechnology.
“I was told these worms will grow huge,” he said. “It depends on the material they feed on and how long we have them.”
A Vermitechnology brochure shows a picture of a 2-year-old worm that is being held by a group of people.
“We will take samples of this to send to a lab to check the metal content in it to see how the sludge is breaking down,” Grigsby said. “I will check this periodically to see how the worms are doing.”