Special Bd. of Aldermen — 10/26/15 Page 7
approached by a pollution removal expert from Canada who just read in the paper that there were
conversations taking place and | did refer him. So I’m not sure whether you were in contact with him or not but
he did forward a thumbnail sketch of an estimate as well.
Ms. Taylor_| am unaware of that.
Mr. Millan-Ramos | haven’t received any communication in that regards.
Alderman Lopez
Well he might be in the audience so I’m sure he could make public comment.
Mr. Millan-Ramos The only thing | can think of is a gentleman that was advocating for digestion, you know
anaerobic digestion which is something that we are evaluating and preliminary results that we have so far
indicate that it is not a good fit for the nature of the contaminants we have in there.
Alderman Lopez
And | don’t want to stay contentious | just want to frame where my perspective was coming from and where |
think a lot of the neighbors are coming from, is we are getting a lot of contradictory information and they are not
entirely sure what the full scope of choices are. And they weren’t aware of that before they were able to make
public comment. But could you speak to the digestion issue and what some of the challenges would be with it?
Mr. Millan-Ramos Yes | do have information about that. Just to make sure we are accurate in what we are
saying. The feedback that we have received from our headquarter experts so far says that in terms of the
organic contaminants present in the sludge, many of the organic contaminants can be biodegraded under the
appropriate conditions. However, the organic contaminants in the tannery sludge are particularly recalcitrant to
biodegradation particularly in an anaerobic, meaning without oxygen, anaerobic environment in general
organic chemicals are more quickly degraded in the aerobic settings rather than the anaerobic approach
described in the proposed technology.
In addition, heavy metals in the sludge can inhibit the growth of microbes necessary to bio-remediate organic
containments. Anaerobes, that is microbes that grow under anaerobic condition, are particularly sensitive to
inhibitory compounds. So that is the summary of the research that we have done so far.
Alderman Lopez
This is the wrong kind of toxin and it wouldn’t go anywhere.
Ms. Taylor The materials that are contained in that sludge would basically kill the microbes if we put any
microbes in there. They don’t like that, so they don’t work well with it.
Alderman Lopez
They don’t kill naturally occurring microbes do they? Does that impact on the site?
Ms. Taylor No because that is all contained within the sludge itself.
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you Mr. President. Looking at the maps and being familiar with the property, | am extremely concerned
because it is adjacent to a river. The Nashua River flows into the Merrimack which also flows downstream and
