Waste from an island fish farm helps feed a robust Belfair composting operation.
BELFAIR – Pile upon putrid, steaming pile, Bob Dressel rots Bainbridge Island.
He makes mountains out of its gnarled stumps, felled boughs and Flintstonian-looking fish bones. Then he helps time and a nearly invisible army of alchemists turn them into pay-dirt.
“That’s Bainbridge Island right there,” said Dressel, pointing to two-stories worth of yard waste, heaped atop a 27-acre slab of asphalt on the edge of Belfair.
Surrounding “Bainbridge Island” are dozens of debris piles of equal stature, each in various stages of decomposition, each destined for a triumphant return to a garden near you.
Meanwhile, standing humbly in their shadows and nurturing them throughout their transition-by-microbe are Dressel, his son Robb and Jim McCary.
“I feel kind of like the prom queen,” said the elder Dressel, who amid the rattles of machinery and the rotting of waste appeared ill-suited for tiara. “I got into this business accidentally.”
It wasn’t by accident that Dressel took over the land on which his company, North Mason Fiber, now sits.
Once home to a Weyerhaeuser rail facility in the 1970s, the property saw a long period of dormancy before Dressel leased it in 1988. He bought the land two years later and for the next decade only dealt in wood chips and other timber products.
Then, following a $1.5 million storm-water upgrade in 2000, Dressel found he was equipped to handle more than just wood chips. Garbage companies came calling and, seeing an opportunity, he obtained the necessary permits to expand his business.
Seven years later, North Mason Fiber is one of the largest facilities of its kind in the state, turning yard debris, pre- and post-consumed food waste, livestock manure and fish into 18 different products.
More than 82 percent of the company’s incoming yard waste – about 2,300 tons in 2006 – arrives via Bainbridge Disposal.
Come May 1, when Bainbridge Disposal begins recycling uncooked fruits and vegetables, Dressel expects that number – and the mountains of waste – to climb even higher.
The company recently became the first composting facility in the state permitted to produce fish compost, receiving fish from Anacortes-based fish farm American Gold Seafood – which has a facility in the waters off of Bainbridge – and other purveyors of salmon, tuna, shark and halibut.
Dubbed “Olympic Mountain Compost,” the fish product will be available for retail sale in June, along with North Mason’s entire line of products, which previously were only sold in bulk.
For island consumers and businesses, the Belfair facility is the little-known link between their waste’s departure, and its often unheralded rebirth as a tangible product.
For the Dressels and McCary, who spend their days wading through the mists of decay, it is a monument to patience, science and attention to detail, all of which are required not only to ensure their products conform to the numerous rules and regulations standing between them and a certified “organic” label, but also to ensure the piles mature into something useful.
“Everything that comes into this facility goes out as a product,” Bob said. “It’s a very involved process.”
The process unfolds in several steps that differ depending on the type of material being composted.
Incoming waste is sorted and mixed according to type. Larger debris, like stumps, will encounter McCary’s “stress reliever,” a yellow back-hoe that crunches pieces into a more manageable size.
Slowly piles take shape atop a network of pipes that pump oxygen through them 24 hours a day.
Each pile is neatly labeled – “HP1” for “horse poop number one,” “S1” for “Salmon number one,” and so on.
Thermometers are inserted at regular intervals so employees can closely monitor temperature and samples are taken frequently to make sure each pile is progressing according to plan.
After a prescribed period the piles are cured for 30 to 60 days and tested again by the state Health Department or Department of Ecology before being screened and made available for sale.
From beginning to end, the process takes six months to a year, depending on the product.
Trying to illustrate the complexity of the transformation, Bob unfolded a letter from California-based consultant Wallace Laboratories regarding some recent tests of his compost.
“Dear Bob,” it says, foregoing further pleasantries in favor of some rather dizzying data. “The compost is lightly acidic with a pH value of 6.83. The salinity is low at 2.01 millimho/cm. About two-thirds of the soluble salts are from potassium salts.”
Remaining paragraphs are equally cryptic, venturing into the world of carbon-nitrogen ratios and saturation extracts – not exactly familiar territory for the average backyard composter.
Still, Bob said, the final products are familiar to most.
“If there’s no air the microbes die,” he said, letting a handful of coffee-colored soil, flecked with white microbes, filter through his fingers. “It takes a while to get to this point, but this is good organic compost. It’s a lot like making wine.”
Which means the addition or subtraction of different ingredients as needed.
Fish, of which the company receives up to 300 tons a week, help compensate for the loss of nitrogen that occurs outside the growing season.
“Some of them come in whole, some of them are scarred by sea lions,” Robb said. “A lot of them might be perfect except for one fin, but they have to be perfect to sell on the market.”
McCary’s back-hoe unearthed a steaming clawful of dirt and dumped it on the asphalt for inspection. Against an earthen background rested a pile of bones.
The pungent smell, Bob remarked, will completely disappear by the time the process is finished.
“We just got in a shipment of tuna from Vietnam,” Robb said. “This guy has only been in the ground for one day.”
Judged unfit for the dinner table, the fish ultimately find redemption in compost that in many cases finds its way back to Bainbridge.
Heather Church, who along with her husband Dean owns Bainbridge Disposal, said she just recently broke into a bag of fertilizer.
On the outside was the North Mason Fiber label. On the inside was a product that started out months ago as someone’s yard waste, and ended up in her yard.
“I just got some for my garden,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
