Bonita Spring Utilities has a plan to protect the environment, save its customers some money, and reduce the number of its trucks on the roadways.

The Utilities company says they will accomplish all three of those goals by using a process called membrane bio-reactor technology. It allows the utility company to take the wastewater and instead of producing sludge, that can be expensive and hazardous to get rid of, it will produce solid pellets. Those pellets will be turned around and sold to farmers as fertilizer. Executive Director of the Utility, Fred Partin, says this technology is not exactly new.

“I know it’s been used for a number of years…people will be familiar with the product known as mil-organite…I think over the years that’s basically the same product that we would be creating.”

Partin says the pellets would help alleviate the number of trucks on the roads since it requires fewer vehicles to transport. He adds, the new wastewater facility that is ready to open near Terry Street and I-75 will use the new pellet technology, but the older facility unfortunately doesn’t have the space for it.