Black Earth Manchester by The Sea CASE STUDY

Black Earth Compost partnered with the City of Manchester-by-the-Sea to redesign a composting facility that had been previously designed by other consulting groups. The project presented several unique and challenging conditions:

• The site is located atop a capped landfill, posing soil stability and structural engineering concerns.
• It is situated in a high-end residential community, requiring strict odor control and sensitivity to NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) attitudes from nearby residents, this led to strict oversight from the town and regulatory agencies.
• Due to the existing design being largely complete, Black Earth had to operate within tight constraints, navigating legacy design elements while still delivering a functional and high-performance system.

Black Earth was seeking support from qualified firms to help them design an efficient composting operation on a limited footprint with excellent odor control.

Green Mountain Technologies (GMT) worked closely with Black Earth to retrofit and enhance the facility’s design within the limitations of the existing engineering plans. Our team focused on reconfiguring the system to meet odor control, cold-weather operation, and regulatory requirements—without requiring major structural changes.

Key components of our solution included:

• Designing a fully enclosed aerated static pile (ASP) composting system with five process stages, two negatively aerated receiving zones and three positively aerated active composting zones, to maximize throughput and control.
• Placing the entire building under negative aeration, with exhaust routed to a biofilter system designed to treat high volumes of air on a limited footprint.
• Engineering a custom aeration system and controller, including high-performance ducting and dampers, adapted for the cold, humid coastal environment.

Despite working within an existing and partially fixed facility design, GMT and Black Earth successfully delivered a system that met the town’s regulatory scrutiny, addressed community odor concerns, and functioned reliably through cold-weather conditions and high internal humidity.