By NICK BUDD
Hays Post

The city of Hays has sent out a request for proposals from firms who seek to reuse the lime residue that comes as a result of the city’s water-softening process.

According to Utilities Director Bernie Kitten, the city uses lime in its water-softening process for municipal water. Once the lime is used, the “water plant waste” is transported to one of three ponds where it is stored. Currently, the city has about three years of storage capacity in the ponds.

Once the ponds fill up, the refuse is transported to a landfill. According to the RFP, the residue is “substantially composed of calcium carbonate and are of a very fine particle size.” The city is looking for a firm to reuse the lime as opposed to transporting it to one of the landfills. According to the request, the city hopes to close their landfill where the lime is disposed.

“There’s a lot of places where liming is needed for acidic land,” Kitten said. “We don’t have a lot of that around the Hays area, but down around Great Bend, there’s some acidic soil where liming is needed. There’s also some places in eastern Kansas and all over the Midwest. In Iowa, they’re really big on it, they lime almost everything. Around our area, we’re basically on limestone, so we really don’t need it. It doesn’t harm the soil, we just don’t need it around here.”

Kitten mentioned there is already some interest from some ag-lime companies and somebody that is interested in using it as fill dirt.

“You can mix it with soil and build up building pads and things like that.” Kitten said.

According to Kitten, it can also be used in coal-fired electric plants to scrub some of the residue from smokestacks.

Proposals are due by July 2, and the city will make a recommendation to commissioners on July 19. A tentative date to proceed has been set for July 24. The RFP can be found here.