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Monterey One Water Launches New Waste-to-Energy Project
On December 2, the Monterey One Water (M1W) regional wastewater treatment and recycling agency celebrated the launch of its new food waste receiving station and digester mixers, part of its Food Waste Co-Digestion Program. M1W will combine food waste slurry with wastewater biosolid sludge from its treatment plant. Then, the biogas produced during decomposition will generate electricity for M1W operations.
A company called Anaergia will truck in up to 51,000 tons of food scraps each year for this program. Although the M1W Regional Treatment Plant is adjacent to the M1W Regional Treatment Plant, ReGen Monterey (formerly known as the Monterey Regional Waste Management District) was not ready yet to participate in this specific project. However, cooperative waste-to-energy projects between M1W and ReGen Monterey are in the planning stages.
Under Senate Bill 1383 (SB 1383), enacted in 2016, the State of California has established requirements to reduce the amount of food waste that enters landfills and thereby reduce emissions produced by anaerobic decomposition (microbes digesting waste without the presence of oxygen). This M1W project is being cited as an example for other regions. The state agency CalRecycles (California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery) oversees implementation of SB 1383 and provided a $4.2 million grant for this project through its Co-Digestion Plant Program.
This is the first of several projects coordinated by M1W that will divert waste, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and generate power for its Regional Treatment Plant facilities. For example, biogas from ReGen Monterey will be available, probably in March 2026, to entirely power the Advanced Water Purification Facility (AWPF), a component of the Pure Water Monterey water recycling project. An electrical upgrade will allow soon all major treatment systems at the Regional Treatment Plant to operate using electricity generated by co-generation biogas and landfill gas. Your Chamber has supported M1W applications for grants to move these projects forward.
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