TABLE OF CONTENTS Pages Symposium 1 - the National Sea ...

Experiences with Regulatory Agency: NY DEC.
Our regulatory agency in New York is called the Department of Environmental
Conservation (DEC). The first farm built by Fingerlakes was an integrated farm with
breeding, fingerling and growout production and located in Freeville, NY (approximately
10 miles from Cornell campus). Target capacity was 250,000 lb/yr of tilapia. This barn
was followed 2 years later by a much larger farm located in Groton, NY (7 miles from
Freeville farm) with a target capacity of 1.2 million lb/yr. Similar waste treatment
schemes were used at both locations. Ponds were constructed to perform primary settling
of manure laden water collected within the fish facility. At Freeville, suspended solids
were removed by a rotating micro-screen (90 micron) while at Groton, settling pits were
used that were divided into a primary settling area (1/3 of the pit) that was emptied daily
and a secondary settling area that was emptied once per week. Settling criteria was based
upon 1 gpm of flow required 1 ft 2 of bottom pit surface. Both facilities employed the
Cornell double drain system (15% flow from center bottom drain and 85% of flow from
side wall that is not treated for solids removal, see Figure 2). Characteristics of the two
facilities are described in Table 3.
Table 3. Characteristics of primary settling ponds used for commercial applications with
Fingerlakes Aquaculture LLC
Parameter Comments
Site Freeville Groton
Feed fed per day 500 to 700 lb/day 2,000 to 4,000 Groton coming on
line; full capacity
September 2000
System water 100,000 400,000 Includes biofilters,
volume, gallons
Primary Settling 100 ft x 100 ft x 10 150ft x 250 ft x 15
Pond
ft
Secondary Ponds 40 ft x 100 ft x 6ft None; effluent goes
(in series with pond
#1)
to municipal sewer
Discharge from Wetland with Public sewer;
ponds
potential for field regulated by time of
crop application day
TSS from ponds 10 to 20 mg/L TSS 10 to 20 mg/L TSS
4
settling tanks etc
Side slopes approx 1
to 1
Ultimately, an effective disposal method of manure solids held in ponds is to apply them
agronomically for land agriculture and field crops. When applying waste-water and or
slurry directly to the land, the following recommendation has been made by Chen et al.
(1997):
Both waste water or slurry.
• 150 to 200 m 2 per kg of feed per day (Chen et al., 1997)
Raw sludge or stabilized sludge
• Application according to agronomic rate