Looming Rural Waste Crisis A Boon for Treatment Firm.

When it comes to pollution, forget about all the nasty manmade chemicals that have contaminated urban America.

Rural America has got its own problems.

It's practically up to its ears in manure, as huge dairy farms, cattle feedlots and other "factory farms" grapple with ways to keep it from contaminating local water supplies.

Now, MCA Recycling USA Inc., a privately held Encino-based company formed by some high-powered local investors, including David Geffen's brother, Mitch, believes it has the solution.

The company was formed three years ago after buying the patents to a process it claims instantly composts manure into fertilizer through a high-speed, ultrasonic milling operation. Mother Nature, by contrast, takes months to complete the composting process.

In addition, MCA's operation is designed to simultaneously compost human bio-solids -- the sludge left over after processing of human waste, an environmental problem in itself.

Though the claims may sound too good to be true, the technology and a companion process that MCA has developed have attracted the attention of a water and sewage district in the Inland Empire, where manure produced by giant dairy herds is contaminating the water supply.

"This is a real process," said David Silberstein, a CPA and former real estate attorney who is MCA's CEO. "The business could get monumental."

A key attraction of the business is that, if successful, the company would generate revenue streams at both ends of its business -- it's paid to take animal waste off the hands of farm operators, and then is paid by selling the composted fertilizer.

Military origins

The milling process was patented by Bert Langenecker, an Austrian native who worked as a metal physicist for the U.S. Navy for decades at China Lake, the super-secret weapons testing ground near Ridgecrest, Calif.

After leaving the Navy, Langenecker developed a process to clean up ponds at U.S. military installations that had been contaminated with heavy metals, but realized it could be applied to compost animal and human wastes.

The process employs a high-speed mill that grinds manure to a few microns while bombarding it with ultra sonic waves. Then, under high pressure, the wastes are combined with other materials to produce compost that is free of harmful bacteria, Langenecker said.

"The whole thing happens in a fraction of a second. We are many, many times faster than any composter -- and the compost product (fertilizer) is superior," said Langenecker, who sold his patents for $600,000 in cash, royalties and an equity interest in MCA.

While the manure can be combined with an assortment of organic materials, such as straw, the company sees potentially greater rewards in a compost that is created from a combination of manure and sludge from treated human waste.

In order to do that, it had to develop a separate process to eliminate salt from manure. MCA recently demonstrated that process to the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, which supplies water and treats sewage for 700,000 residents in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

The agency is combating a persistent manure-related water contamination problem, and also runs a facility that uses traditional methods to compost cow manure and the sludge from its four sewage treatment plants.

It is now considering proposals from various companies to increase the efficiency of its composting process.

"The (desalinization) demonstration we saw produced the results (that MCA) said could be produced," said Ben Price, a consultant to the agency.

MCA is now awaiting a decision from the utilities agency on whether or not it wants proceed with a larger-scale demonstration desalinization project. The company also is preparing to exhibit its composting process for the agency.

Land-use concerns

Sondra Elrod, a spokeswoman for the utilities agency, said the agency's board is open to innovative ways of composting its manure and bio-solids, processes that normally take up acres of land.

"As the agricultural land is becoming urban land, they are always looking for a better process," she said.

Silberstein claims that his company's composting process is up to seven times faster than any other process that he has heard of.