The Washington state Department of Agriculture recently stopped Spokane-based PacifiClean Environmental LLC from transporting yard and food waste from Western Washington to its Quincy, Wash., composting facility after discovering apple maggot larva in compost.

“We’re working in concert with the WSDA in addressing the concerns and issues it has,” says Ryan Leong, general manager of PacifiClean, which is a subsidiary of Spokane-based SRM Development Co. The Quincy site is located in Grant County roughly 45 miles northwest of Moses Lake.

Given the priority the state Legislature has assigned to protect the apple industry, the WSDA concluded the immediate risk of harm to the apple industry outweighed the interest of PacifiClean being allowed to continue to accept unprocessed municipal green (MGW), the WSDA writes in its decision.

The apple maggot larva finding caused apple industry representatives to express “grave concerns” about the potential of “imminent harm to the reputation of Washington apples in the domestic and foreign markets,” the WSDA wrote in a summary order suspending the transport of unprocessed municipal green waste (MGW) to the composting facility.

However, the Western Washington Compost Alliance came out in support of PacifiClean, calling the WSDA’s decision “abrupt and unfair.”

PacifiClean was founded in 2011 as an organic waste management company. The company has secured a contract with the city of Seattle to transport and compost unprocessed municipal green to the Quincy facility. There, the processed waste from Seattle is merged with composted ag-based waste and sold to area growers for application to their crops, Leong says.

A WSDA inspection in early July revealed an apple maggot larva in the municipal compost. At the point of inspection, the Seattle-based waste had yet to be composted. The compost process enhances natural biological activity, which produces heat and increases temperatures above 131 degrees to ensure bacteria, pests, and other harmful organisms are killed.

“Unprocessed MGW is more likely than not expected to contain viable life stages of apple maggot (adult, larvae, pupae, eggs),” the WSDA said in its summary order. The agency has a legislative mandate to provide a strong system to protect the state’s apple industry from infestation by pests, such as the apple maggot,” the WSDA writes.

The compost alliance issued this response: “The Washington Apple Industry had previously agreed with experts that if yard waste is compacted prior to shipping, apple maggots and other quarantine pests cannot survive the compaction pressurization process, and there are no issues.”

The alliance went on to say: “However, despite the very strong science that was presented by experts and by PacifiClean, WSDA decided to ultimately ignore the overwhelming evidence and instead succumbed to big apple industry and agribusiness lobbying groups who mainly only support synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, and who want to stifle and suppress the production of sustainable and organic production inputs such as compost.”

The WSDA is concerned that the lack of a closed structure isn’t as effective in preventing the escape of pests. PacifiClean’s collection facility isn’t enclosed. Leong says the company in June started the initial design work on a structure to be built that will completely cover collected waste before it’s processed. The company expects the building to be completed in September. 

“We’re going to continue to address and meet the needs that they have,” Leong says of the WSDA. “There is a growing need in our state to process green waste, and there is a demand for our finished product, and that is to bring back the waste for soil usage in our region. This is a benefit to the state on a number of levels. It’s certainly a complex challenge.”

Last year, PacifiClean began a partnership with Waste Connections of Washington Inc., a subsidiary of Vancouver, Wash.-based Waste Connections Inc., to provide waste management services to Spokane County.