Published April 15, 2008

This is where government waste comes to die and be reincarnated.

Unless a member of the House of Representatives or their staff is in the Clean Plate Club, the leftovers from meals in their cafeteria end up at Chesterfield Farms, an organic composting plant in Crofton.

On a tour of the 5-acre facility Monday afternoon, Rep. John P. Sarbanes, D-Baltimore County, federal officials and business people saw firsthand how leftovers from Washington, D.C., end up in Mr. Sarbanes' 3rd Congressional District - about 2.5 million meals-worth a year.

"It's one of those things, when you are in the middle of it, you think 'what are you doing?' " said Daniel Beard, chief administrative officer for the House, as he stood near neat rows of what were once salads, noodles and chicken fingers, a two-story tall heap of yard waste, near tractors, trailers and a scale the size of a bus - all quite pungent.

Composting of meals is all a part of the Green the Capitol program, an initiative by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to make government more eco-friendly. Mrs. Pelosi is a Baltimore native.

At the House, her program includes using renewable power sources, fewer pesticides, more trees, a fleet of hybrid vehicles and a week-old car electric car from Fargo, N.D., called Gem.

For Chesterfield Farms it means more table scraps.

"If you want to know what your representatives ate for lunch, come here," said Marsha Boehm, who owns the composting company with her husband, Alan Boehm.

From Mr. Sarbanes' plate or the cafeteria's kitchen, House food services separates compostable food from other types of trash. Behind the House offices, a machine turns the food into a pulp and squeezes out water, making it 60 percent lighter and 90 percent smaller before it is sent by truck to Crofton to begin a 75-day process that turns it into dirt.

There is "definitely an awareness" among representatives that this is important, said Mr. Sarbanes, who, wearing a starched shirt, suit pants and a tie was overdressed for a man touring a compost plant.

Once at Chesterfield Farm, the food pulp is mixed with other organic materials like yard waste, making the perfect recipe for soil. It is then piled into narrow rows around five feet high, where microorganisms go to work, eating away at the mix, leaving nutrient-rich dirt in their wake.

Throughout the process, plant employees monitor gas levels and temperatures; long thermometers stick out of the rows like javelins. Roughly every four days the mix is tilled - the rows turned inside-out, encouraging microorganisms to consume the entire pile.

"This is just a perfect scenario, a perfect ecosystem for the bugs to thrive in," Mr. Boehm said as he raised his arms above his head, gesturing to one of his compost rows.

Eventually, bits of plastic are removed and large chunks are collected by shooting the entire mix through a large net. From there it may be mixed with other soils or sold as-is to nurseries, developers, green-roofers and others.

The House sends about 250 tons of trash to landfills every month, but since December when it began sending scraps to Chesterfield Farms, that number has dropped. In February, 11 tons of food waste from the House was either recycled or composted.

But the process is not without its critics. It's a smelly operation and sometimes Crofton residents gripe about the odor.

Mr. Sarbanes said the smell could come from a nearby sewage plant, but concerns will wane as time goes on, and operations like Chesterfield Farms become more common and technologies advance.

"Every day the processes are being improved," he said.

Mr. Boehm, who was raised on a farm and later worked as an excavator - finds himself reliant on soil again. His business has grown, with clients including Anne Arundel County, the World Bank, National Institute of Health and soon BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport, and now he needs more land. He and his wife currently take in up to 30 tons of waste a day.

And in Anne Arundel, he is confined to industrially zoned land. He wants to be considerate of nearby neighborhoods, too, he said.

"It's hard to site a facility. As you can see, we have residents on our downwind side and that's tough," he said.

But for the time, Chesterfield Farms may be the only show in town. There are other composting plants, but his is the only one in the state he knows of that accepts food waste.

In San Francisco, which is in Ms. Pelosi's district, composting is mandatory, Ms. Boehm said.

"This is the last part of the nation that needs to come on board," Ms. Boehm said as she gave a presentation in a heavily perfumed office.