Tracy Press

Congressman Jerry McNerney (left) listens as Musco’s Benjamin Hall explains the olive pit burning process today. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press

Heat from burned pits boils blackened sewage into steam that spins a 104-year-old engine outside Musco Family Olive Co., a plant on the southern edge of Tracy near Interstate 580 and the old Patterson Pass Road.

Owners hope the prototype chugging away outside their 310,000-square-foot plant will one day help take them off the grid by using olive pits and sunlight to supply electricity to the multimillion-dollar factory.

The hope, too, is that it’ll give a fresh start to a company that has for the past several years struggled to meet water quality standards because it let too much oil and salt seep into its clay-rich soil.

McNerney (left) and Hall look over a sample of NyPa Forage, a salt-tolerant grain they are using to help remove the salinity from the property. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press

Since 2002, the company has paid about $700,000 in fines and faced numerous warnings for failure to meet state-set deadlines to bring its water treatment up to par with legal standards.

Olive treatment plants in general have historically struggled to meet water quality regulations, partly because of the fatty residue that’s left from processing the bitter fruit, according to state officials.

So the biomass-fueled sewer-water recycler is both a public relations godsend for the Musco family and a way to save the company money by making it more sustainable.

McNerney (left) and Felix Musco, Frank Schubert and Sherwin Gormly watch a 1904 steam engine run attached to an olive pit burning plant. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press

About 60 pounds of pits are burned in the small outdoor furnace every hour. It’s a paltry number compared with the 30 tons, or two truckloads, of pits processed by the plant every day.

The carbon dioxide emitted is roughly the same amount absorbed by the olive orchard that supplied the fruit to Musco last year, said Benjamin Hall, environmental director for the 250-employee company.

And one pound of the dried pits generates about two-thirds the energy in the same amount of coal, he added.

Someday the company would like to recycle all of its olive pits, Hall said.

In the meantime, it’s hard at work with the help of a privately contracted inventor and a NASA recycled water expert to refine its year-old solar-and-biomass-fueled generator.

Inventor Frank Schubert works constantly to refine the amalgam of boiling oil vats, furnaces, pipes and turbines.

For every 100 pounds of olives processed, there are 15 pounds of pits. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press

Solar energy absorbed through panels near the machine heat the saltwater on sunny days. The rest of the time, olive pits fuel the turbine.

“We got to close the loop,” Schubert said about his aim for a more sustainable generator. He pointed out that around his machine fueled by biomass, solar and steam energy, there grows a salt-tolerant turf, which desalinates the dirtied soil by sucking up high concentrations of the mineral into its frond-like leaves.

After watering the wild-wheat-like plant with sewer water, the company will see if it, too, could be used to fire up the steam engine.

Otherwise, the salty grain could be sold to ranchers to feed livestock, which need lots of salt anyway, Hall explained.

It’s another way the factory is trying to recover from a past marred with environmental shortcomings by making a name as a pioneer in renewable energy.

“You’re using everything,” McNerney said after the walk-through, commending the company for its advances. “This is exactly what I like to see in my district.”

• To reach Tracy Press reporter Jennifer Wadsworth, call 830-4225 or e-mail her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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