Waste Savings at American Maize
Products Company
E. M. VAN PATTEN AND G. H. MC INTOSH
Bacteriologist & Chemist
American Maize Products Co.
Roby, Indiana
BRIEF   HISTORY
American Maize Products Company is a producer of corn products
by the wet milling process. The company plant was built at its present
location in the north part of Hammond, Indiana, in the year 1907
largely because of the availability of an unlimited supply of water from
Lake Michigan for cooling and process purposes, and the availability of
the lake for the discharge of such waters. During the past several years
the company has used as much water as 15,000,000 gallons a day.
Prior to the year 1940 there were no sewage treatment facilities of
any nature in the plant area. Consequently the entire waste flow was
discharged into Lake Michigan and equalled at times as much as 350,000
persons or 10 population equivalents per bushel ground. In 1940 the
Hammond Sanitary Board constructed an intercepting sewer into the
northwesterly part of Hammond for the purpose of diverting sanitary
sewage and trade wastes to the modern treatment plant of the district.
The company then constructed sewerage facilities on its property and
connected same with the intercepting sewer. Since then, the company
has diverted all of its sanitary sewage and a portion of its trade wastes
to the treatment plant of the district. This relieved the situation in
Lake Michigan considerably, but the company continued its program
of waste abatement. On September 18, 1944, the company agreed to
make further improvements which were incorporated in a stipulation
filed in the case of the State of Illinois vs. State of Indiana et al, in the
Supreme  Court of the  United   States.
A definite program of procedure was outlined in 1944. This pro¬
gram was finally completed in September 1950 and subsequently resulted
in the company's dismissal from the case on November 6, 1950. For the
last quarter of 1950 total trade wastes discharged by the company
averaged .7 of a population equivalent per bushel of corn ground. Of
this volume, wastes essentially very dilute entrained glucose solids were
discharged in cooling waters to Lake Michigan at the rate of approxi-
344