NEWS

GMP's St. Albans manure-digester project on hold

Joel Banner Baird
Free Press Staff Writer
Cows stand and eat in the barn of the Bess-View Farm, in St. Albans. The farm, owned by father and son James and David Bessette, is part of a proposed manure-digester project designed to generate electricity and reduce pollutants that reach nearby St. Albans Bay of Lake Champlain. Backers say the $8 million project will help meet about one-third of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s goals for reducing phosphorus runoff into St. Albans Bay.

State approval for an advanced-design manure processor and power generator proposed for St. Albans has stalled due to a slew of questions about its environmental benefits, according to Green Mountain Power.

The power utility suspended its application to the Vermont Public Service Board on Friday, citing additional time needed to make engineering and design changes to the so-called eFarm digester.

Regulators and a concerned citizen, in written testimony filed earlier this spring to the service board, asks the utility to more thoroughly support claims that the project would:

  • safely confine and burn methane, a potent greenhouse gas that typically escapes from open manure pits
  • meet clean air standards
  • protect nearby wetlands and Jewett Brook from manure slurry spills
  • conserve nearby Abenaki artifacts and
  • remove significant amounts of phosphorus — a component of manure, and a major pollutant in Lake Champlain — from the regional watershed.

Green Mountain Power’s commitment to the facility remains strong, and the delay in securing a Certificate of Public Good will likely amount to about one month, said spokeswoman Kristin Carlson on Tuesday.

"This is the first project of its kind, and it’s being submitted to a really robust regulatory process,” Carlson added. “We've asked for a pause, and we’re moving forward.”

A draft site plan of Green Mountain Power's proposed manure digester in St. Albans shows its proximity to farm fields, at left, and wetlands, lower right.

Testimony filed with the service board were mostly supportive of the project's goals of harvesting nutrients and energy from manure.

But, they all asked: How, exactly, would the eFarm help Green Mountain Power reach its ambitious goal of significantly reducing phosphorus pollution from farms in the St. Albans Bay, a chronically impaired section of Lake Champlain?

The utility's plans so far “are dependent on several factors, a number of which I would consider to be either voluntary or susceptible to human error,” wrote Marli Rupe, a program manager with the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Clean Water Initiative.

Rupe recommended that GMP devise improved, long-term methods for tracking soil fertility on the three participating farms, as well as monitoring exports of phosphorus to other watersheds.

Like Rupe, Tim Camisa, president of St. Albans-based Vermont Organics Reclamation, questioned the project’s proximity to Jewett Brook.

“In the blink of an eye, Green Mountain Power could move from being the largest electrical utility to being the state’s largest polluter,” he said.

Camisa also faulted the utility's calculations that claim eFarm would create long term reduction of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and to phosphorus reaching St. Albans Bay.

Finally, he added, not enough safeguards are in place to prevent the methane-fired generator causing “a spike in poisonous gases” in the vicinity.

Carlson, the utility's spokeswoman, said detailed responses to those and other concerns are forthcoming, later this summer.

Benefits of new GMP manure digester debated

This story was first published Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Contact Joel Banner Baird at (802) 310-5231 or joelbaird@freepressmedia.com