ELLSWORTH – After a five-hour public hearing Monday, Aug. 14 in a packed, and sometimes hostile, village hall, the Ellsworth Village Board decided to table a special use permit request from Ellsworth Bioenergy until a special meeting in September.

Trustee Ryan Bench suggested looking at conditions to be added to the special use permit, along with finding out a firm number for the “payment in lieu of taxes” from the company.

The village board voted 4-2 to approve a zoning amendment, changing the 40-acre parcel owned by Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery off County Road C (the proposed building site for the digester) from agricultural to industrial. Trustees Tom Schutz and Tony Hines voted against.

“This moves this into industrial use, which is part of the comprehensive plan,” Administrator/Clerk-Treasurer Brad Roy said.

The parcel is located near Western Wisconsin Ag Supply, the biosolids facility and Kaufhold’s Kurds.

As the public hearing commenced, people in the audience objected to the location of the meeting in the village hall meeting room.

“You call the meeting in here, what a joke,” one man yelled. “You should have called it in the library.”

Several people yelled questions haphazardly while others spoke and complained about not being able to hear.

Bigadan presentation

Bigadan is a Danish renewable natural gas company hoping to build an anaerobic digester and nutrient recovery facility in Ellsworth, under the name Ellsworth Bioenergy. Representatives said Bigadan, would design, build, own, operate and finance the site with no cost to the village. The project would occupy 20-25 acres and use anaerobic digestion (without air) to produce renewable natural gas from turkey litter, dairy waste, cheese processing byproducts and similar projects.

The renewable natural gas would be injected into an existing natural gas pipeline system. The process results in nutrient-rich byproducts that can be returned to participating farmers as fertilizers at no cost. The process eliminates odor, unlike the current aerobic (with air) process used at Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery.

Consultant Emily Tweiten, a farmer from southeastern Minnesota, said she and her husband visited Denmark in March to explore the biogas plants and visit with farmers.
“Farms there are mandated to work with an environmental program like green gas,” she said. “Bigadan was formed to help farms become more environmentally sustainable.”

She spoke about watching “super clean trucks” entering and leaving storage bays.

“Once the bay doors closed, it no longer smelled,” she said. “Bigadan is 30+ years ahead of the environmental game than we are in the US. This digester is the solution to the odor complaints at the creamery, a solution for the local farms, and a way for the community to take part in environmental sustainability.”

 A woman in the audience shouted out “Who paid for your trip?” She also accused the village of hosting secret meetings.

Tweiten said she and her husband paid for their own trip, while Roy said the village held no “secret meetings” on the digester. Pierce County Economic Development Corp. Director Joe Folsom clarified that he has held meetings with business people about the project; the village has not. 

As Jørgen Fink of Bigadan, who has been in the industry for 30 years, began his presentation, people in the crowd heckled him about “building for sure” or “proposing to build.” He made sure to say “proposing to build.”

He gave a history of the company, which began in 1982 by improving and expanding existing biogas plants in Denmark. Their first plant built from scratch went up in 2014 and has been expanded twice.

According to Bigadan’s special use permit application, although raw materials are known to smell, these materials would be managed indoors. Odor from receiving biomass is minimized by delivery into an enclosed loading hall, which would be ventilated. Negative air pressure would keep the air inside, which would be treated with a biological biofilter treatment system or by a UV and active carbon treatment system.

Fink said tanks that store anaerobic digestion byproducts will also be ventilated to maintain a small negative pressure inside the tanks. The air from the tanks will be treated in a pre-filter before entering the main biological treatment filter, where it will be blended with air extracted from the buildings. The pre-filter will treat and remove ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. Treated air will be lifted into the stack and dispersed.

“Anaerobic means without oxygen, so must be in closed tanks,” Fink said. “All the air from the tanks and the hold is extracted and goes into a biofilter. The most important thing is, if you have a good design of the building, if you have the negative pressure in there, you can prevent the air from leaving the building. Power consumption of a plant like this is very low.”

The natural gas rises to the top of the digester, Fink said, where the CO2 is taken out; the gas is then injected into the natural gas pipeline.

Odor plan

Mike McGinley of St. Croix Sensory would be hired by Bigadan to develop a program to understand odor before and after the potential project, at no cost to taxpayers.

“Odor is addressed in Europe, Australia and Canada much like you would address hazardous waste,” McGinley said. “It’s much more strict than the US. Knowing odor is a concern in the community, they reached out to us beforehand to develop a plan.”

McGinley’s team would begin monitoring existing odors and implement a complaint response immediately, to see what odors are currently harassing the community.

“Some of the elements in this project would potentially reduce the existing odors,” McGinley said. “The current plan is to work with UWRF or village and community involvement to document over time the existing odors.”

“We would be creating with the same standard as in Denmark with some improvements,” Fink said. “The waste from the Creamery would be pumped to the biogas plant instead of trucked. By doing this, there will be odor improvements.”

Traffic

Fink said the majority of traffic going to and from the digester would come from the east and south.

The SUP application indicates at full production the facility would see 150 transport trucks per full working day and 80 on Saturdays.

Ellsworth Bioenergy would work to optimize the truck traffic patterns throughout the design phase to prevent offsite truck lines, Fink said. They’ve compiled a map of all potential participating farms in the area (no agreements have been made) for a traffic estimate. Trucks would be required to follow road rules and weight restrictions.

“We haven’t canvassed farmers yet, but have estimated,” Fink said. “If all farms that have dairy permits in Goodhue, southern St. Croix, Pepin, western Dunn, there’s only a few dairies west of Ellsworth that would be coming down Main Street. Bigadan would be paying for the trucks, and no costs to the farmers.”

Trustee Andrew Borner said a WisDOT traffic analysis shows the plant would increase traffic by 2% per day. The average daily count at County Road C and Highway 10 is 6,400 vehicles.

“Leading up to these meetings, we have talked to (Pierce County Highway Commissioner) Chad Johnson,” Borner said. “They are requesting a traffic impact analysis at 10 and C. We are also wanting one at East Business Way and C to see if improvements are needed.”

Board questions

When asked how many cities, towns or townships have turned this particular project down in St. Croix and Pierce counties, the answer was none. Different companies have proposed projects in St. Croix.

“The way to handle this is to have an open dialogue and listen to people,” Fink said. “That is probably one of the reasons why sometimes it goes wrong, is because a company is not willing to listen to people.

“This is the first time we have started developing a project and talking about permits. Even if we get the approval, we still need state permits. If we don’t get those, there won’t be a plant.”

In Denmark, one plant is in the middle of a city, while another is 200 feet from a town.

Jon Strand of CBS2 analyzed the potential water usage by Bigadan, Roy said.
“After reviewing the projected water use, the wells have adequate capacity for an additional 23,000 gallons per day, which is what is proposed,” Roy said.

Public Works Director Bradley Vick said the village water system is capable of taking on Bigadan’s water use.

“Just think, if a water main breaks, that uses 1 million gallons per day to maintain the system,” Vick said.

If a village well were to “go bad,” the village would be responsible for fixing it, Vick said. Bigadan’s proposed “payment in lieu of taxes” (utilities are not required to pay property taxes), which should be a hefty sum each year, could be used to fund water projects.

Trustee Mindy Anderson asked consultant Dean Doornink, of John De Farms in Baldwin and a mechanical engineering PhD, to talk about the nitrates and phosphorous in the digestate byproducts returned to farmers.

“A lot of the nitrogen in raw dairy manure is not in a form that a plant can use,” Doornink said. “The bugs/ bacteria in the ground eventually do convert it into a form that the plant can use, but it can take up to three years for that to be accomplished. The bacteria in the digester can do that in three days. When it gets back to the farm, if it’s applied at the right time of the year, more of that nitrogen will be used by the plant. Often there are no plants there to take it up. It’s in a very leachable form. Any rain will carry it out of the root zone and down into groundwater. That is the reason nitrates are rising here. It’s been done that way for years.

Phosphorous is the other problem with raw manure,” Doornink said.

“We apply it year after year to our corn ground. Because so much of the nitrogen in raw manure is not available, you’re actually putting about twice as much phosphorous as the crop needs. Now we have excessive phosphorous in the soil, which causes green scum in the surface water. That is what attracts me to this project. The digestate has a much better balance.”

Farmers who spread the digestate must follow a DNR-approved nutrient management plan, which is evaluated every three years.  

Bench asked if Bigadan officials have consulted the Ellsworth Fire Chief about potential risk assessment plans and responses. Fink said the plan would be sit down with him and go through everything step by step.

“I’m having a hard time wanting to approve this when there are so many variables outside of this,” Bench said.

As for what would be released from the stack, Fink said it would be plain air from the biofilter with no chemicals. Doornink added that they must follow DNR air quality standards.

“We are not burning anything,” he said.

Public comment

Former Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and local dairy farmer Jim Harsdorf said he’s gone to Denmark and examined the digesters.

“Because I have a phosphorous issue, I’ve been looking for ‘how do you solve it?’” Harsdorf said. “I told my son, we’re going over there to see if it works. I’m a skeptic by nature and I also know enough about government; you have to know about dotting your Is and crossing your Ts. We paid our own way over there. We stopped three feet from the door and couldn’t smell it. The absolute cleanliness of the trucks impressed me. How they separate the phosphorous so it could be sold to other farmers who don’t have livestock and need phosphorous. We went to several plants.

“What’s interesting, I look at the world saying we need alternative energy sources. I don’t know how we’re going to do it. We need energy that can be produced from a product that we have a lot of. Other communities have said no. You’ll get pressure from people who want alternative energy but who say you can’t put it anyplace. We can’t have it both ways. It’s a big positive for me as a farmer.”

Tony Hines shot back that it’s not a plus for Halls Hill and East Ellsworth residents.

Local teacher Julie Frion questioned whether local people would be able to run the facility efficiently and safely. Fink said an experienced plant manager would move to the area from Denmark and be responsible for properly training employees.

She also questioned nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide being dispersed into the air. Fink said all the gases she mentioned come from burning biogas, which would not be done in Ellsworth.

When Frion asked what Bigadan gets out of the project, Fink said their profits would come from selling the biogas. The plant would be an $80 million investment for the company.

Next up to the mic was Halls Hill resident Mark Matzek, who was furious his property would look over the proposed plant. He also accused village officials of signing a nondisclosure agreement last winter with Bigadan, which Roy vehemently denied.

“I never tried to misinform anyone on this project and I have never signed a nondisclosure agreement,” Roy said.

Matzek hurled questions at the board about village funding (there is none), the ability of the Creamery to expand because of the project, the PILOT payment (which he called a bribe) and odor complaints.

He also accused a board member of telling him to be “a good soldier, to do what is right for the betterment of the community.”

Borner immediately denied saying that.  

“I don’t want to be a good soldier for the Doorninks, for Jennie O, for the Creamery,” Matzek said. “I think it’s a great project for somewhere else.

“The bottom line is that this whole process, the way it’s been done, it doesn’t feel right. Something’s really, really off about this.”

Larry Langer, another Halls Hill resident, said he sees many red flags and conflicts of interest in the project.

“People on the board know what I’m referring to when I say that,” he said. “How are you going to help me if I try to sell my property with a digester in my backyard? You’re asking me to lose several hundred thousand dollars in my land. Not in my back yard.”

Fink said he’s heard the same type of concerns many times, but digesters have no impact on property values in Denmark to his knowledge.  

Ethan Hofland, the health, safety and environmental manager at the creamery, said his experience in anaerobic treatment began 2.5 years ago when the creamery built the plant in Menomonie. He said most larger municipalities operate anaerobic digesters: Hudson and Menomonie are two of them, both located downtown.

“When you capture the gas, you can clean it up and put in the pipeline,” he said. “Taking organic matter and turning it into methane and carbon dioxide. It’s clean enough to inject into a pipeline and use when heating your home. Manure goes into a slurry pit, all the gases go into the atmosphere, and that’s why it smells. The things that stink is rotting organic matter.”

When asked how Ellsworth was chosen for the proposed project, Folsom said consultant Ray Davy approached him looking for options.

“Ellsworth had potential because of its industrial location, and its comprehensive plan,” Folsom said. “Not because of the Creamery.”

A pipeline runs north of the creamery already, which in turn brings natural gas all over the mid United States.

“Why is it a bad thing that we can take our high-strength waste and turn it into natural gas?” asked Creamery CEO Paul Bauer. “By using a pipeline, it becomes efficient.”

One woman who went back and forth with Bauer said she plans to call and email village board trustees at all times of the night to complain about the digester if it goes in. She also expressed anger that the village currently has no odor ordinance in place.

Trustee Tom Schutz said the village board has been working on the ordinance for five months.

Former trustee Neil Gulbranson asked the board to carefully consider the PILOT and make sure it’s set in stone.

“This board and this village have been stung before on apartment buildings. There are three or four apartment buildings in this town that do not pay taxes,” he said.

Serina Hendrickson, who was highly passionate and upset, spoke about purple sand found in her water in November 2021. She lives on Northview Street. She said Vick has said he has no idea where the sand came from.

“My kids were drinking this! I don’t drink this water,” she said. “Our community is holding on to a string of existence. We have so many expensive problems in this town.”

Ellsworth High School Principal Oran Nehls spoke in favor of the project. He grew up on a dairy farm and his dad managed two cheese factories.

“When it comes to smells, I’ve been around them,” he said. “Do not pass judgment until you actually go to an anaerobic digester. They do not smell. I worked as a livestock nutritionist. Farmers put them in to cut down on the smells for their neighbors. It’s completely a contained environment.

“The wastewater treatment plant has been a problem for years because it’s aerobic. Give them a little time to get caught up and keep working on it.”

Several other community members spoke in favor of the digester, including Pierce Pepin Cooperative Services CEO Nate Boettcher, who Hines laughed at when he said he lives in Minnesota.

“We can all look at information on Google, but it’s not often an apples-to-apples comparison,” he said. “Listen to the experts in this room. The American Biogas Council says there is potential for another 15,000 sites to be built across the US. We can support a project that can support the comp plan, economic development, and opportunity for you to demonstrate community leadership.

“You have a company that wants to pay you to come here. That doesn’t happen very often … It’s no surprise that River Falls and Prescott continue to grow, because they’re forward-thinking.”

When Ellsworth Area Chamber of Commerce Director Kim Beebe rose to spoke, Hines muttered, “Oh God.” Borner and Village President Becky Beissel chided him, but he denied saying anything.

“Obviously we want to be sure the project is safe,” Beebe said. “They are committed to adhering to the strictest safety and environmental measures and willing to address the community’s concern about odor due to its history. As a community, we find ourselves at a crossroads.”

Village attorney Bob Loberg spoke last, advising the board to ask Bigadan for a large PILOT payment each year for the next 30 years.

“If someone puts $80 million in the project, you may not have the legal fees to go after them if they stop paying. There’s a lot of good faith involved in it, and to some extent, hope and trust. You don’t often find folks who want to pay a PILOT and I think they should be asked to pay a lot,” he said. “You just changed the game by zoning this industrial. Maybe you can get another industrial company to come in and pay taxes.”

As for the public hearing, he said five-hour meetings are not efficient.

“You cannot have a roomful of people establishing your special permit conditions or you’ll go insane. The board has to study each condition and make sure they’re enforceable,” he said. “I’ve spent 46.5 years in this chair. I would say this is the biggest issue, the biggest impact on the community since I’ve been here. Conditions must be firm, tough and if you violate one of the terms of the special use permit, your permit can be revoked.”
A date for the September meeting has not been set yet.