RIVER FALLS – After members of the River Falls community spoke their mind, a proposed anaerobic digester did not receive a motion from the River Falls City Council during the Dec. 12 meeting.
…
This item is available in full to subscribers.
To continue reading, you will need to either log in, using the login form, below, or purchase a new subscription.
If you are a current print subscriber, you can set up a free website account and connect your subscription to it by clicking here.
Otherwise, click here to view your options for subscribing.
Please log in to continue |
RIVER FALLS – After members of the River Falls community spoke their mind, a proposed anaerobic digester did not receive a motion from the River Falls City Council during the Dec. 12 meeting.
The proposal was for a special use permit which would allow the operation of an anaerobic digester facility on up to 11 acres of land at W10322 Highway 29, located in the town of River Falls in the Extraterritorial Zoning District.
The proposed lease would last 20 years, with extension options being a possibility after the original 20 years.
“The proposed facility would combine manure from the farm operations with organic food waste brought to the facility from food producers, restaurants, grocery stores, and other uses that generate organic food waste,” according to city documents.
The digester process uses the inputs to create biogas, a dry waste product and liquid fertilizer.
Assistant Director of Community Development Emily Shively outlined the plan prior to the public hearing portion of the meeting. The proposal was a cooperation between Vanguard Renewables and Peterson Family Real Estate.
Details of the digester plan include an estimated 8-10 full-time employees and 20-25 trucks entering per day from Monday to Saturday each week. According to city documents, the trucks would access the site via County Highway FF instead of Highway 29 for a list of reasons including the path used by Peterson Dairy off Highway 29 is not currently wide enough for the trucks and a potential disturbance of the operations from Peterson Dairy and the nearby sand extraction site.
Shively said the proposal has been approved by the Town of River Falls and the Extraterritorial Zoning Committee to get to the council.
City Administrator Scot Simpson later explained that the lack of a motion from the council is neither an approval nor denial. Simpson said due to state law, the permit is “likely” to return to the council’s agenda in the future.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that the permit was denied, so we will have to do some additional consideration with the applicant to determine what next steps would be,” Simpson said. “The council received all of the public hearing, and that’s part of the public record, and that will be considered in future steps to determine how we go next.”
A primary concern during public hearing was about the truck access, with some community members criticizing the list of reasons for the traffic going through County Road FF.
“Nobody asked me whether my existing operations were going to be impacted by the additional traffic,” June Cicero said. “I can reach out the window and touch FF from my bed, and now you’re going to put as many as 60 truck trips in a day on FF starting at five o’clock in the morning and going until 10 o’clock at night?”
Multiple attendees mentioned they were not against the project as a whole, only the truck access plan. Concerns included the safety of children and pedestrians in the area and noise coming from the trucks.
Resident Paul Boespflug criticized the noise that comes from the Peterson Farm currently during the harvest and planting seasons and said this project will only add to that.
“Having that many more trucks coming through there on a daily basis, I won’t be able to have my windows open, meaning I have to use my air conditioner, means I have to use more electricity,” Boespflug said.
Aaron Amara of Vanguard Renewables addressed some of the concerns shared by the public during the hearing.
“Inconvenience has been thrown around a lot tonight, and totally understood, but it’s more of an infeasibility,” Amara said. “The Petersons have a huge investment with their lagoons on site, their bins and dryers. To move those in order for trucks to pass would make that infeasible to proceed as a project.”
One resident in favor of the project said the nearby dog park brings a lot of traffic to the area as of now, and the digester would not bring a noticeable amount of new traffic.
Other attendees mentioned disappointment in a perceived lack of communication from the city.
“We are very disappointed in the lack of information that we were given,” Steve Slivicki said. “I’m wondering why that it wasn’t decided to send out a mailing to the residents that could be affected by this.”
Other business
