"I am used to farm smells. I am a farmer myself. Manure spread, and even the turkey CAFO a mile away, were unpleasant but familiar smells that our community has lived with. The digestate was nothing like these. I could only liken it to having my head in a full port-a-potty. I am over a mile away."
Fremont, Michigan is a rural community in west Michigan’s Newaygo County, about an hour north of Grand Rapids. The pillars of Newaygo’s economy are tourism, agriculture, and small manufacturing, reflected in its median household income of just over $37,000 – barely over half the state median. It is home to over 800 farms, 230 natural lakes, 350 miles of rivers and streams, thousands of acres of the Manistee National Forest, and 50,000 people.
Since 2012, it’s also home to a huge anaerobic digester owned since 2017 by the Delaware-incorporated company Generate Upcycle, part of multi-billion dollar “clean energy” investment firm Generate Capital.
Anaerobic digesters use bacteria to decompose organic waste (such as commercial food waste and factory farm sewage) and generate biogas. The byproduct of this process is a concentrated sludge called “digestate.” The digestate – often full of heavy metals and biological hazards – is held in massive cesspits, then sprayed on fields as “fertilizer.”
But it doesn’t stay there.
In addition to creating the noxious, intolerable odors described by resident Kathy Morrison and others, the digestate makes its way through field drains and runoff and into lakes, streams, groundwater – and residential water wells.
"Many residents that live near these fields of wastewater spread and near the two ten million gallon lagoons are unable to afford testing…to assure themselves that their drinking water has not been compromised by the digestate."
PICTURED ABOVE: Spring 2020 run-off from fields where Facility wastewater was being spread. Thousands of gallons ran off the field and formed a river flowing off to neighboring property, into culverts, and on into the watershed.
Despite these hazards, in 2016 the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE)’s Solid Waste Division granted Generate Upcycle an Agricultural Use Authorization to spread digestate without many of the protections Michigan normally requires for solid waste disposal.Within two years, Generate violated its authorization to such a degree that EGLE implemented a Consent Order in 2019 and issued a $13,860 fine.
Following years of maneuvering by Generate Upcycle to avoid a more protective permit and repeated extensions of its outdated, inadequate authorization, EGLE has now proposed a groundwater discharge permit that does not go far enough to protect the health and well-being of the watershed, farmland, and people in the surrounding community. As part of the application process, EGLE granted Generate Upcycle a waiver of the hydrogeological report required by Michigan law, based on Generate Upcycle’s claims that a hydrogeological report was too burdensome, because the facility spreads digestate at over 700 sites . To the contrary, the variety of affected terrain and waterways is a powerful reason for a comprehensive hydrogeological report.
That’s why FLOW is leading a coalition of residents and organizations in submitting public comments to EGLE, detailing our concerns about the proposed permit. Our concerns include:
- Insufficient soil and groundwater monitoring standards and parameters
- Inadequate hydrogeological study
- Discharge concentrations higher than allowed under Michigan laws and the Michigan Environmental Protect Act (MEPA)
- Inadequate protection of natural resources under the Public Trust Doctrine, the Michigan Constitution, and the Michigan Environmental Protection Act (MEPA)
- Failure to evaluate feasible.and prudent alternatives, as required by MEPA.
The FLOW Coalition comments make specific recommendations regarding field application locations and conditions; prompt, effective response to citizen odor complaints and odor compliance; pre-treatment of digestate to remove chemicals of emerging concern (CECs), microplastics, PFAS/PFOAS, pathogens, and heavy metals; compliance and enforcement; and more.
The Coalition of signatories includes Fremont area farmer Kathleen Morrison, Michigan Farmers Union, Michigan Lakes and Streams Association, Michiganders for a Just Farming System, Progress Michigan, Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, and U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib, as well as Michigan environmental law clinics and organizations. The FLOW Coalition has requested a public hearing in or near Fremont, and coordination with the Office of the Environmental Justice Public Advocate, to initiate a comprehensive evaluation of measures needed to operate the digester safely.
The problems with the Fremont Digester aren’t just a case of one bad apple. Industrial scale biodigesters create vast waste streams full of concentrated toxins — a threat to land, air, and water.
The FLOW Coalition calls on EGLE to go back to the drawing board, and figure out how to handle this technology in a way that protects us all.
Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation should certainly sign on to these comments. Many of our members live in Newago County. This sounds like another example of a state agency willing to bypass environmental protection law and common sense regulations to prop up industrial pollution, similar to the threat to Osceola and Mecosta Counties generated by the granting of waste injection well permits to the proposed potash mine.
Great work. Thank you
It is unconscienable that a neighbor to digester has discolored smelly water. Why is the health department not checking it? Is this the beginning of another Flint like Michigan Failure?
And this documents that digestate is different than manure when land applied and that there needs to be air monitoring and emission limits.
Have we not learned? The Clean Water Act was implemented because we were callous and ignorant about both short and long term impacts of releasing pollutants, chemicals, and waste into our waterways. This is our drinking water, the water we use to bath and cook with. We are fortunate to have an abundance of freshwater but what good will it be if it is polluted and destroyed by our lack of will to protect it from harm. Any concern about a declining population in Michigan is negated by allowing those of us who live here to suffer and be subjected to air and water that results in illness and death. We can (and MUST) do better!!! It’s time for CAFOS to treat their animal waste/manure the same as municipal waste water facilities do for human waste, or be forced to shut down.
In this day and age, and having looked at prior environmental fiascos, this is abhorrent. Regulations should be followed and communities and waterways should not be subjected to the flagrant lack of concern for these ill effects on us all.