Traverse City, Mich.— On Friday, August 2, 2024 FLOW submitted comprehensive legal and technical comments (PDF) to the Michigan Department of Energy, Great Lakes, and Environment (“EGLE”), calling on EGLE to deny a groundwater discharge permit for the Fremont Regional Digester owned by Generate Upcycle, a Delaware corporation.
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, who has recently drawn attention to the need for improved public participation in environmental permitting. The FLOW Coalition 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 Fremont Regional Digester generates biogas from commercial food waste, factory farm waste, and other sources. The byproduct is a more concentrated liquid waste called digestate. The digestate is applied to fields, where it can create toxic runoff, leach to groundwater, and negatively affect water quality.
EGLE granted Generate Upcycle a waiver of the required hydrogeological report on its land application fields, based on Generate’s representations that the “purpose of the hydrogeological report can be met without the submittal of the full hydrogeologic report due to the infrequent use of each land application location.”1 On the contrary, the use of hundreds of different application sites, each with different risks, indicates the need for an exceptionally comprehensive hydrogeological report. The waiver decision is not supported by any analysis, and casts serious doubt on the effectiveness of the entire Draft Permit. Geologist recommendations developed as part of the permitting process show that spreading digestate on fields without the required setbacks – and in some cases, even with setbacks – creates “very high risk” of groundwater contamination.2
Generate Upcycle claims that feedstocks for the digester are only “food waste, food waste waters, food byproducts and food sludges from food manufacturers and consumer packaged food and beverages that have been depackaged”, but lagoon effluent testing shows metals, nutrients, sodium, chloride, and other contaminants in vastly higher concentrations than Michigan discharge standards allow.
Michigan law requires Generate Upcycle to analyze “feasible and prudent alternatives consistent with the reasonable requirements of the public health, safety, and welfare.” However, according to Generate Upcycle, “We do not discharge to the groundwater. A feasibility of alternatives to discharging to the groundwater is not applicable.” The Coalition questions how Generate can diligently avoid discharges it considers imaginary.
In December 2023, Generate Upcycle president Bill Caesar3 of Houston, a former McKinsey consultant, went public with his objections to EGLE’s permitting action, telling Michigan news outlets that the Facility would be forced to close.4 In Caesar’s words:
Not only are the proposed changes to our permit prohibitively expensive, because huge portions of the fields we currently use will be off limits, but these regulations are also operationally impossible for us to comply with…After months of discussion with legal we made the very difficult decision to cease operations at the end of December unless and until it can operate under a rational regulatory approach…I don’t think that we’re going to find a solution with the approach that EGLE has propositioned us with…
EGLE Director Phil Roos rebutted many of Caesar’s allegations, including that the agency was being “aggressive” with Generate Upcycle, in a November 30, 2023 letter.5 Caesar’s position that regulatory compliance is too costly for the Facility and its parent company, Generate Capital, is remarkable in light of the firm’s “sustainability” branding6 – and financing. In January 2024, Bloomberg reported on a $1.5 billion investment in Generate Capital by the California teachers’ retirement fund and other institutional investors in “clean” energy.
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.
NOTES:
1 EGLE Groundwater Basis for Decision memo, July 20, 2023, at 3.
2 See Geologist Recommendations Fact/Decision Sheet, Table 7, Comparison of Risk Evaluations Based on Isolation Distances.
3 https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-caesar-020688/
4 Kyle Davidson, “West Michigan Digester to Close Doors Amid Permitting Conflict with State”, Michigan Advance, Dec. 6, 2023.
5 Roos letter to Caesar, Nov. 30, 2023.
6 https://generatecapital.com/
