Ohio bioenergy farm will no longer accept municipal waste

A bio-energy farm near Fairborn, Ohio, has announced it will no longer accept municipal solid waste beginning on Oct. 1, reports the Dayton Daily News.

The bio-energy farm, called Renergy, Delaware, Ohio, turns sewage, biowaste from municipalities, food and farm waste into methane energy, the byproduct of which is then turned into fertilizer for crops used to feed livestock.

Renergy creates this biogas by putting material into biodigestion tanks where it is broken down. The byproduct must be injected into the ground to apply it.

Cari Oberfield, chief operating officer of Renergy, told the Dayton Daily News that currently about 20 percent of what Renergy takes in is municipal waste. After Oct. 1, the company will only accept food waste and farm waste, like manure, she said. Oberfield says these materials would end up in a landfill if Renergy did not take them.

Oberfield said Renergy, also known as Dovetail Energy LLC, has had a lot of questions from people living near the Bath Township facility.

Bath Township and Fairborn residents protested the operation last week. The main concerns of people who live nearby are about human waste from municipalities and how it may impact health. Fairborn and Bath Township residents have been pushing to have the operation shut down for years.

Oberfield said the questions citizens have are questions that can only be answered by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and they’re “out of Renergy’s control.” Oberfield said she hoped taking the human waste “out of the equation” would help community relations.

“We did not have support from the EPA regarding biosolids and it was negatively impacting our relationship with our community,” Oberfield said. “We want to be able to quell concerns of the neighbors, but until the EPA can answer all those questions or wants to step in, we just feel like it’s better for the community to remove that part of it.”

Oberfield said the company will continue processing food waste and manure to provide renewable electricity to power the Pitstick farm, the utility grid and provide valuable organic fertilizer to local farmers.

Renergy has two digester facilities located in Ohio, one in Bath Township and one near Columbus.