Dominion, Smithfield want to use gas from hog waste. Is that good for the environment?
A partnership between Dominion Energy and Smithfield Foods is seeking a state permit that would let it turn fumes from hog waste on 19 Duplin and Sampson County farms into natural gas, an approach cheered by farmers and economic development officials even as people who live near the facility express concerns.
Officials from the Align Renewable Natural Gas partnership tout the environmental benefits of their BF Grady Road project, pointing to the process of capturing methane and turning it into the less-potent carbon dioxide. They also say the project will make farming more sustainable, with Smithfield’s growers adding a revenue stream by selling raw gas to Dominion, which will purify it before it is resold.
But some who live near the proposed facility are staunchly opposed. They wonder why details about the project have not been released — like which farms are involved — and if it means their community will long be coping with odor and groundwater impacts from hog lagoons.
“They’re trying to profit from the problem, but the problem still exists. There probably will be a handful of people who make money off the Align project, but the problem still exists in our community,” Danielle Koonce, a Sampson County resident, told The News & Observer.
Koonce, a doctoral student who is working on a dissertation about environmental justice in Sampson County, is among those wondering if the farm near her is participating in the project and if her house is close to the proposed path of the pipe carrying the methane.
Smithfield’s farms have been the target of dozens of lawsuits in recent years, with neighbors complaining of odor from lagoons and sprayed waste drifting to their property. Thursday, a federal appeals court ruled that while a verdict against Smithfield was appropriate, a multimillion-dollar punitive damage should be decided again because mentions about executives’ compensation could have been used unfairly to determine the damages.
How does biogas work?
The biogas process starts when hog waste flows from barns into an anaerobic digester — basically a lagoon covered with a tarp that looks like a large black balloon near barns. Underneath that tarp, gases that would normally flow into the atmosphere are trapped, including about 65% methane and 34% carbon dioxide, according to the Align partnership application.
From there, gases from the waste would be sent through underground pipes to a processing facility at 2940 N.C. Highway 24 West in Duplin County’s Turkey community. Align has contended that the pipelines from the farms to the processing facility will operate at low pressures and thus are not subject to oversight by the N.C. Utilities Commission’s Pipeline Safety Section.
Aaron Ruby, a Dominion spokesman, said the underground pipes — or gathering line — will range from 4 to 12 inches in diameter and operate at 10 to 15 pounds per square inch.
Align has not disclosed where these pipes will run. Ruby said the company will negotiate easement agreements with private landowners regarding its path.
Once gas reaches the BF Grady Road facility, non-methane chemicals would be separated out and burnt off. Those emissions will primarily include an estimated 47 to 50 tons annually of sulfur dioxide. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, sulfur dioxide can make breathing difficult, especially for people with asthma.
Before Align builds the facility, it must obtain an air permit from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality. Individual farmers must also obtain permits regarding changes to their waste management practices, but DEQ officials said during a public hearing Monday that they have received only four applications.
Construction on the processing facility could start early next year, Ruby said, and take 12 to 18 months.
“The same story”
An environmental justice analysis conducted by DEQ looked at factors like poverty rates, per capita income and the race and ethnicity of people in a one-mile radius around the BF Grady Road site. That analysis determined that census tracts inside that radius in both Duplin and Sampson counties had higher percentages of Black and Latino residents than statewide averages.
DEQ also found that the people living in those census tracts are more likely to live below the poverty level than people elsewhere in the state. People living within a one-mile radius of the BF Grady project were estimated to earn $17,429 annually, less than either Sampson’s $21,950 average or Duplin’s $19,455 and well short of the state’s $29,456.
Sherri White-Williamson is the N.C. Conservation Network’s environmental justice policy director and a resident of Sampson County. White-Williamson asked why DEQ is not taking into account a nearby feed mill, existing hog farms and the impact of Interstate 40 when considering whether it should grant the permit.
“This is the same story over and over and over again for environmental justice communities,” White-Williamson told The News & Observer. “They continue to be bombarded with toxic industry, with dirty industry for the sake of economic development.”
Ruby told The News & Observer the location was chosen because it is near an existing natural gas pipeline and a cluster of farms, allowing Align to reach economies of scale.
“That’s the model,” Ruby said. “That’s what a typical project looks like.”
Transparency is a key issue among those concerned about the Align project. They want to know which farms are participating and where Align plans to build the pipes that will transport the raw biogas to the BF Grady Road facility.
“When a community doesn’t know about the scope of the project that is going in place, where the project is located, what the impacts are going to be, then the community is not in a position to offer feedback,” Blakely Hildebrand, a Southern Environmental Law Center staff attorney, told The News & Observer.
Hildebrand has obtained public records indicating that the lines that will carry the natural gas span about 34 miles throughout the surrounding area. In its application, Align indicated that the nearest farm is 1.1 miles away, the farthest about 20 miles.
Biogas is included in North Carolina’s Clean Energy Plan, which notes that N.C. has the third-most biogas potential of any state in the country and calls for further efforts to determine how much greenhouse gas could be reduced by the method. But Hildebrand and other environmentalists have questions.
“Biogas is not a truly renewable resource like solar and wind energy because the emissions that biogas depends on are not naturally occurring,” Hildebrand said. “I would not consider methane trapped from hog waste a clean energy resource.”
Biogas effectiveness
The BF Grady project is part of Align’s multi-state, multi-site effort. A similar facility is already operating in Utah, and the company is poised to spend $375 million over the next decade building biogas projects in Eastern North Carolina, Ruby said.
“We’ve said very clearly from the beginning that we see tremendous opportunity throughout Eastern North Carolina for these renewable natural gas projects,” Ruby said. “There’s obviously a lot of hog operations in Eastern North Carolina — that’s the feedstock.”
Align’s website indicates that its first phase will include 48 farms in Sampson and Duplin counties. While the BF Grady project only includes 19 farms, Ruby said Align is in the planning phase of a second project in the region.
The BF Grady Road project would, according to filings, generate enough energy to power 3,500 homes annually.
Mahmoud Sharara, a NC State University waste management extension specialist, told The News & Observer that while biogas is effective at managing methane emissions, it is not a tool to better manage the nitrogen and phosphorous that are often associated with hog lagoons and other animal waste.
“The technology does a great job of potentially reducing the greenhouse gas and increasing the renewable energy portfolio for the state and potentially the U.S.,” Sharara said. “It does not address the nutrients piece of this puzzle. This is not a drawback for this technology, but it is something the technology does not address.”
Hog waste contains ammonium, which turns into nitrogen over time. In uncovered lagoons, ammonium often drifts into the atmosphere. But the ammonia remains in covered lagoons, leading to more concentrated nitrogen that could pose a threat to nearby waterways after the waste is sprayed onto fields.
High nitrogen levels in water lead to lower oxygen levels and have been linked with fish kills and algae blooms in North Carolina.
Christine Lawson, an environmental engineer with DEQ’s animal feeding operation program, said farmers associated with the Align project would take steps to prevent increased nitrogen from reaching waterways. Once the methane and other gases are pumped away, the leftover waste will be sent to a nearby open-air lagoon, Lawson said. The waste would be stored there before being sprayed onto fields.
“The normal loss of ammonia will occur in those existing lagoons,” Lawson said, “so you would not anticipate any increase in the nitrogen content in the effluent that would be land-applied.”