Biomass Industry Needs to Prepare for Water Constraints

- April 14, 2014. Source: KDUZ/KARP

St. Paul, Minn.– The ethanol plant in Buf­fa­lo Lake for­mer­ly owned by Min­neso­ta Ener­gy is in the process of cor­rect­ing water and air qual­i­ty per­mit vio­la­tions, and must pay a $10,000 civ­il penal­ty, accord­ing to an agree­ment with the Min­neso­ta Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Agency (MPCA).

In Octo­ber 2012, Renville Coun­ty offi­cials report­ed a “white dis­col­oration” in a sec­tion of Judi­cial Ditch 15 down­stream from the plant. An MPCA inspec­tion revealed that con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed stormwa­ter and cool­ing tow­er waste­water had been dis­charged to the ground, caus­ing a storm pond to over­flow, and even­tu­al­ly flow­ing to Judi­cial Ditch 15. The inspec­tion also not­ed that the plant had failed to meet per­mit require­ments for observ­ing dis­charge lim­its, mon­i­tor­ing, and reporting. 

Min­neso­ta Ener­gy is a coop­er­a­tive pre­vi­ous­ly per­mit­ted to pro­duce up to 23.5 mil­lion gal­lons of ethanol per year. In June 2012 it licensed oper­a­tion of the plant to Puri­fied Renew­able Ener­gy, and trans­ferred own­er­ship in Novem­ber 2012. Puri­fied Renew­able Ener­gy has since filed for bank­rupt­cy. The plant is now owned by Buf­fa­lo Lake Advanced Bio­fu­els, LLC, which is now respon­si­ble for the remain­ing cor­rec­tive actions.

The penal­ty and cleanup are part of a stip­u­la­tion agree­ment between Min­neso­ta Ener­gy and the MPCA. This type of agree­ment is one of the tools the agency uses to achieve com­pli­ance with envi­ron­men­tal laws. When cal­cu­lat­ing penal­ties, the MPCA takes into account how seri­ous­ly the vio­la­tion affect­ed the envi­ron­ment, whether it was a first-time or repeat vio­la­tion, and how prompt­ly the vio­la­tion was report­ed to appro­pri­ate author­i­ties. The agency also attempts to recov­er the cal­cu­lat­ed eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit gained by fail­ure to com­ply with envi­ron­men­tal laws in a time­ly manner.