×

North Elba biodigester deal falls through

LAKE PLACID — North Elba town officials are killing a plan for a biodigester to convert food waste into energy, after finding out costs would run over budget.

Tammy Morgan, a Lake Placid High School science teacher who pushed the project from the beginning, is disappointed by the news, but town board members insist they still want a biodigester here.

“We need to do something; we agree with that,” Councilman Bob Miller said. “It’s just not going to be this project with this company at this time.”

“There’s still very much a divide between environmental and sustainable, and realistic and for the tax base,” said Derek Doty, the other councilman who oversaw the project for the town. “Somehow we’re going to figure out how to do this.”

A biodigester is a machine that, as per its name, breaks down organic matter and produces energy, in this case electricity. Unlike with compost, meat and fat scraps are desirable because they produce more energy than fruit, vegetable and bread matter, Morgan said. Biodigesters are also used at farms and wastewater treatment plants to convert animal and human excrement, but food waste produces more energy because it hasn’t already been digested once.

Some other municipalities around the country use biodigesters, but North Elba would be the first in the region. The case for it rests with the large number of restaurants in the town’s primary village, Lake Placid, presumably meaning food waste makes up a larger-than-average proportion of the garbage. How much is unknown, but in New York City it’s about a third, according to the city sanitation department, and other municipalities nationwide cite a similar proportion.

The Adirondack Park’s landfills were closed in the 1990s, so North Elba has to pay to truck garbage elsewhere. Morgan can show spreadsheets to support her argument that a biodigester would save North Elba money.

But Miller and Doty said the deal is off because Bioferm, the company the town was working with, announced at “the 11th hour” that it would need at least $250,000 more than the $1.2 million covered by a grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. The company also said the town would have to do extra site work.

“We’re not walking away from the project,” Miller said. “Bioferm is unable to deliver.”

Town officials also were wary that instead of building a new biodigester on site, as contracted, Bioferm was going to ship a used one from Italy, refurbish it and give it a one-year warrantee. Morgan, however, said this is an improvement because the used one is a better model she favored in the beginning.

Miller said that when he heard about the cost overruns in recent weeks, “I decided the town needed to deal directly with Bioferm.” Before then, Morgan and a hired consultant from Clarkson University served as middlemen. “There was some concerns of filtering of information,” Miller said.

“In a conference call, they put the big dog on,” Doty said. “Something worried Bioferm in the very late stages after they signed the contract. We don’t exactly know what it was, but for the president of the company to get on the phone with us shows there was definitely some trouble in their ranks.”

Miller and Doty said Bioferm’s president warned them that maintenance costs for a biodigester of this size are usually higher than predicted.

“He was very forthright that companies that put in a system that is an under-$2 million system end up having sizable maintenance costs,” Miller said. “He said we could be underwater pretty quickly.”

Morgan wouldn’t discuss her feelings about the decision, although she was clearly unhappy. Miller and Doty praised her passion for the project.

“Tammy has been amazing,” Doty said. “I’m sure she feels very disappointed and let down.”

“At the end of the day, this is something that I did because I’m a science teacher and a scientist, and as such, I like to solve problems,” Morgan said. “And to me, that fact that we throw away food waste is a problem. It contains energy and matter that we could use, and instead, we pay someone else to take it away and deal with our problem, which doesn’t solve it.”

Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York City require organic waste to be handled separately from landfills. If New York state joins them, Morgan said, a biodigester would be a major asset.

“I understand the hesitation and fear of taking that risk, but if you don’t, you’re going to be stuck,” she said. “Landfills aren’t getting any cheaper; there aren’t any in the Park.”

Asked about the cost overruns, she said, “When you write a grant proposal, you have to use your best guesses and best estimates based on limited data, and that’s what they gave us in the very beginning — not knowing how far away from the [electrical] pole they were, not knowing where the town wanted to put this. I think they probably did the best that they could. And I don’t work for them, and I don’t care if it’s them or not. This is a system that will benefit the community in the long run.”

Ultimately, she said, “I’m not a business person. I’m just the scientist who says, ‘This is a good idea. This will work.'”

Town Supervisor Roby Politi said no formal decision on the biodigester would be made before the board’s next regular meeting Tuesday, but he agreed with Miller and Doty that he didn’t want to burden local taxpayers because Bioferm couldn’t stick to the contract.

“You just don’t do business that way,” Politi said.

Doty said the next step is to work with Jennifer Perry, who handles NYSERDA funding through the Adirondack North Country Association, to see if the town’s grant can be put toward a new biodigester project. Perry could not be reached for this story.

“We’ll entertain any new option, if you will, but we’ll need some direction from Jen Perry,” Doty said, “because it will either die or stay alive in the form of a grant.”

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

Starting at $4.75/week.

Subscribe Today