Sunnyside residents express concerns about proposed biomethane plant

SUNNYSIDE — Safety, increased truck traffic and property values were among the concerns Sunnyside residents raised during an informational meeting Thursday night to discuss the proposed construction of a renewable natural gas plant near the city.

Hosted by Empowering Latina Leadership and Action, a Sunnyside-based nonprofit and Friends of Toppenish Creek, the meeting gave residents a chance to ask questions about the plant. The meeting featured experts like a public interest environmental law attorney and a representative from Pacific Ag, the company seeking to construct the plant. About 30 people attended.

Late last year, the city and port of Sunnyside committed $12 million toward developing the infrastructure necessary to get water to the port and establish sewage lines using a mixture of grants, loans and city funds. The biomethane plant, which is expected to cost Pacific Ag $120 million to construct, will sit on a 50-acre port property off Sunnyside Mabton Road.

The plant will take agricultural crop residues and dairy manure from local farmers and put it through a process to produce renewable natural gas, also known as biomethane. Once treated, the biomethane will be fed into the nearby interstate gas pipeline.

Biomethane can be used interchangeably with other natural gas products as a fuel. Burning it produces carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, but reusing agricultural waste as fuel has benefits. Agricultural waste can produce methane, another greenhouse gas, when decomposing, or be a pollutant.

The anaerobic digester also will produce organic matter which can be used as fertilizer or compost, the company said.

Reaching out to the community

Maria Fernandez, executive director of ELLA, said the meeting was organized in part because she’d met many Sunnyside residents, especially those who spoke only Spanish, who had never heard about the plant before. Once they found out about it through Fernandez and other members of ELLA, they had questions.

Fernandez said she and her team canvassed approximately 250 homes in Sunnyside to ask what they knew, if anything at all, about the plant. They also visited churches in the area and handed out informational fliers outside Fiesta Foods. She said only a handful of residents were aware of the project, and no Spanish speakers knew about the potential development.

During the meeting, Fernandez and other attendees criticized city and port officials for not making a larger effort to communicate with the community about the plans for the plant.

The city of Sunnyside’s website has documents available about the plant, including an application from Pacific Ag and a notice of environmental review from the city of Sunnyside. There were no communications in Spanish about the biomethane plant on the city’s website.

Environmental statement

Residents also expressed frustration that city officials decided to move forward with planning for the plant without an Environmental Impact Statement which would determine what kind of impact the plant would have on the city and surrounding areas.

The city issued a mitigated determination of nonsignificance, or MDNS. This allowed the project to move forward after its initial environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act, or SEPA.

SEPA requires those in charge of the project, in this case Pacific Ag, to submit a checklist that answers questions related to the project’s environmental impact. In this case, Pacific Ag had to submit that checklist to Sunnyside.

Trevor Martin, the city’s community and economic development director, consulted with various agencies including the state Department of Transportation, Ecology and the Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency before issuing the MDNS.

The city is currently in a public comment period where residents can submit concerns related to the project. After the meeting ended, Fernandez and other members of her team provided community members with resources like pre-stamped envelopes to ensure the city would receive their public comments before the comment period ends on Tuesday, Dec. 5.