Iowa Osha investigation of the State Center after fire, gas leak | News, sports, jobs

Photo by Nick Rohlman/The Gazette – Blake Iske takes a rehearsal on Wednesday, September 18, 2024, in the Marshall Ridge Renewable Energy Center in the State Center. The three anaerobic dung dumplings of the furnishings extract methane made of milk cow chul. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)

State Center – Iowa Osha examines a fermenter in Central Iowa Biogas after a whistleblower claimed that a 2023 fire violated two employees and that ongoing natural gas leaks endanger workers.

In the meantime, Marshall Ridge Dairy is looking for state permission to almost double his herd of 8,000 dairy cows to 15,000.

Marshall Ridge, a 42-million dollar system that extracts methane from the cow, and turned into renewable natural gas, had a fire in September 2023 that burned the roof of a million gallon fermenter tanks, released methane and other gases Employee injured who had injured two employees who, two employees, injured that they were injured with two employees, and two employees injured after a complaint submitted to the US environmental protection authority.

Rodney Richwine, who said that he was a project manager at Clean Energy Fuels – a California company that the Fermenter belongs together with BP – in the complaint that was submitted on December 5, pipeline to renewable natural gas in states with low -carbon fuel standards (LCFS) To pump to make big winnings.

“This means that instead of reducing methane, which is generated by this dairy products, while the LCFS receives the company from the state of California, that the location actually kept this crap in three, 1 million gallon proliferus and mixed by far more methane to produce, ”wrote Richwine. “Then the gas allowed the atmosphere for seven months.”

Clean Energy Fuels refused to answer questions about Richwine's allegations, but said that the company recently changed the operators at Marshall Ridge.

“The owners of the fermenter of renewable natural gas (RNG) in Marshall Ridge Dairy ended their relationship with the operator in early February and brought one of the most respected RNG operators in the country” February 17.

“RNG is a fuel that brings enormous ecological and economic advantages to end users such as the thousands of buses and trucks who work cleanly and weaken the methane emissions in dairy farms. We look forward to the new contractor with his extensive experience to take over the operation of the RNG fermenter in Marshall Ridge. “

Security questions that are examined

The fire on September 27, 2023, which burned through the roof of one of the three Fermenter tanks by Marshall Ridge, was not reported to the fire department of the State Center, said fire chief Brad Pfantz.

“If it were something in which the structure was on fire for a certain period of time, someone would have called 911,” he said. “I suspect that the liner is on this vinyl. It is Methaneas made of manure. This gas inflamed and melted the vinyl roof. As soon as that breaks off, nothing remains to be burned. “

The same fermenter tank was without a roof last autumn, as the operators repaired a leak, the company said.

In his complaint, Richwine said that the fire had destroyed the roof membrane of Fermenter 503, which contained thousands of cubic feet methane and injured two workers. “

Richwine said he was concerned that gases, which were held by the Marshall Ridge location, were dangerous for employees and visitors. On May 1, 2024, he toured on the premises with stakeholders from Clean Energy, BP and a construction company when he noticed that alarms went out to show a high degree of natural gas, which is poisonous and can be an explosion risk.

“The operators told us that it was a disturbing alarm and that it sounded for two months,” said Richwine in the complaint.

Iowa Osha examines Marshall Ridge in connection with security at the workplace.

“In November 2024, Dial/Iosha received a direct complaint from the complainant about the Marshall Ridge Energy Center,” said spokeswoman Stefanie Bond in an e -mail. “Since the department is currently investigating this institution based on the complaint in November 2024, we cannot provide any further details at this time.”

Richwine's allegations about the 2023 fire were too late to research the agency.

“In December 2024, DNR (Iowa Department of Natural Resources) shared a incident tracking form with Iosha about a fire that took place in September 2023,” said Bond. “However, the information that Iosha received in December 2024 was more than 14 months after the incident and the limitation period had expired.”

How does a fermenter work?

Marshall Ridge, who started operations in February 2023, picks up the 8,000 dairy cattle of Kevin and the 8,000 dairy cattle of Holly Blood, adds the mixture into one of three 1.3 million gallon durations. The procedure sets gas, including methane, free, which is picked up and filtered from the top of the digestion to remove water vapor, carbon dioxide and hydrogen in order to create renewable natural gas.

When the Gazette toured at the Marshall Ridge site on September 18, project manager Mike Raymer said that it produces 250 to 325 million times British thermal units (MMBTU) of renewable natural gas per day.

Black Hills Energy injects the compressed gas into the northern natural gas pipeline, which is underground near the State Center. Large facilities such as this can earn more than 10,000 US dollars a day on credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industries – including agriculture.

But it wasn't always a smooth sailing.

“To commission and get operations is always so hard,” said Raymer in September. “Everyone wants something yesterday. We had problems. “

Iowa dnr monitoring of air quality

If energy devices such as Marshall Ridge have problems processing methane or carrying out repairs on devices, you can flicker into the air. According to the DNR records, Marshall Ridge exceeded his state border of 2,000 torches per year in March 2024. The site flared too much again in August, as recorded.

“Sometimes you can't get it on the pipeline, so you have to burn it down,” said Bill Gross, Senior Environmental Specialist in the DNR region 5 office.

When the location visited the location in May, he found that Marshall Ridge had installed pressure relief ventilation without receiving permission. After Gross Richwine described from the EPA, he spoke to an engineer in the Air Quality Bureau, and in January they decided that Marshall Ridge had to receive a permit for ventilation.

“Because they didn't report it to us first, that's a kind of punishment,” he said.

Dairy products want more animals

Iowa has approved 15 new Fermenter facilities since 2021 when the legislator passed a law that enabled animal nutrition operations with digestive disorders to exceed 8,500 animal units.

Marshall Ridge Dairy, which should have up to 11,200 animal units (approx. 8,000 dairy cows), is now planning to expand his herd by another 7,000 cows, as the operator presented to the Marshall County Board of Supervisors. According to a story on January 16 in The Times Republican, the operators want to build a new detention building, a free stand, barn and milking of milking.

The DNR is still considering this application for approval.

The Iowa Driftless Defenders, a group that spoke out against a new fermenter on the farm in the district of Winneshiek, said in recent court applications that they were nearby because of the security of rural residents, since there are potential manure and leaks and incidents such as fires. According to news reports, Wisconsin Digesters, including one in 2014 in Wisconsin Digesters, including one in 2014 in Waunakee and in 2020 near Kewaunee.