A new biodigester owned by Georgian Bluffs and Chatsworth is up and running.
The Mayors of the two townships joined with Bruce Grey Owen MP Larry Miller and MPP Bill Murdoch to cut the ribbon officially opening the 3.8 million dollar facility south of Kilsyth on Wednesday.
The biodigester will process organic material with a twofold purpose — to remove pathogens from septage, making the byproduct suitable for farmers’ fields, and to create electricity for the grid.
The genesis can be traced back to a conversation several years ago between Chatsworth Mayor Howard Greig and John Wilkinson, who is now the provincial Environment Minister.
Wilkinson told Greig the province would like to ban the spreading of raw septage on fields but needed an alternative.
Chatsworth and Georgian Bluffs joined forces with Ross Slaughter of Owen Sound engineering firm Genivar to find that alternative.
Slaughter designed this particular biodigester to make organic waste virtually pathogen and odour-free — while harnessing methane gas for the production of up to 24 hundred kilowatt hours of electricity per day.
However, an extended approval process means it will probably be another month before the facility is hooked up to the grid.
Electricity sales and tipping fees are expected to allow Georgian Bluffs and Chatsworth to pay off their shares of the construction cost within eight years.
The townships are each expected to contribute a little over one million dollars while the federal and provincial governments are paying a total of nearly $1,666,700.
Stimulus funding for this project was announced in August 2009 and construction begin in May of this year, a very quick turnaround.
But Greig points out that planning has been ongoing for years and so the project was design-ready as soon as the money became available.
This is the first municipally owned biodigester in Ontario, but all concerned believe other municipalities will seek to construct their own facilities now that this one is operational.
Slaughter says he’s already received a number of inquiries.
