Letter: Digester Concerns

To the Editor:

I recently wrote a  post  for a private FB group page called "Fremont Digester and Lagoon Updates". It is the only FB group pages I know of in this county that was formed to bring community members together to try to get resolution to the problems of odors, land application spills, misinformation, etc that was the result of Generate Fremont Digester's operation at the food waste digester site in Fremont and at their two lagoons in Holton that hold the wastewater from their operations. That wastewater has been spread on thousands of acres of area farmland for the past 5 years under a previous permit which was found to be the wrong type of discharge permit and did not have the type of scrutiny the new permit will have. That being said, a permit is only good if the business operator chooses to follow its terms as the state cannot be up here 24/7 to monitor .

The efforts of members of the FB  group used up thousands of combined hours that we could have spent enjoying ourselves instead of babysitting the Digester and wastewater applicators and forcing the state to take action. It will be under a new permit that calls for more scrutiny than the last, but again, a permit is only as good if its terms are adhered to. I want to inform you of what I see as some concerning information within the geologic studies conducted by the state, esp in reference to what is actually in the wastewater (aka "digestate") being spread on area farmland and the potential threat it has to our area land and drinking water wells.  When I saw information about the wells near True North Community Services and Holton Elementary being flagged as VERY HIGH RISK, I became very concerned. There are a multitude of other individual homeowner's wells with similar risk. 

We only have one chance to get this right and be assured that the spread of this wastewater isn't going to endanger area drinking water. I am sending this to many people, you included, as someone who I felt should see the information for a multitude of reasons. Please give this some serious thought and attention, and please seek answers from our state environmental agency, EGLE, to be sure that no decisions are made that are not right for our community.

Thank you for your time.

​Kathy Morrison
Fremont, MI