Senator Tom Carper Tours BioEnergy DevCo site in Seaford, highlighting Anaerobic Digestor project

SEAFORD, Del. – Delaware Senator Tom Carper toured the BioEnergy DevCo facility in Seaford Friday, ahead of plans for an Anaerobic processing project to get underway.

The project seeks to convert poultry waste that may otherwise be stored in DAF tanks or reapplied raw to farmland with significant risks for the watershed, into a compost-like product and natural gas that proponents say drastically reduce the environmental impact those products would have in direct application or alternative storage.

“In Europe, they have literally hundreds of plants where they’re already doing this and they’re doing it for environmental reasons, and we want to find out what works and do more of that,” Senator Tom Carper said.

The facility once up and running would process up to 250,000 tons a year with a turnaround time of 30 days that would produce 400,000 BTUs of gas, enough to power 15,000 homes.

“We’re sequestering the methane that normally would be associated with just normal rotting of organic material, so if that raw material is sprayed raw on the farmer’s land, it would rot and turn into biogas, and drain into the watershed and increase the nutrients in places like the Chesapeake Bay,” said BioEnergy DevCo CEO Shawn Kreloff.

The construction is set to start despite an EPA review of the DNREC permitting process for the site, an action spurred by the environmental group Food and Water Watch which opposed the site.

47ABC reached out to the group and did not hear back.

Senator Carper says the project will bring the first state in line with sustainability goals while protecting its agriculture and poultry sectors.

” We’re keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere from a water standpoint. We’re helping the water quality, which is very important to this part of the world by not allowing excess nutrients into the soil, by processing that material,” Senator Carper said adding “100, 200 years from now I want the soil to be healthy and this is the best way to achieve that.”