High River council gets a biodigester education

High River town council got a first hand look at a biodigester Wednesday near Lethbridge.

Mayor Craig Snodgrass says they were looking for issues at that site that could be a problem in the town with a biodigester proposed for Foothills County.

"It was good to see how all these pieces work together from the feed stock that they use to the end product that's produced and everything in between. The big things that we were focused on learning was what are the bigger impacts to High River, whether it be odour from the liquid digestate lagoons, solid digestate or the incoming products and how that's handled at their facility and H2S, we talked about how they handle H2S and how everything's dealt with through their processes."

Snodgrass says the Lethbridge site has never had an issue with H2S (hydrogen sulfide).

He says council's trying to focus on the issues that are being brought to them about the Rimrock and Tidewater proposal.

"What we see is the largest impact that could be for the town of High River is their current design of the open liquid digestate lagoons and that's what we're trying to do to get them to contain that product," he says.

Snodgrass says they've already sent letters urging the Alberta Environment and Parks, Rimrock and Tidewater to make sure the liquid digestate issue is addressed.

He says the Lethbridge operation is smaller than the one being proposed west of the town and is in an industrial area.