Warden talks wastewater with biodiesel firm

Company seeks permits to help find more investors

WARDEN - Warden City Council authorized the city administrator to negotiate a wastewater agreement with Washington Biodiesel at last week.

Kevin Raymond with Washington Biodiesel said the company is in the process of financing its seed-crushing and biodiesel production plant in Warden and they were requesting Warden City Council's help.

"One of the things that we've heard from prospective investors is they don't consider us ready to go until we have our permits in hand," he said.

Washington Biodiesel needs a wastewater permit and the agreement would be a step toward it, he said.

Raymond said Washington Biodiesel considered different wastewater treatment alternatives, onsite and offsite.

"For lots of reasons we decided to pursue an onsite alternative, which means we'll be engineering a wastewater treatment pond that will be on our site that will hold four months' worth of wastewater and we would like to negotiate a contract with the City of Warden that would have us irrigating some of your fields south of our project during the growing season," Raymond said.

Raymond said he could draft a sample contract if needed, adding he knows the town would like to know certain details such as the characteristics of the effluent.

"I can assure you that our wastewater's going to be very clean. It's not going to have the kinds of nutrients that have been sometimes problematic in other contexts, but we know that we have to prove that out to the city before we enter into a contract."

The water from the biodiesel plant is mostly cooling water without nitrates, said Raymond.

Councilmember Todd Kisler said the state Department of Ecology would like the town to get away from using water with too many nitrates.

"It's going to be about 60,000 gallons per day and we'll have four months' worth of storage on site," Raymond said.

The water is stored when the weather doesn't permit watering and would be used when it's warm enough.

The city approved the request for the city administrator to enter wastewater negotiations with Washington Biodiesel.

"Thank you. It's going to be a huge help to our project," Raymond said.