Bion Ag Project Slated for Small Upstate Town

Oswego County Concerned About Impact

Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
N.Y. Correspondent

SCHROEPPEL, N.Y. — With approval from the town board, Bion Environmental Technologies, Inc. (www.biontech.com), based in Crestone, Colo., plans to move forward with a project that could eventually bring 72,000 head of beef cattle and 600 jobs to a small Oswego County community.

The project planned would result in an integrated beef cattle closed loop operation, including the finishing and processing of beef and the generation of ethanol from the manure of the herd. Many locals raised concerns over the massive project.

As a neutral party, Johnathan Schell, representing Oswego County Cooperative Extension, helped facilitate meetings between members of the community and Bion officials.

Schell said that the local objections to Bion’s proposal included the manure’s smell, the number of job openings that would be filled by local labor, and the disturbance in ecology and local culture caused by the introduction of a large-scale, commercial ag operation to a small community.

Oswego County is home to numerous tourist fishing hotspots, including the Salmon and Oswego rivers, Lake Ontario, and several notable tributaries that feed those rivers.

“There’s some environmental concerns regarding the water,” Schell said.

Nancy Weber, president of Oswego County Farm Bureau, echoed these thoughts, relating that the project would bring the largest concentration of cattle east of the Mississippi River to a small, rural county.

“To have that many animals in our country brings up biohazard and food concerns that could affect other cattle in our county,” she said. “And there’s also the impact on our water and the manure controls.”

Former Oswego County legislature majority leader Shawn Doyle feels more strongly about the company and its proposed project.

“I am absolutely opposed to Bion,” he said. “They have come in here and run roughshod over people. They undermined me politically when I opposed them by going to other legislators and saying I was ‘anti-business’ and trying to use my influence against them. I recently was voted out of being majority leader. Other issues determined that, but the first troubles I had in my caucus were caused by Bion.

“I am very concerned about the threat of a bio-illness and how surrounding farms would be affected. I also am extremely concerned about the upset to the workforce and our schools by the potential of bringing in many low-skilled, Spanish-speaking workers which they alluded to.”

Jeff Kapell, Bion’s vice-president for Project Development Renewables, answered these concerns at town meetings and in a recent interview with Lancaster Farming.

Regarding the odor, he stressed that an odor study completed for St. Lawrence County by a team of scientists at Clarkson University’s Center for Environmental Excellence determined that the project’s environmental odor impact would be equivalent to a farm “no larger than a 400-head dairy that does not spread manure,” Kapell said.