The Washington state developer who wants to turn the former 6-Mile mill property into a waste-burning operation to heat large-scale greenhouses said his next steps include lining up financing and making an offer to buy the land from the borough.
Dale Borgford said he was heartened by the warm reception he received from the borough assembly, mayor and borough staff when he and his crew met with officials and toured the site last month.
The Colville, Washington businessman has estimated the cost for developing the Wrangell project could total $87 million.
His plans include a biomass system to burn trash, wood waste and other organic material. The system would generate heat for tens of thousands of square feet of greenhouses to grow fruits and vegetables for sale in town and to ship to buyers out of town.
The plans also include a plant to bottle as much as 40,000 gallons a day of creek water or rainwater, and an operation to turn fish waste into fertilizer.
Borgford will need state and federal permits for the operations and told the assembly at a Dec. 18 public meeting at City Hall that he and his wife are prepared to put $14 million into the venture.
“We’ve just got to finish the financing,” he said in an interview Jan. 3. And though loans would be available, “I would prefer a little help” from government grants to reduce the amount borrowed, he said.
At some point in the process, he plans to make an offer to the borough to buy the land, he said, preferring to purchase rather than lease the acreage.
The borough in 2022 bought the almost 40 acres from the former owner of the 6-Mile mill for $2.5 million. It leases a small portion of the property for a scrap metal recycling operation and is looking to sell or lease the land for economic development.
Borgford tried a similar venture more than a decade ago in Springdale, Washington, where he planned to install a biomass operation to burn wood waste from a lumber mill that he had purchased in 2009 and reopened in 2010. The mill, 40 miles northwest of Spokane, had been closed for five years. Reopening the mill created more than two dozen jobs.
The biomass burner is the same system he is proposing for Wrangell, where it would cleanly burn trash from Wrangell and other Southeast communities, producing heat and methane, he explained. The heat would keep 73,000 square feet of greenhouse space warm year-round, and the methane would help fuel the burner operation, Borgford said.
He calls the eight-sided burner unit an “octaflame gasifier.” Though it is not in commercial operation anywhere, he has built a test unit at his shop in Colville. “Our system is a gasification system, not an incinerator,” he said Jan. 3.
The Springdale venture was estimated to cost close to $9 million, with a $4 million federal grant awarded in 2008, $4 million from the Borgfords, a $540,000 loan from the state of Washington and a $230,000 Washington state grant awarded in 2012.
The state funding came after the Washington Legislature in 2009 authorized the Department of Natural Resources to work with private firms to develop forest biomass-to-energy pilot projects.
The U.S. Forest Service, however, backed out of the project, leaving the bioenergy venture short of cash to pay its bills and continue with the venture, Borgford said. “We took some pretty hard losses.”
Borgford BioEnergy filed for bankruptcy in federal court in Washington state in July 2013. The company filed under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, which allows businesses to reorganize their finances and pay off their creditors.
The company exited bankruptcy the next year after selling assets and paying its debts, he said.
At the time of the bankruptcy filing, the company’s largest creditor was the state of Washington for the balance owed on the 2012 loan, which Borgford said he repaid in full.
Wrangell officials were aware of the bankruptcy history when they met with the Borgford team last month, said Mayor Patty Gilbert. She did not plan to raise the issue at the Dec. 18 public meeting, though she thought other borough officials might ask about it.
“I was interested to see how he (Borgford) handled it,” if asked at the meeting, she said.
“I’m glad nobody brought it up,” Borough Manager Mason Villarma said last week. Officials had discussed the bankruptcy with Borgford during his visit to town, and Villarma said he wanted to keep the meeting focused on the Wrangell project.
“We’ll see what the next step brings,” Gilbert said. “We certainly haven’t fully vetted him.”
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