Unknown business in advanced talks for $85M plastic recycling plant, $12M waste sorting facility in east Greeley

Proposed plant site is just north of controversial special parks district considered last year

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The city of Greeley and an unknown company are in serious talks to construct an advanced plastic recycling plant on the city’s east side, as well as a municipal waste sorting and transfer facility, according to a memo made public in late January, estimating more than $100 million in investment and about 80 jobs should the deal get inked.

The memo from Benjamin Snow, Greeley’s director of Economic Health and Housing, and J.R. Salas, manager of Greeley’s Urban Renewal Authority, was sent Jan. 30 to the GURA’s board of commissioners. It appeared in the agenda for the authority’s Feb. 8 meeting.

Show me the numbers.

Sure. Snow and Salas claim their staff have been working for a year and a half with a not-yet-publicly-revealed “business prospect” they’ve given the code name Project Energy. That business or consortium has agreed to the following terms, according to the memo:

• Purchase the entire undeveloped portion of the Ironwood Business Park, 1612 1st Ave. in Greeley, which is about 12 acres;

• Develop a 20,000-square-foot municipal waste sorting and transfer station there at a cost of about $12 million, creating an estimated 25 jobs;

• Develop an additional 50,000 square feet of speculative industrial space at the same location at a cost of about $7.5 million, creating an estimated 20 jobs;

• Provide household plastic feedstock from the sorting and transfer station to a proposed 40,000-square-foot pyrolysis plant west of Anderson Sales & Salvage, 1490 E 8th St. in Greeley, at a cost of about $85 million, creating an estimated 35 jobs;

• And donate about 9 acres of land the company currently owns within Greeley for open space, trails and parks use, contingent on an environmental assessment of the real estate.

As part of the agreement, the GURA will spend up to $1.3 million to construct the road and utilities through the Ironwood Business Park. The funds would come from the GURA’s Western Sugar Tax Increment Financing, a form of bond issuance often utilized by local governments for redevelopment.

Wait, so what is the plan here exactly?

According to the memo, the company involved has secured commitments from current household waste haulers operating in Greeley to use the company’s proposed new sorting facility as the delivery point rather than going straight to the landfill, as they do now.

Plastics would then be separated from the delivered waste and transferred to a proposed pyrolysis plant adjacent to Anderson, which purchased the plant site from the GURA last year under the name ASR Energy LLC. According to the memo, Anderson will send the plant plastic waste from its current auto recycling operations.

And what is ‘advanced recycling?’

Pyrolysis is “the thermal decomposition of materials at elevated temperatures.” According to the memo from city officials, the plant would convert processed plastics into “fuel, energy and biochar.”

But that’s a controversial claim. In 2021, British news agency Reuters examined 30 pyrolysis projects by two-dozen advanced recycling companies across three continents and found results rarely attained the lofty promises announced at the outset.

“Most of those endeavors are agreements between small advanced recycling firms and big oil and chemicals companies or consumer brands, including ExxonMobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Procter & Gamble Co (P&G),” the investigation found. “All are still operating on a modest scale or have closed down, and more than half are years behind schedule on previously announced commercial plans, according to the Reuters review.”

And the Reuters investigation claims pyrolysis of plastic has its own environmental concerns. The news agency quoted Hideshige Takada, a geochemist and professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology who has studied pollutants in waste for decades. In addition to consuming large amounts of energy, “pyrolysis can generate toxic waste, such as dioxins,” the professor told Reuters.

That could complicate the roadmap for the proposed plant in Greeley, which would be constructed directly north of a controversial, 500-acre special parks and recreation district proposed last year by Richmark Companies, the real estate development and oil and gas investment firm owned by the Richardson family.

Oh yeah, whatever happened with that?

That proposal was slowed when the quick pace of the project drew ire from prominent members of Greeley’s Latino community. During city council meetings related to that project’s development, one former council member noted north and east Greeley have been home to a majority of the city’s Latino residents for generations, and she criticized Richmark — one of the most prolific developers in Greeley — for not talking with residents about the plans from the outset.

But the proposal has steadily moved forward. Last the author knew, a vastly reduced proposal for a special district was submitted to city staff and was under review.

The reader can bet that the secrecy involved in Greeley’s negotiations with “Project Energy” is unlikely to cool tempers already flared over past actions in the area.

So what’s next?

It wasn’t immediately clear Monday what discussion or actions the GURA board undertook Feb. 8. The “Ironwood Project,” as it is listed on the GURA board’s agenda, was listed as the third business item. The board next meets at 4:30 p.m. March 8.

But the memo from Snow and Salas notes a recommendation from GURA staff that the board motion to approve spending $1.3 million in TIF funds “to facilitate new industrial development projects within the Ironwood Business Park, contingent on agreeing to final terms within a new Development Agreement.”

The memo lists this approval and a recommendation that the Greeley City Council do the same as the first steps in the process. After those spending approvals, the GURA and the “Project Energy” entity would revise a development agreement that apparently already exists, adding in the bullet points at the top of this post.

City council would then need to approve the new development agreement. It’s unknown when the identity of the “Project Energy” firm would become public knowledge.