For Immediate Release

Dover, DE — Last night, in a hard-fought victory for the democratic process after the County initially sought to ram the project through without public engagement, environmental and community advocates showed strong opposition to Bioenergy’s proposed factory farm biogas operations in Sussex County. Bioenergy’s proposal to build a dangerous new poultry waste digestion facility near Seaford would be the first of its kind in the country, and represents a serious threat to the local environment and community efforts to dislodge Perdue’s factory farm chokehold on the region.

After successfully fighting off a back-room, closed-door approval process and gaining public hearings for this controversial proposal, environmental and community health activists celebrated the opportunity for public oversight. Advocates and Sussex County residents submitted over 130 public comments in opposition, and numerous people spoke out against the Bioenergy proposal at last night’s Planning & Zoning Commission hearing. Speakers highlighted the dangers of Bioenergy’s ever-shifting proposal including heightened traffic, pollutant emissions from carbon dioxide and smog-forming molecules, as well as the threat of explosive truck-bombs, and the impact that digestate poses to the region’s waterways.

In response to the robust local opposition, Food & Water Watch Staff Attorney Tyler Lobdell issued the following statement:

“Bioenergy’s attempt to circumvent the democratic process and rush this project through approvals without proper oversight betrays their intentions. Now that the public has regained the reins of this process, Delaware’s elected officials will have no choice but to listen to the outpouring of resistance to Bioenergy’s plan to profit off pollution. As we look ahead to the Sussex County Council hearing next month, Delaware residents are sending a clear message: Bioenergy will not test their dangerous facilities in communities where families live, work and play, and their hopes for a national buildout will be checked at all points by opposition like what we saw last night.”