City of Fort Scott agrees to sell wastewater to biodiesel plant

The City of Fort Scott has entered into an agreement to sell its wastewater to a biodiesel refining plant in Missouri.

The Fort Scott City Commission at its last meeting, Nov. 20, approved the agreement between the city and Prairie Pride Inc., a combination soybean oil extraction and biodiesel refining facility near Deerfield, Mo.

They'll pay between $50,000 and $75,000 per year, with the payments to be made in monthly installments.

An exact amount hasn't been established, because the price will be based on the amount of water used.

The city will provide an average of 340,000 gallons of water each day from its wastewater treatment plant at 601 S. Barbee St. Usage will not exceed 400,000 gallons per day.

The term of the agreement is for five years.

Prairie Pride first initiated contact with the city about buying water for its plant. Former City Manager Richard Nienstedt and staff members worked on negotiating the deal for 8 to 9 months, interim City Manager Robert Farmer said.

Prairie Pride chose Fort Scott to provide the water, because it was the closest town to the plant that could provide that amount of water.

The plant is currently using well water.

John Nelson, general manager at the plant, said the amount of water will vary, but when the facility is running at maximum capacity, it will use 340,000 gallons of water per day. Nelson added that the plant hopes to run seven days a week.

"We actually won't need to start pumping that water (from Fort Scott) until probably March of next year," Nelson said.

Workers will have to construct a 6-inch water line from the wastewater plant in Fort Scott to the biodiesel plant located six miles east of Fort Scott.

The pipeline will cost approximately $1 million, and construction is anticipated to start at year's end, Nelson said.

Once the water reaches the plant, it will go through a treatment process, similar to how drinking water is treated but without added chemicals.

"We'll run it though a reverse osmosis system and filtration unit," Nelson said.

He said large amounts of water are needed to cool down certain areas of the plant. It also uses steam, and some water is lost to evaporation and needs to be replaced with treated water.

The water has already been used by Fort Scott, so Prairie Pride will be recycling the water, which is an environmental upgrade over the well water they're currently extracting, Nelson said.

"It will be one less natural resource that we're consuming," Nelson said. "We're just using water over that has already been used, so it's kind of like a recycling process. The state agencies think it's a great idea, from an environmental standpoint, to use recycled water."