The Conewago Township Zoning Hearing Board (ZHB) approved a zoning request that will allow developers to take next steps for a facility to convert food waste to natural gas.
The ruling was announced at a decisional meeting Thursday, October 10, 2024. The board heard zoning requests from developers Divert Real Estate Holdings, LLC, who presented information about the proposed facility and its operations over multiple sessions of a quasi-judicial hearing.
The hearing concluded on Wednesday, September 4, 2024. Afterward, the ZHB met in closed session three more times to deliberate, ZHB solicitor Harold A. Eastman, Jr. Esq said.
The site is located at 444 Oxford Avenue, Hanover, and is a 22-acre space on the west side of Oxford Avenue, north of McSherrystown. It is zoned industrial.
According to the website for Divert, Inc, the company’s facilities collect food waste and convert it to “renewable natural gas” (RNG) through a process of anaerobic digestion.
Divert states that about 90% of the organic matter is converted to biogas, while the remaining 10% is left as a solid substance, which can be added to soil as an amendment. The company announced plans in 2022 to open 30 more facilities by 2031.
The ZHB was tasked with ruling whether to grant a special exception to allow a “heavy industrial” use of the property. Production of natural gas is defined as heavy industrial use in the township’s zoning code.
Heavy industrial uses are permitted in the industrial zone by special exception if an applicant can meet conditions in the Conewago Township code’s criteria. Applicants must present information to the ZHB about the planned operations and plans for the facility, including the estimated environmental impacts of the site such as light pollution, noise, waste generation, traffic, and stormwater impact.
The ZHB ruled to grant a conditional approval of the special exception. They required the condition that the developers would build two anaerobic tanks on the property to the minimum height possible that would still allow for their reasonable and safe use. The townships code limits the heights of buildings to 45-feet-tall, but allows certain structures to be taller, as long as they are set back “a horizontal distance at least equal to their height from any property line.”
An engineer for the project testified that the tanks would be set back from the property line more than the required amount.
The board also set a condition for the applicants to explore the possibility of partially burying the tanks in-ground to reduce their height. The applicant is awaiting results of a geotechnical study to determine if this is possible.
Approximately 35 parties entered the record as objectors to the zoning application. Objectors were required to live within one mile of the proposed facility. The objectors were individually offered a chance to testify and present evidence if they wished.
Several seemed to object to the fact that the property was included in the industrial zone, arguing that it would be against the public interest to develop the land for an industrial use and preferring the site to remain farmland.
Various participants in the hearing stated that the site was zoned industrial in the Conewago Township Zoning Ordinance of 2009.
To define “special exceptions,” the PA Department of Community & Economic Development states that, “A use permitted by special exception . . . is also expressly permitted in a zoning ordinance, but subject to a hearing and decision of the zoning hearing board . . . . The function of these boards is to determine whether the special exception . . . is consistent with the public interest as expressed in specific standards and criteria established in the zoning ordinance.”
The zoning hearing is only one step in the process of development. The developers would need to seek final approval of a land development plan and approval from outside agencies such as the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to move the project forward.
The hearing spanned several sessions, beginning on June 5. Video of the final session can be viewed through the Community Media Center of South Central PA.
Catalina Righter, freelance reporter, lives in New Oxford. She previously wrote for the Carroll County Times and the Kent County News, covering crime, education, local government and arts. She works as a legal assistant.