A $180 million expansion of a key piece of Pasco’s food processing infrastructure is coming online. 

City officials, along with representatives from multiple partners, will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the expansion of the Pasco Water Reuse Facility and Pasco Resource Recovery Center at 11 a.m. March 22. 

The expansion of the water reuse facility will allow the city to support more processors, including the Darigold facility currently under construction. The resource recovery center will generate renewable natural gas, soil nutrient additives and algae for bioproducts as it returns clean water to the local irrigation system. 

“This facility is truly cutting-edge,” said Maria Serra, Pasco public works director, in a release. “By repurposing water from food processing plants, we’re improving our environmental impact, meeting state and federal environmental standards, and harnessing valuable resources like renewable natural gas, all while sharing costs with industry partners.” 

Currently, the water reuse facility serves seven food processing plants, taking their process wastewater and storing it in large ponds during the winter and using fields during the spring, summer and fall as a land treatment system to recycle the water back into the land. Along with Darigold’s facility currently under construction, Reser’s, Simplot and Grimmway all have new or expanded facilities with greater wastewater processing needs. 

The expansion will provide capacity to treat 1 billion gallons of process wastewater per year. Additionally, the facility will now be able to conduct further pretreatments, with two 34-million-gallon anaerobic digesters breaking down organic matter in the wastewater while also producing biogas to be turned into renewable natural gas for local use. A greenhouse filtration system will use algae to recover nitrogen while also capturing carbon dioxide. 

The project was paid for from state and federal grants such as $53 million from the Washington Department of Ecology’s Clean Water Grants & Loans program, $1.5 million from Franklin County Economic Development grant funds, a $1.5 million low-interest loan from Ecology’s Revolving Fund and a city bond. Existing and future processors and investors will pay back the bond over the coming years. 

The list of partners on the project is long, with Xylem, Burnham RNG, Biogas Engineering and Gross-Wen Technologies providing the technological enhancements. Kennewick-based Cascade Natural Gas Corp. will distribute the renewable natural gas produced at the facility. Swinerton Energy was the project’s contractor. 

“This project does much more than treat wastewater; it unlocks long-term value for the City of Pasco and its industries,” said Chris Tynan, Burnham RNG CEO. “By integrating advanced treatment, nutrient recovery, and energy production, we and our partners have built a system that makes wastewater a financial and environmental asset.”