Guest editorial: Don’t let the manure hit the fan; biogas plant still a possibility in Freedom Township
Editor’s note: Guest editorials are by local leaders or experts with specific knowledge of a topic and may contain opinions. Views expressed in any editorial are always exclusively those of the author.
Cheryl Ruble has been working as a volunteer leader with several state and national organizations for over three years, challenging the greenwashed industry narrative surrounding biofuels, particularly manure-based biogas produced using anaerobic digesters, while also promoting truly clean energy policies. She has been working even longer (since 2018) to advance a just, sustainable, resilient, and transparent food and farm system rooted in the One Health principle: the recognition that human, animal, and environmental health are deeply interconnected and therefore must be prioritized equally.
by Cheryl Ruble, MD
In January 2024, The Manchester Mirror reported plans for a commercial-scale gas plant on a local dairy farm in the heart of Freedom Township. The project is a partnership between the farm and Vanguard Renewables (“Vanguard”), a company controlled by BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm. Vanguard aims to extract methane gas (“biogas”) from cow manure and large volumes of trucked-in industrial waste using a process known as anaerobic digestion.
The proposed gas complex would also include a refinery to scrub impurities from raw biogas to produce “pipeline-grade” biomethane, also known as renewable natural gas (“RNG”). RNG is chemically identical to fossil gas and used interchangeably. Methane, by any other name, burns and leaks the same.
Freedom Township residents responded swiftly with well-founded concern—attending public meetings, contacting local officials and state legislators, asking tough questions and pressing for answers, and organizing to inform neighbors and fight the project. Their efforts are ongoing. Notably, Freedom Township’s Zoning Ordinance currently prohibits “farm-based production of methane or any fuel product from an anaerobic digester” (Page 5–62).
More than a year and a half later, Freedom Township and neighboring Manchester-area communities remain in the dark as to the status of the project. Vanguard has been utterly silent—no response, no updates, no answers. In other communities, including Lind, Wisconsin, and West Jefferson, Ohio, Vanguard officially pulled out following fierce public backlash. Yet in Freedom Township, despite equally strong local resistance, they haven’t called it off. So, what exactly is Vanguard waiting for?
Two bills have been introduced in Michigan that would deregulate digesters and digestate, weakening Freedom Township’s ability to prohibit these facilities and protect against soil and water contamination from their waste byproduct. Washtenaw County is currently debating whether to support digesters as part of its Materials Management Plan, which would help clear the way at the county level. And legislation establishing a low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) is expected to be introduced in the state senate that would make biogas production in Michigan, already a lucrative business model, even more profitable.
Why Freedom Township?
Refined biogas is typically compressed and injected into pipelines for commercial distribution and sale. For this reason, biogas developers often target dairy partners near existing gas infrastructure. Freedom Township is already a pipeline corridor crossed by multiple oil and gas lines and hosting a Consumers Energy gas compressor station.
According to Penn State Extension: “Most digesters experience spills and leaks, which can be significant to the environment and may lead to serious injuries or an explosion in rare cases…The danger of fire and explosion is especially significant near digesters and gas reservoirs.”
Freedom Township is already saddled with more than its fair share of explosion risk.
Follow the Money
Proponents describe this “waste-to-energy” model as a win-win for farmers, rural communities, and the environment.
Make no mistake: biogas production is about harvesting a crop of financial rewards under the guise of sustainability, not taking meaningful climate action or helping family farms survive and thrive independently. Contracted farms are bound to large corporations. The commercial biogas industry would collapse without generous public subsidies, lucrative state and federal carbon credits, and substantial IRA tax breaks. Vanguard is investing in a cash cow, not in Freedom Township, Manchester, or other nearby communities.
Co-location on a farm allows biogas companies to operate under looser regulatory frameworks and tap into subsidies intended for farms. The corporation takes the lion’s share of the profits, while the farm is left with the hard and messy part: raising the animals and managing the waste byproduct known as digestate.
Business as Usual
Biogas carbon credit schemes let industrial polluters buy discounted credits from biogas producers and claim net-zero without actually cutting their own greenhouse gas emissions. It’s cheaper than doing the real work. Carbon markets are a windfall for biogas companies and heavy polluters. Unfortunately, rural, urban, and downstream communities bear the brunt of the pollution.
And the tax credits? Biogas companies and their investors profit off the credits, turning taxpayer money into private gain.
Digesters Are Not a Waste Management Solution
Anaerobic digestion does not reduce waste volume, nor does it eliminate odor or pathogens. Nutrient pollution may worsen because the nitrogen and phosphorus in digestate are more water-soluble, which increases the risk of runoff into lakes, rivers, and streams, and leaching into groundwater that supplies private drinking water wells. The consequences? Harmful algal blooms, fish kills, and toxic nitrate levels in well water. The proposed digester site is roughly a mile or less from Pleasant Lake’s shoreline and from hundreds of homes that rely on well water.
Co-digesters: Contaminants In, Contaminants Out, and Worse Odors
“Co-digesters” raise further concerns by mixing manure with other contaminated industrial waste streams, including municipal yard waste, food waste, agricultural processing waste, FOG (fats, oils, and grease), slaughterhouse and rendering waste, and even pharmaceutical waste. Such mixes can result in even more intense odors.
Digestate from these sources can contain PFAS, microplastics, plasticizers, heavy metals, pathogens, antibiotic resistance genes, endocrine disruptors, pesticides, herbicides, cleaning chemicals, and other harmful substances. Microplastics are especially prevalent in depackaged food waste. Vanguard seeks to build an on-site depackaging facility to separate foodstuffs from plastic packaging, with the resulting microplastics-laden waste fed into the digester.
The biogas industry freely uses the word organic to describe industrial digester feedstocks and digestate. In this context, organic simply means carbon-based—not chemical-free, toxin-free, or USDA-certified under any legitimate organic food or farm standard. They rebrand digestate as a nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and pass it off to farmers or market it for sale as a value-added product instead of paying for proper disposal. Those contaminants can end up in your soil, and eventually in your water and food.
But What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Michigan’s Fremont Regional Digester should serve as a cautionary tale. After Generate UpCycle (“Generate”) began adding larger volumes and new sources of industrial liquid waste to its feedstock, neighbors reported severe odor and digestate pollution. The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) determined that applying the contaminated digestate to farmland posed serious risks to groundwater and surface water. EGLE ordered stricter oversight, including a groundwater discharge permit, which Generate disputed. The draft permit drew fierce opposition at a packed public hearing in November 2024. In March 2025, Generate withdrew its application, and the digester later shuttered—a testament to the power of an engaged, informed, resolute community.
Will Michigan Clear the Tracks for Biogas Interests?
The Michigan biogas train hasn’t left the station, but it’s loaded, fueled, and waiting for the green light. Oil and gas giants like Chevron, utilities such as Consumers Energy and DTE Energy, waste management companies like Vanguard, investment firms like BlackRock, and major agribusinesses are already on board. They’re waiting on three key outcomes to clear the tracks and send the train barreling forward at full throttle.
- Deregulating Digestate
Digesters are not magic machines that turn contaminated waste streams into guaranteed safe and beneficial use products. Yet despite well-documented environmental and public health risks, many Michigan lawmakers are pushing to deregulate both digesters and digestate.
Now more than ever, Michigan legislators should be strengthening—not dismantling—critical environmental protections. Safeguarding public health must take precedence over easing regulatory burdens or lowering compliance costs for polluting industries. Protecting people is not a “business expense” to be minimized or an operational inefficiency to be streamlined.
House Bills 4265 and 4257, introduced by Representatives Joey Andrews [D-3] and Jerry Neyer [R-2], would fast-track industrial biogas projects and strip away meaningful oversight of digestate. The House passed both bills on June 12.* They now await consideration in the Senate Energy and Environment Committee.
*To see how your Representative voted, visit michiganvotes.org and search HB 4265 and HB 4257.
- Materials Management Plans (MMPs)
A 2022 amendment to Part 115 of Michigan’s Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act (NREPA) governing solid waste management replaced the term “solid waste” with “materials.” Now we have Materials Management Facilities instead of Solid Waste Management Facilities, and counties must replace Solid Waste Management Plans with Materials Management Plans (MMPs). A name change doesn’t alter the harmful nature of some waste streams.
The stated goal of MMPs is to promote recycling and keep solid waste out of landfills, inarguably essential steps. But the amendment also advances biogas interests by prioritizing anaerobic digestion as a so-called sustainable waste management strategy. Proponents are even angling to reclassify anaerobic digestion as a form of recycling, claiming the land application of digestate returns nutrients to the soil, while ignoring the addition of harmful contaminants.
Zero waste strategies should focus on preventing waste generation in the first place. Diversion has a role, but source reduction is key. Waste-to-biogas schemes claim to divert and recycle, yet moving landfill waste to farmlands isn’t recycling; it’s relocating. It’s not diversion; it’s dumping. Pro-biogas policies encourage more, not less waste, undermining true zero waste aims.
Counties have been tasked with formulating MMPs tailored to their waste management needs. Materials Management Planning Committees (MMPC) are meeting now. The biogas industry is betting on pro-digester MMPs.
Deregulating digestate and advancing digester-friendly MMPs will pave the way for the big biogas prize—a state low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS).
- A Michigan LCFS Would Likely Seal the Freedom Digester Deal
Senator Sam Singh [D-28] is expected to reintroduce a state LCFS, dubbed the Michigan Competitive Fuels Act. Similar legislation (Senate Bill 275) failed to advance in 2023-24. In theory, an LCFS promotes the transition to cleaner transportation fuels. In practice, it’s a windfall for oil and gas companies. In California, 80% of LCFS credit value goes to combustion biofuels like manure biogas and “renewable diesel” made from biofuel crops. Michigan is right to act, but wrong to lean on biofuels. Biogas doesn’t live up to its green-and-clean promises when its full carbon footprint is counted and unintended consequences are factored in.
Currently, RNG must be burned as fuel in a state with an LCFS (California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico) to earn credits. That means transporting it or injecting it into an interstate pipeline that theoretically carries the methane molecules to the state. Biogas producers are clamoring for a Midwest LCFS to shorten the delivery route and expand the biogas market.
If Michigan enacts an LCFS, it could all but guarantee a gas plant in Freedom Township.
Will rural Michiganders be left with any say over the siting of utility-scale digester operations?
Consumers Energy has invested in at least four Michigan dairy digester projects; DTE Energy operates eight in Wisconsin and will likely invest in stateside digesters should conditions become more favorable. Several other companies have built digesters in Michigan. Expect more digester-dotted rural landscapes if Michigan aligns with the biogas lobby.
Co-locating digesters on farms shifts the burden of waste disposal onto farmers and rural areas, and can jeopardize soil and water quality, and public health. The biogas industry is driven by carbon and tax credits, not community concerns.
Call to Action
Tell members of the Senate Energy and Environment Committee and your own state senator to reject House Bills 4257 and 4265. But don’t stop there. Urge your local elected officials, legislators, and Governor Whitmer to put the brakes on biogas. Even the Governor’s signature MI Healthy Climate Plan promotes biogas as a climate solution.
Speak up now, or others will decide for you—collective community vision must prevail over corporate intrusion.
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