GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. On Monday City Council members met to take the next step to improving the air quality of the city.
Persigo Wastewater Treatment Plant burns off 100,000 cubic feet a day of digester gas, or methane, which is a byproduct of processing the city’s waste.
However, the methane bio-gas can be converted into an alternative fuel that the city would use to fuel its CNG vehicles, which would amount to over 196,000 gallons of this alternative to gasoline.
Several years ago the city contracted an engineering firm to help find a benefit to this burn off, and today they presented the city with four different options.
The council members voted on an option that would allow a pipeline to be built that would then take the burn-off and convert it into the alternative methane bio-gas that the city could then in turn use to fuel the CNG vehicles and buses.
The cost of this option is $1.3 million to build the pipeline, and it would reduce the amount of CO2 in the air by 3 million lbs.