December 25, 2022. A new natural gas line connecting Sioux Center, Iowa, to a source of locally-produced natural gas could start next year.
The Sioux Center City Council at its Dec. 21 meeting approved giving City Utilities Manager Murray Hulstein authority to sign the agreement between West Branch RNG and the city of Sioux Center when the agreement is officially complete.
Maurice area dairymen Junior Hoogland, Aaron Maassen and Brian Roorda are partnering with renewable natural gas infrastructure company Novilla RNG to make a pipeline from the three dairies to the city of Sioux Center a reality.
Their plan is to produce renewable natural gas with the construction of methane digesters. The company producing this natural gas, West Branch RNG, would like to connect it to Sioux Center’s natural gas distribution system to inject and sell the gas to Sioux Center.
“This is a great way for us to partner with the county and our ag community in locally-produced renewable natural gas,” said Assistant Utilities Manager Adam Fedders. “As energy independence becomes more important and we are thinking more about where our energy comes from, to have a renewable source locally produced in Sioux County will be beneficial.”
In the proposed project, Novilla RNG would cover the estimated $5.2 million cost while Sioux Center would construct the 8-mile natural gas line to connect the main digester to the community’s system.
The proposed 6-inch line would run from near the intersection of Seventh Street and 13th Avenue NW (Grant Avenue) along Grant Avenue south to 470th Street to Hoogland Dairy, 2978 470th St., near Maurice. Another $230,000 will go toward construction of a maintenance and quality check building in which equipment will detect the quality of the natural gas produced before it’s injected into the line to the city. If the natural gas does not meet Northern Natural Gas standards, a shut off value will kick in and the gas will be flared off, going unused until the quality is back to the proper standards.
The overall project for West Branch RNG involves bringing manure from Roorda Dairy to Maassen Dairy, where a digester would generate raw natural gas. A line would be installed between the Maassen Dairy to Hoogland Dairy to transport the raw natural gas to another digester at Hoogland Dairy, where the raw product would be scrubbed and monitored before injecting gas into the city’s system. This step is to ensure the renewable natural gas quality meets the same standards of Northern Natural Gas, which currently transports natural gas to Sioux Center.