Schumer Asks for EPA’s Help with Burning Ethanol Plant Silo Pumping Smelly Smoke into Volney

(LocalSyr) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer visited the old Attis Biofuels Ethanol Plant Tuesday to demand the owners who vacated the property help clean up the burning mess left behind.

Smoke, billowing from one of the silos left partially filled with corn kernels, is causing the smell of burning coffee or burning trash to overtake the air.

People who live in the area have been asking for help for weeks. The fire started late last year but broke through the silo roof in June.

Fulton Fire Chief Adam Howard tells NewsChannel 9 that he and the Volney Volunteer Fire Company have a plan to extinguish the fire, but they need permission from the owners. Unless it’s an emergency threatening the public, he says sending firefighters in is too risky.

Schumer calls the company’s CEO “a very elusive character” and hadn’t been able to connect with him by the time of his visit. READ MORE

Similarity Sells: Three recent plant acquisitions and a pertinent joint venture reveal how ethanol producers, when investing, often seek facilities that resemble or bring balance to their existing assets. (Ethanol Producer Magazine)

Excerpt from LocalSYR.com: Oswego County Legislature Chairman Jim Weatherup issued an emergency order to take care of it. He said that the county has a contractor in place to come to the silo and safely dispose of the ashes and burn material.

He says getting rid of the smell is only the first step in revitalizing the plant and the economy as a whole.

“It’s a first step,” he said, “But it’s really exciting in that it’s a first step in a journey to getting this plant back in production and to hire full-time people again and the surrounding community you know with farmers and agriculture.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Ethanol Producer Magazine: It’s possible—but not yet official—that a long beleaguered ethanol plant (formerly Sunoco) at the site of a former Miller Brewing Co. site in Fulton, New York, could be headed back to production. After shuttering prior to 2019, a Georgia-based company called Attis Biofuels acquired the plant. Successful operations never came for Attis. In 2021, a silo fire was left in a state of controlled smolder at the site, causing an understandable ruckus with nearby residents. Attis had reportedly exhausted its ability to correct that and other problems at the plant. From the city council to county officials to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, regional leaders worked to find a way to stop the slow burn in the silo and, with it, the unpleasant smell of smoldering grain.

As of late 2022, the grain smolder is extinguished and the regional chamber of commerce in Oswego County is hoping that a new plan and offer to buy the site will restore production. Through county legislation, a series of resolutions has passed that will put the site into the hands of Fortune 500 company Global Partners. For roughly $13 million, GP has proposed to purchase the site and restore ethanol production.

The county had to take possession of the tax delinquent parcels and work with Attis’s creditors to complete the sale to GP, which isn’t the only big investor looking to revamp different parts of the sprawling campus where the former Sunoco plant resides. Next door, TDJ Properties has purchased a 67-acre property for $5.5 million. TDJ is a large supplier of screening and crushing equipment in the Northeast and has purchased the area next to the ethanol plant for a totally different purpose: microchips.

Further down the road from the ethanol and TDJ sites, Micron has plans to spend $100 billion on a massive semiconductor facility to also produce microchips. Oswego County has since experienced a land rush to house applicable businesses, according to the chamber.

Global Partners has not yet released any public information on its purchase of the ethanol plant, other than its stated intent to restart, submitted to the Oswego County legislators. The company does own and operate a major terminal in Albany, New York, that is able to supply ethanol to customers throughout the East Coast. On the opposite side of the country, in Oregon, Global Partners handles multiple grades of ethanol, which allows the company to engage in export markets.

“The advantageous location of our terminals, coupled with our expertise in moving product by rail, barge and truck, makes [GP] a leading supplier of ethanol on the East Coast and a participant in the West Coast export market,” the company says. READ MORE