Conagra is already of the economically prominent businesses that call Waseca home, and it’s now looking to utilize its plant in town year-round with help from the city.
Conagra has requested to connect its facility to the city-owned Waseca Wastewater Treatment Facility to enable the company to operate vegetable production during the winter season. This will allow its plant to produce year-round.
Conagra Plant Manager Jef Kraimer, Joe Palen of Stantec, and Waseca City Manager Carl Sonnenberg all talked to the Waseca City Council at its May 21 work session, and the council later approved a wastewater business expansion plan at the regular meeting the same night.
Overview
Conagra will maintain its facility’s existing wastewater treatment system and associated permits to reduce loading to the city’s treatment facility from April through October.
“With this project, they would propose to build a pre-treatment facility to treat most of the organics down to domestic strength and then to discharge that to the city’s wastewater plant,” Sonnenberg said.
Sonnenberg talked to the city attorney to make sure everything was legal, so that the council would have no concerns with all the technical items within the resolution.
The resolution is a preliminary approval and is subject to change over the next number of months. If Conagra and the city follow through with the agreement, the first term will be over five years and would be renewable after that.
“We are working with them on the extent to which they have to treat their wastewater, so that the strength of the wastewater doesn’t harm the treatment plant,” said Sonnenberg. “Because once we take anybody’s wastewater in town, it doesn’t matter who it is, it is our responsibility to comply with the permit, not the people that ship us the wastewater.”
The city has been working with the company Stantec to evaluate the flows and loads that would be coming to the wastewater treatment facility. Conagra has been paying for the city’s technical review from Stantac.
Proposal
The city plans on projecting 300,000 gallons a day in the winter to their treatment facility. If everything goes accordingly, Conagra will start the process of connecting to the city’s wastewater plant in 2027.
The access charge Conagra will pay the city will be just under $900,000.
“It’s for that new user to essentially pay their fair share of the capacity that they would be utilizing that you already paid for,” Palen said to the council. “That treatment facility already exists, and so it’s important that they pay their fair share of the capacity that they would be consuming.”
“If [Conagra] were to connect today, that revenue to the city would be about half a million dollars a year,” Palen added.
That revenue, along with the $900,000 would allow the city to invest in their sanitary sewer system, something that is of importance to the city and the council.
The agreement between the city and Conagra will help make Conagra more viable as a plant and company in town since they would be able to produce year round.
“Today the plant is about 38% utilized,” said Kraimer. “So there’s $300-$360 million investments sitting down the road that’s 38% utilized. In order to make that asset really work for us financially, it needs to run at least 250-300 days a year.”
Conagra will also bring new equipment in once they connect to the city’s wastewater plant that will allow them to make vegetables they haven’t produced yet at the plant including potatoes, carrots and green beans.
The proposal will potentially produce more jobs within the company and have seasonal employees at the plant turn into full-time employees year-round.
“Depending upon how they package their winter products, which is still under the analysis stage, that will help them determine what their additional full time staff would look like,” Sonnenberg said about Conagra. “But the bottom line for them right now corporate wise is they need to make this plant more profitable...So this resolution authorizes us moving forward to accomplish that.
Resolution 24-34
The resolution would authorize city staff to continue to work with Conagra on getting an industrial user permit because Conagra wishes to discharge wastewater to the city’s treatment plant.
“It gives Conagra the confidence to go back and to continue their technical, legal, and mathematical analysis to determine the viability to what’s being proposed,” said Sonnenberg.
The proposed plan would only take place during the winter months, as Conagra would still continue their summer operation as normal. The council was in favor of the proposal.
“It’s a huge investment,” council member Mark Christiansen said. “We’re going to recoup some dollars but also we’re going to invest in one of our businesses in town to stay here in town.”
But if the city and Conagra go forward with the proposition, it will mean the city would have to turn away new businesses and industries that would need to have the city store wastewater during the winter months.
“If the council approves this, in terms of accepting large industrial wastewater growth, which is what this is, we’re done,” said Sonnenberg.
The council approved the resolution unanimously to have the city continue work with Conagra on the proposal.
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