By Morgan Cardenas
editor@wayneherald.com
At Tuesday's meeting, the Wayne County Commissioners heard updates and learned more about the Summit Carbon Solutions proposal.
First, during the Board of Equalization they approved motor vehicle exemption applications for Providence Medical Center as well as approving personal property tax corrections and the listing of omitted property and clerical errors on March's assessment roll.
The Commissioners meeting started with Wayne County Emergency Manager Nic Kemnitz presenting the ReGroup Emergency Alert Agreement. Originally, CivicPlus was the system that was used and was called CivicReady for the notification service. CivicPlus had a subcontract with ReGroup from 2017 to 2021 and then signed a new contract with AlertSense. ReGroup reached out to Kemnitz and informed him that all of the system that they had during their subcontract through CivicPlus was still intact and would like to have a direct contract instead of with ReGroup. Kemnitz said that ReGroup has worked better in the past for them than AlertSense has over the last couple of months and that they offered a contract for the same amount as the one with CivicReady for $3,640.44 for a year. The service sends out text messages with alerts for major weather. The text messages include a more detailed alert than that of AlertSense with time and location of the storm. It was moved to sign with ReGroup over AlertSense. Kemnitz then talked about a HAZMAT spill that happened on Highway 57 last Wednesday. They said the spill is being listed as a liquid fertilizer but are not completely sure due to the vehicle that created the spill left the scene without reporting the incident. A crew was sent out to spray the mess from the highway and open the road.
Then a public hearing was held for Ben Hogans Heroes LLC for the Logan Valley Golf Course in Wakefield in reference to obtaining a Class I Liquor License. With there being no problems with this, the Commissioners approved of the license for one year.
Representatives from Summit Carbon Solutions returned to give more information about the CO2 pipeline with an economic analysis report. The goal of the pipeline is to capture CO2 going into the atmosphere from the 32 ethanol plants across a five-state region with half of the corn going towards ethanol production. Six of those ethanol plants are located in Nebraska. The project would bring in $28 million to Wayne County as Summit would be paying $630,000 in property taxes yearly to the county. Between 12,000 – 15,000 temporary jobs would be created across the five state region with another 500 permanent jobs available once the pipeline is online. Last July/August, Summit Carbon Solutions reached out to landowners and provided voluntary surveys for cultural, biological and civil. They also answered the question of who would be liable for any problems with the pipeline. The answer was that Summit Carbon Solutions would be fully in charge and take care of the costs for any problems unless there is obvious evidence that the landowner damaged the pipeline on purpose.
Haystack Wind Farm representatives then updated the board about their project closure. Along with tying up some loose-ends, Haystack will be removing their lay-down yard before the end of May. Three turbines are currently not operational and are waiting on parts from Germany. Future wind turbine development in northeast Nebraska will be around the Battle Creek area.
Finally the meeting ended with a presentation from Sandra Hansen, Disaster Recovery Specialist, to discuss the funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF). Hansen informed the Commissioners that Wayne County received the first half of the ARPA funds, being $911,463, last June and will receive the second half next month for a total of $1.82 million. A committee has been put together and will meet on June 7 with applications being made available by June 8. The only action taken was if an application is deemed not eligible and the money was already allocated and spent, the group who received the money would have to pay 100% of it back in 60 days. Wayne County would appeal with the Department of Treasury. The Commissioners and the committee will meet on May 26 to discuss this more.
The Wayne County Board of Commissioners will next meet in regular session on Tuesday, June 7 at 9 a.m. in the Wayne County Courthouse.
