Fruitful endeavor

Wisconsin Rapids welcomes Ocean Spray developments

The Onyx Cranberry Creek Landfill is working with the city of Wisconsin Rapids and Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. on a methane gas pipeline from the landfill to Ocean Spray's Wisconsin Rapids facility. Photo courtesy of Onyx Cranberry Creek Landfill

Government and business leaders in Wisconsin Rapids want to keep pace with a changing world filled with a growing number of technologies and economic demands.

Layoffs in the city’s paper industry left many people looking for new work in recent years, and leaders hope to diversify the city’s business base to prevent that kind of devastation from happening again.

“We lost 2,000 jobs,” said Jerry Bach, Wisconsin Rapids’ mayor. “We were a paper-mill town, and we’ve had to reinvent ourself. ... We’re aggressively courting what we can find. We need to get away from being a one-horse town.”

Cranberry processing, another of Wisconsin Rapids’ major industries, has undergone its own changes. Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. purchased a plant there in September 2004 and is spending about $18 million to improve the property, Bach said.

The company is building a 12,000-square-foot addition to house boilers and associated equipment, and it has created a new processing area out of a renovated cooler, said Ocean Spray’s Denise Perry.

The lion’s share of the cost comes from the installation of a new concentrator, a piece of equipment that will more than double the plant’s ability to process cranberries.

When completed, the Wisconsin Rapids plant will be able to process 8,500 barrels of fruit a day, Perry said.

The company anticipates hiring new workers to handle the increased production at the facility, she said.

As the new concentrator revs into gear, the plant will start accepting methane gas fuel from the nearby Onyx Cranberry Creek Landfill thanks to a business partnership that will save money for both the landfill and Ocean Spray.

The construction crew that is running a pipeline from the Onyx Cranberry Creek Landfill to the Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. facility in Wisconsin Rapids backfills a portion of the trench. Photo courtesy of Onyx Cranberry Creek Landfill

The landfill constantly produces methane, a greenhouse gas that is usually burned in a process called flaring, said Todd Watermolen, vice president of engineering for Onyx Waste Services Inc., Wisconsin Rapids. Burning the gas reduces its toxicity to the environment but doesn’t put the substance to good use.

Teaming with Ocean Spray and the city of Wisconsin Rapids changes that scenario. The methane gas will be piped directly to the cranberry processing plant, where it will fuel the steam boilers that energize the concentrator.

Greenhouse emissions from the landfill are expected to drop by 7,000 tons a year, the environmental equivalent of planting 15,000 trees or removing carbon monoxide emissions from 12,000 cars.

Ocean Spray will pay for the fuel but still anticipates reducing annual fuel costs by 25 percent, Perry said.

Construction of the one-mile, 12-inch-diameter pipeline began in June, and the conduit is expected to be ready to transport methane gas by September, Watermolen said.

The pipeline will run through the city’s business park, a measure the mayor helped facilitate, Watermolen said.