We just received our new monitoring equipment. We’ve purchased two mobile terminals that we will place in various surrounding areas to measure how much sound is leaving our facility and traveling in which directions. We also purchased a fixed mounted sound station for installation at the plant, to monitor exactly what sounds the plant is making at all times. Additionally, we installed a sophisticated weather station which will allow us to constantly record which way the wind is blowing, as the direction and strength of prevailing wind can cause sound to travel much further. This will allow us to make sure that we can isolate which specific sounds are attributable to our plant, and which ones we have no control over (loud trucks, tree frogs, thunderstorms, etc.) Over the course of this ongoing effort, we’ve assembled quite an impressive amount of data demonstrating some very positive progress. As always, feel tree to drop us a note or ask any questions you might have. Thanks for all your feedback!

– Lorne A.

We’ve just installed more covers on vessels-V 31,32,33,34. With this latest addition, we’ve spent over $250,000 on sound attenuation so far.

– Matt S.

Remember the enclosure we built around our Guild skid last March? In response to some more feedback and sound testing, we’ve gone ahead and added special custom-made louvers to the enclosure as well. These should eliminate the last bit of sound that could possibly come from this equipment.

– Jeff B.

We’ve just received the acoustical cover for V-1580. We’re very slowly blanketing our noisy vessels in the processing plant with thick acoustical covers, trying to ensure that none of our neighbors are inconvenienced at all by any of the sounds made while we’re processing our green gas. As always, feel free to drop us a line and let us know how we’re doing!

– Jeff B.

King County Solid Waste and Bio-Energy Washington co-hosted a community meeting to address neighboring residents’ concerns about noise from the BEW facility. I was pleased to be able to meet many of you personally, and I know I speak for everyone at BEW when I say that we are all very appreciative of the excellent community feedback we received. We’ve been working quite hard to maintain our ‘Good Neighbor Policy’ and we’re happy to announce that we’re still plugging away at it. For more information on what was discussed at the meeting, as well as BEW’s next steps on the issues, check the written summary of the Nov. 16 meeting. We’ll follow up with more updates right here in the blog.

– Chuck P.

Amidst all of these technical issues, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the crew here at BEW is not only making green gas, but also producing green electricity every hour that we run. Since coming online in May, the onsite power plant has produced enough renewable electricity (using waste gas from the process) to power 88,500 light bulbs for a whole year! We’re really proud of this!

-Paul K.

We retained Hessler to come back onsite to measure our sound levels after we completed the installation of sound mitigation equipment. Results look much improved, and we’re still well within the requirements set forth by the county. Can you hear the improvements?

– Matt S.

Today I had the opportunity to meet up with one of our neighbors near the landfill. We stood on their lawn and talked through the recent improvements to overall sound level. Thanks for the time and invitation to come out and experience firsthand the sound levels that you all are experiencing. We’ve come quite far, and meetups like this one are just one of the ways we’re working on fulfilling our “Good Neighbor Policy”.

– Chuck P.

We just finished up the enclosure that our consultant recommended we install around the valving skid for the Guild system. We’ll have another sound expert back to measure it officially, but we can already tell a huge improvement.

-Matt S.

The custom double-walled acoustical blanket arrived and we installed it the very next day. Already we can hear a noticeable reduction in sound here at the plant. Hope it’s noticeable further away, too.

– Matt S.