Waste Management hopes construction on a $50 million renewable natural gas plant at Twin Creeks landfill will begin in June.

Waste Management held an open house to show the public its plans for the first RNG plants in Canada.

The company hopes to convert all the methane produced at its Twin Creeks landfill into natural gas to sell to Enbridge Gas.

The Watford landfill is one of the largest in the province and has about 8.4 years of life left. WM hopes to expand the facility by building larger berms to contain more waste on top of the cells already in place.

All that waste produces methane which must be vented to the atmosphere. But, the company plans to build a 50,000 square foot renewable natural gas plant at the Watford site this summer to capture it, process it then sell it to Enbridge for use in homes in southwestern Ontario.

Officials at an open house told The Independent the company will invest $50 million into the Watford project.

Waste Management Spokesperson Jessica Kropf says the company has a “growing network of RNG plants and the mot landfill gas-to-electricity plants in North America” although the Watford RNG plant is one of the first being built in Canada.

Kropf says it’s part of the company’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 42 per cent by 2032.

Kropf says the plant will produce natural gas of the “equivalent to the energy required to heat over 35,000 Ontario homes. If the project moves forward and commences full operations, it is expected to help address Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions target with an estimated reduction of 70,000 tons of CO2 per year – the equivalent of taking 28,000 cars off the road.”

The construction is expected to create 100 full-time jobs and then five to 10 full time jobs for the operation and maintainence of the plant.

Meantime, WM said a request by Warwick Mayor Todd Case to divert the natural gas created at the site to Warwick township is simply not possible.

“The RNG produced at Twin Creeks will be injected into an Enbridge transmission main, operated at high pressure. As well the RNG will be unodorized…The RNG is not suitable for distribution to local homes. WM understands that there are separate initiatives being looked at for extending gas distribution into different parts of Warwick township however, these initiatives are not connected to the Twin Creeks RNG project,” said Kropf in an email.