YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A Lansing, Mich., energy company seeks nearly $39 million from two companies regarding a project that was to process landfill gas to pipeline quality renewable natural gas.
Bio Energy (Ohio II) LLC, referred to throughout the suit as EDL, filed the lawsuit April 10 in federal court. It names Stearns, Conrad and Schmidt Consulting Engineers Inc., doing business as SCS Energy of Long Beach, Calif., and Adsorption Research Inc., doing business as Kent S. Knaebel and Associates Inc., as defendants.
In July 2023, Australian company EDL’s new RNG plant started production near Republic Services’ Carbon Limestone Landfill in Poland Township.
The plan called for the new plant to capture gas generated by decomposing materials in the landfill and purify it into renewable natural gas for the commercial market, EDL representatives said at the time.
EDL operated a gas-fed electrical power plant at the site for 20 years and had a long-standing relationship with Republic Services, the representatives said. As the contract for that service neared its maturity, a decision was made to invest nearly $100 million and construct a modern renewable natural gas facility at the site.
The lawsuit called the project a “catastrophic failure.” EDL hired SCS to design, engineer, construct and deliver a complete turnkey project in fully functional, operational condition and guarantee completion by the agreed date” in the contract, it says.
SCS subcontracted with ARI to design and provide critical components for the project.
“Rather than delivering a functioning facility capable of processing landfill gas to pipeline-quality renewable natural gas, SCS delivered a fundamentally defective and largely nonoperational facility plagued by pervasive design and engineering failures,” it says. “These failures have rendered the Project incapable of achieving its intended purpose without substantial past and future remedial corrective work. The Project and its systems remain defective to date due to SCS and ARI’s failed promises and consistent downplay of their botched design and inability to remedy their deficiencies.”
EDL filed a lawsuit April 10 in federal court in Cleveland against the same defendants, seeking nearly $45 million, stemming from a similar plan near a landfill in Lorain.
In the Youngstown case, EDL says SCS owes EDL more than $16 million in liquidated and other delay damages for failing to deliver the project by the deadline.
“These damages are in addition to performance buy down damages of nearly $3 [million] and the hard cost of correcting the work and design to make the facility operational, the cost of which exceeds $19,400,000,” it continues.
But it says the “more fundamental failure” lies with the defendants’ “inability to deliver a project that works in theory and in practice.”
It says that because of ARI’s “defective design, engineering and construction” and SCS’s failure to manage and deliver a working complete project, “and their concerted efforts to disguise their persistent deficiencies, EDL has incurred and will continue to incur tens of millions of dollars in damages to investigate, repair, redesign and reconstruct defective systems” as well as continuing liquidated damages.
Pictured at top: EDL’s RNG plant in Poland Township.