Frustrated landowners in Converse County sat down last week with a company that’s proposing to build a natural gas processing facility outside of Douglas to discuss alternative locations for the plant.
Crestwood Midstream Access’ plant would be situated in a largely agricultural area, and nearby ranchers have protested, saying it would be better to group it with existing industrial development.
But there are no land use regulations in Converse County, so rancher Art Nicholas proposed a trade: a parcel of his land south of the city in exchange for the site.
Nicholas had offered the deal before but says he was hoping that sitting down with the VP of Operations would bring a different answer. It did not.
“It wasn’t that the other site made sense or any of that, it was just that it would delay it, and ‘we gotta get to market,’” Nicholas said.
The plant still needs air quality permits from the Department of Environmental Quality, but Crestwood has said previously they’re hoping to get those by the end of the month, and plan to complete construction on the facility by next summer.