Gianforte meets about Madison Food Park

U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., met today with Todd Hanson, Madison Food Park director of development whose office is in Havre, to learn about the proposed food processing facility.

Hanson told Gianforte that the intent of the company is to market the Montana brand nationally and internationally, bringing economic opportunity to Montana agriculture producers and communities across the state as the various increases in production create more jobs.

“We’re not building a man camp,” Hanson said, adding that the facility will create good-paying jobs that will be there for the long-haul, attracting families to the area.

The facility, which will employ about 2,800 people, will have five separate plants, Hanson said, with different implementation phases.

The first plant to begin operation will take in Class 3 milk, produced in the state and currently shipped to Idaho for processing, and use it to make cheeses, protein drinks and yogurt. This first phase, which is projected to cost about $150 million, will also include starting a distillery.

The second phase will see construction of the three meat processing plants — chicken, pork and beef — that will cost investors about $600 million, Hanson said.

At a meeting Thursday, Hanson said they expect the chicken and pork facilities to be producing up to capacity before the beef processing plant.

Gianforte asked about the attraction to the Great Falls area as a construction site and some of the obstacles Hanson was seeing to development.

The location of the purchased land seemed to have everything going for it, Hanson said, even beyond the nearly centralized location in the state, in the Golden Triangle.

Transportation needs are met with access to a major highway, not far from the interstate, as well as proximity to a BNSF Railway line and a preliminary agreement from BNSF to build a spur to the plant, he said.

Great Falls has a strong infrastructure to handle the increase in population, he said, and the land sits above the Madison Aquifer which, environmental studies have shown, can easily supply the about 3.5 million gallons of water per day originally expected to be needed.

The water issue and the smell are two of the major objections people in the area have to the processing plant, Hanson said, but they will be mitigated as much as possible through the same treatment facility.

The two waste treatment lagoons, which would have taken up about half of the 3,000-acre facility, are being replaced by an advanced-technology algae treatment system that will recover about 50 percent of their water for re-use and contain the waste in a piped system that will be housed in a four-and-a-half-acre building, Hanson said, adding that it will also recover and store any methane for re-use in the facility.

“So this is not your grandfather’s processing plant,” Gianforte said.

Hanson said they put a moratorium on the initial special permit with Cascade County to change the waste treatment facility description, and they will be resubmitting that soon. After that they would continue through the state and federal permitting process.

Gianforte said he would help with the permitting process on the federal level where entities don’t necessarily communicate effectively with each other or don’t understand a situation that is thousands of miles removed from Washington.

“When we shine a bright light on (these projects) ... we have a very high batting average,” Gianforte said, including helping get permission from the Bureau of Land Management to use hay bales as a wind break north of Shelby after a winter traffic fatality caused by blowing and drifting snow.