After nearly two years, seven permits, and more than $10,000 in fees, Jayne Merner of Charlestown, R.I.-based Earth Care Farm is on the cusp of opening a second composting facility, just across the border in Sterling, Conn.

Merner and her father, Michael, have been making compost at Earth Care Farm for nearly 50 years. The new facility in Sterling will churn out five times as much compost as the home farm once it’s up and running on the 240-acre site Jayne Merner bought for $1.5 million. Only 14 of those acres will be required for the composting operation, but Merner likes having a big buffer for her facility. She said it was impossible to find a comparable property in Rhode Island.

“There’s too much neighborhood pressure in Rhode Island,” Merner said. “No lots came up for sale that would have met the criteria I needed.”

While her efforts getting through the permitting process with Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) have been met with “goodwill rather than resistance,” Merner has despaired at times of ever finishing the process.

She worries others will be discouraged from following in her footsteps, meaning the materials that make up good compost, such as food scrap, will continue to end up in landfills.

 “If this work can’t move forward in the hands of someone who has spent their life building soil, then it raises questions about how accessible composting expansion truly is,” Merner said. “Still, I’ll stay with it. Enlivening soil and expanding composting isn’t just my profession, it’s my life’s work.”

Merner needed the help of angel investors to stay in the game in Connecticut, when she was forced to take out a bridge loan to tide her over until she can close on her mortgage and get her operation up and running. Part of Merner’s mortgage for the new facility will be through the U.S. Small Business Administration, which requires full permit approval before closing the loan.

The bridge loan from Rhode Island’s Centreville Bank has a variable interest rate, requiring monthly payments of between $8,500 and $11,000, an enormous expense Merner didn’t anticipate.

“It has been a long and very expensive journey,” she said. “There have been moments when it felt daunting, even discouraging. Just when the stress seems too much, an approval has come or an amazing funder pulls through. I remain confident.”

Gil Richards, a supervising environmental analyst with DEEP, is sympathetic to Merner’s plight, but said the permitting requirements are there for a reason, not the least of which is to protect endangered plants and animals.

Merner was required to hire a botanist and a biologist to scour her property for any endangered species.

“None were found, but the process took seven months and I couldn’t get to the other permits until I got through this,” Merner said. “This part was very frustrating for me.”

Merner was particularly confounded by the fact that her land isn’t exactly pristine, as a former gravel pit. She is already permitted to continue removing gravel from the site, something she won’t be doing. Just the opposite — she plans to restore the land.

“I understand the intent, but this is land that’s been extracted for over 100 years,” Merner said.

Richards said it is sometimes surprising where endangered plants and animals are found, even in the most unlikely places.

“We’re the only advocate for certain species that exist on small little areas, making sure any activities we’re doing are not going to be catastrophic to any species,” he said.

Another of Merner’s permits had to do with social justice. Sterling is in an economically depressed area of Connecticut, and was the former home to a facility that burned scrap tires for fuel, a dirty business when it comes to air quality. Scrap tires are comparable to coal as fuel.

Merner said she understood the intent, given that low-income areas are often targeted for environmentally hazardous operations. But she didn’t think her composting operation was comparable to a tire burning facility.

“(DEEP) considers food scrap processing to be solid waste handling,” she said. “Anyway, I was like, ‘OK, this is all right. I’ll go through this process.’”

Merner had to contact everyone living within 5 miles of her proposed facility by mail. She also had to hold a public hearing to explain what she would be doing on the site. She had to pay for a venue to hold the meeting, as it couldn’t be held in a government facility.

“There was great turnout, a little over 50 people showed up,” Merner said. “There definitely was an angry vibe at the beginning, but then, it’s just me talking to the people. I was there to hear what they were concerned about. The energy really changed during the meeting, and I felt supported by the end.”

Merner invited everyone at the meeting to visit her farm in Charlestown the following weekend. Only six people came. That whole process took another five months.

“So that’s one of the seven [permits], all of them well intentioned,” Merner said. “I’m going to put that out there. It’s just too much for what we’re doing.”

Richards confirmed that he heard “very good things” about Merner’s meeting with Sterling residents.

“The department is happy that someone wants to do this type of work in this state and we support it,” Richards said. “We do have to adhere to our permitting process. That takes time. We do understand that business owners have expenses and we try to be sensitive to that as best we can.”

Richards conceded that DEEP doesn’t have enough staff working on permits. He said there is also tremendous pressure being placed on the agency by towns in Connecticut that want to build solar facilities and are racing to beat an end to federal funding coming from the Trump administration.

“We have towns clamoring, ‘If we don’t get a shovel in the ground by this date, the funding is gone,’” Richards said. “Our agency has had to readjust to this challenge. That does factor into it, unrelated to Jayne’s composting facility. I would really hope she doesn’t get discouraged.”

Although he knows the higher-ups don’t like to hear it, Richards said DEEP could use at least six more staff to work solely on permitting.

“That would be hugely beneficial,” he said.

There are currently about 10 people working on permitting, including Richards. DEEP has streamlined the renewal process for permits to help relieve some of the pressure on staff, but that doesn’t help Merner, who is applying for a new permit.

“We had a lot of retirements,” Richards said. “We’re still suffering from our retirements and [losing] the knowledge base of people who have been here 20 or 30 years. That’s another hurdle, training new staff to be as good as the staff that has been retiring over the past five years.”

On the bright side, Richards said Merner is getting close to receiving her seventh and final permit.

“The review of her application is getting close to being issued,” he said. “It’s at the final review stages. I wouldn’t want to put a timeline on it, but we are working aggressively on her application to get her in a situation where she can operate.”