Citizens of Rohnert Park and/or Sonoma County, California – 

In an effort to hold government accountable to the people, please sign on as a co-submitter of a Citizens’ Complaint made to the Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury to be filed in October 2025.  

We are asking the Grand Jury to investigate the City of Rohnert Park and related agencies’ roles in permitting Resynergi’s plastics incineration/pyrolysis operation in SOMO Village – an action which threatened not only the health of the SOMO Village and Rohnert Park residents, but also all of Sonoma County, and possibly even the greater Bay Area.  

An extensive presentation has been prepared for the Grand Jury as part of the submitted Complaint. The presentation contains public-record information from Resynergi’s Bay Area Air Quality Management District engineer’s evaluation report, comprehensive details about the proposed plastics pyrolysis operation, relevant City of Rohnert Park Zoning Ordinances which were violated, and an extensive timeline including supporting documents obtained through California Public Records Act requests to all related agencies. 

Submitting a complaint with the largest number of citizens signing on will help to create the strongest request for the Grand Jury to consider taking on the investigation. In signing on here, you are naming yourself as a co-submitter of the Citizens’ Complaint. Below, find a more detailed narrative of the Citizens’ Complaint to be submitted to the Grand Jury in October 2025. Please join in protecting the health of our children, ourselves, and the precious environment in which we all live.

Citizens’ Complaint - Narrative

The following document constitutes a complaint and comprehensive narrative respectfully submitted by citizens requesting that Sonoma County’s Civil Grand Jury investigate the process by which the City of Rohnert Park (“The City”) provided permits for operation of Resynergi’s plastics pyrolysis facility within the city limits.  Plastics pyrolysis in a refining process which involves heating solid waste plastics up to between 800F and 1000F (via microwave) at which temperatures the plastics vaporize.  “Pyrolysis oil” is condensed from the vapor as the output product, with up to 25% by weight of the remainder as non-condensable gases such as methane, butane and propane, which are burned in a “thermal oxidizer,” leaving behind a carbon-rich char.

The permitting process involved many oddities and apparent disregard for elements of the Zoning Ordinance and for the health and safety of the Rohnert Park residents and environment.  

February 2024

Resynergi, a plastics pyrolysis operator, applied to operate in SOMO Village, Rohnert Park and within 500 feet of Credo High School, also part of SOMO Village. The SOMO Village leadership, most notably CEO Brad Baker and CFO Eric Reid, have been publicly supportive of this venture.  However, under a segment of the Clean Air Act, the EPA affirmatively classifies plastics pyrolysis as “other solid waste incineration” (OSWI), and because Rohnert Park’s municipal zoning ordinance expressly bans incineration from all Rohnert Park transects, no Permit can be legally issued to Resynergi for pyrolysis.  Nevertheless, Resynergi submitted an application for a Conditional Use Permit in February of 2024 to the City of Rohnert Park.

The City’s Planning Department initiated the review process required to issue a Conditional Use Permit and generated a series of correspondences with Resynergi highlighting the areas of potential risk: explosion, fire, toxic emissions and the stockpiling of hazardous materials.  

October 3, 2024

On October 3, 2024, City Planners notified Resynergi by email that City Planning Staff did not then have sufficient supporting materials to recommend approval of the project at the upcoming Planning Commission meeting.  It remains to be discovered why the Planning Department failed to recognize that Resynergi’s operation was a form of incineration and therefore should have rejected the Permit application.  

Also, during the month of October, Resynergi communicated to various City officials that their Series B investors required them to secure a Conditional Use Permit in order to release a significant funding extension.  Without the funding extension, Resynergi stated that it would have to discontinue operations.

November 8, 2024

In any case, the Permitting process ground to a halt in November of 2024 when the City demanded that Resynergi provide an additional $50,000 in deposit money to offset various costs including an updated CEQA analysis and preparations for a required public hearing.  

December 18, 2024

On December 18, 2024, The City pivoted away from the Conditional Use Permit application process, and simply issued an “Administrative Use Permit” based on the false claim that Resynergi’s operation was a “recycling facility.”  “Recycling facility” has a specific definition in the zoning ordinance, and can be either a large or small collection facility, or a reverse vending machine operation.  While it is true that “recycling facilities” are allowed via Administrative Permit, the definition does not include plastics pyrolysis, a heavy industrial application.  Resynergi is not, in point of fact, a “recycling facility” and therefore the Administrative Permit is invalid.  An Administrative Permit does not require Planning Commission approval nor does it require a public hearing - it can be issued by the direct authority of the Director of Development.  The Administrative Permit process requires a notification to property owners within a certain radius of the proposed site of operation.  There is some evidence that the City attempted to fulfill this obligation, but that evidence suggests the City incorrectly notified Century Communities, the home-building company which formerly owned several new houses within the radius and not the then-current homeowners within the radius.  This renders the already-invalid Permit also defective.  The notification defect has not been rectified to this day.

July 2025

As part of the conditions associated with the (invalid and defective) Administrative Permit, Resynergi was required to secure an emissions permit from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), and also an exemption from applicable EPA Regulation 40 CFR 60, Subpart VVb.  The BAAQMD has procedural rules that require notifications to parents of any students who attend any school that is within ¼ mile of the proposed site of operations.  Credo High School falls within this radius, so the BAAQMD provided Credo High School with a Notification, which the school in turn emailed to the parent community.  This notification was delivered via email from Credo High School to all school parents on July 18, 2025 and marked the first time that the vast majority of the public was notified about Resynergi’s intentions.  It appears that BAAQMD was also obligated to notify any residents and businesses within 1,000 feet of the proposed site.  This latter obligation does not appear to have been met in full.

The Credo High School parent community immediately mobilized, engaging with other members of the SOMO Village community, with residents of other sections of Rohnert Park, and with officials at the City, County, State and Federal levels.  Educational institutions were particularly disadvantaged, as the comments deadline fell only two working days after the school year began, leaving schools like Credo High School with inadequate comments response times. Attempts were made to contact County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, State Senator Christopher Cabaldon, Congressional Reps Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman, and Governor Gavin Newsom.  Primarily, the community attempted to get the Rohnert Park City Council to revoke the permit, because it was patently invalid.  Almost universally, City Council members refused to respond to emails and phone calls asking them to meet with their constituents and review the matter.  The City refused to agendize the issue at four consecutive City Council meetings despite significant and increasing numbers of citizens requesting that the City agendize the issue and revoke the Permit.  At the August 26, 2025 City Council meeting, the City Attorney advised the City Council to take no action and advised the Council to wait out the Administrative Permit process. This advice is manifestly incorrect.  The zoning ordinance has specific provisions for Permit revocation, and expressly authorizes the City Council to revoke any Permit for cause, by its own motion.  The cause for revocation was clear - the Permit was issued on the false pretext that Resynergi is a “recycling facility” when it was, in fact, a plastics pyrolysis heavy industrial application. 

September 16, 2025

On September 16, 2025, further evidence of Resyergi’s lack of proper permitting surfaced in a letter from Sonoma County Department of Health Services, notifying Resynergi that they are not a “recycling facility” under state law.  Resynergi was also told they would need to be incorporated into the countywide siting element of the Countywide Integrated Waste Management Plan. Finally, the letter declares that Resynergi requires a Solid Waste Facilities Permit or to meet the criteria for exemption.

Conclusion

Citizens have performed extensive public records requests and received replies under the California Public Records Act (CPRA) from both the City of Rohnert Park and BAAQMD and have reconstructed nearly the entire process, going all the way back to late 2023, when Resynergi began initial communications with the City to explore the Permitting potential.

The citizens submitting this Complaint assert that the City’s Planning Department had a clear idea that Resynergi proposed to operate a plastics pyrolysis facility - because they had just been working through the Conditional Use Permit process from February to November of 2024.  The Planning Department should have advised the Director of Development that Resynergi’s operations did not meet the Zoning Ordinance definition of “recycling facility” and that it was ineligible for an Administrative Permit.

The citizens submitting this Complaint respectfully request that Sonoma County’s Civil Grand Jury investigate this case, make determinations about the validity or invalidity of any Permits for Resynergi’s operation, and attempt to discover whether the misclassification of Resynergi as a “recycling facility” was accidental or deliberate, and if deliberate, which person or persons made that decision.  We assert that if Resynergi intentionally misclassified itself to secure an Administrative Permit, it may be guilty of fraud, and that if the City intentionally misclassified Resynergi (either in collusion with Resynergi, or on its own) that the persons involved may be guilty of malfeasance at the very least.  We ask that the Civil Grand Jury then suggest appropriate restorative actions, as well as appropriate punitive actions should the Grand Jury uncover deliberate fraud and/or malfeasance.

Coda

On September 25, 2025, Resynergi announced via press release that it would be leaving California for a more favorable regulatory environment.  In conjunction with that press release, the Press Democrat released a story about Resynergi’s likely pending departure.  Subsequent public records requests have provided evidence that Resynergi has withdrawn both its City of Rohnert Park permit application and its Bay Area Air Quality Management District permit application.  

The citizens submitting this Complaint assert that the voluntary withdrawal of the permit applications does not exonerate any potential wrong-doing on the part of the City nor of Resynergi should it be determined that either entity or both entities were acting in bad faith or willfully attempting to bypass the Zoning Ordinances restrictions and requirements, and we continue to ask the Civil Grand Jury to investigate this important matter.