Save the environment at any cost! - manure digesters

The State of Washington has been encouraging dairy farmers to invest millions of dollars into a technology called an anerobic digester, and they've actually built 8 of them so far.  There's one a few miles east of my farm, in Monroe, WA. 

I first noticed these digesters because they started sucking up food that I could otherwise feed to my hogs.  Vegetables and fruits, expired beer, prepared foods like soups and stews (that had been boiled so would have been legal to feed to the pigs) were all getting shipped to these things. 

It worked a little like this:  The department of Ecology would approach a dairy farmer and say something along the lines of "Hi!  You sure have a nice farm here.  It would be a shame if some sort of endangered species were found on it.  "  With the explicit threat of losing the use of their land or having it dramatically curtailed (that's the stick) followed by the carrot of federal, state and local grants, and a "small" investment of the farmers own money, why "you won't have any problems at all.  "

The particulars will vary.  Sometimes it'll be salmon streams.  Sometimes its because horse owners in the area don't have anywhere to take their manure, and sometimes it's because, well, big capital projects are just cool.  Sometimes there's not any good reason other than the fact that we can get a few million dollars in grants and keep a local contractor happy pouring concrete.   

Here's what they did to the dairies around Mr.  DeRuyters farm: 

"Officials with the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have said the dairies in Promus' project are among the likely contributors to the pollution. And the EPA has been working with the owners to draft legally binding management plans to clean up, while environmental advocacy groups have threatened to sue the dairies."

You sure have a nice dairy there, Dan.  Sure would be a shame if something where to happen to it.

The only problem is that...

"...traditional digesters such as DeRuyter's don't get rid of those nutrients. Besides the gas, they leave behind a brown slurry that farmers must store in lagoons and apply to fields, as well as solid waste they turn into compost for livestock bedding. "

So folks like Dan DeRuyter spends 3.8 million dollars building one of these things... and the bottom drops out. 

In the case of Mr.  DeRuyter, the electricity that he generates from his digester is now being purchased at less than half the price he was quoted, and was counting on. 

So he's stuck with this multi-million dollar contraption on his farm that is costing him money.  In his words "...To be honest with you, it's not a cash-flowing deal," he said. "I haven't got out of it what I hoped to get out of it."

We have an ethos here in Western Washington that no amount of money is too much to spend if you can link it to "saving the environment".  

That's fine if you have the money to spend, but think about it, folks.  I bet you that you can think of better things to do with 3.8 million dollars than stick some dairy farmer with an albatross, and a pig farmer with increased competition for food.   Disclosure:  I'm that pig farmer. 

What is the solution for Mr. DeRuyter? 
He'd like to make fuel for trucks out of his digester.  That seems like a great idea, right?  I'd sure like fuel to be cheaper myself. 

All we need to do is pour another 10 million? dollars into that concrete pit he has.   That's what it cost another group to convert their digester. 

How about we do something simpler?   Use the manure (which dairymen refer to as "nutrients") for what it has been traditionally used for -- fertilizer.  Make sure that it's not over-applied -- that is, spread the dairies waste over more acres so that it's utilized and not runoff. 

Simpler, cheaper, but it's not politically popular.  it's a lot more fun to have a vast public works project that generates consultant fees and political contributions and contracts to bid...  Patronage. 

The cost of natural gas is dropping through the floor because of increased production of the gas due to fracking.  The chances of this venture producing fuel that costs less than that are very small.