2-10 IAN Community Digester

 –One of Idaho’s largest dairies is proactively integrating a renewable energy infrastructure into its business operations that can be used as a sustainability blueprint for the dairy industry.

Rock Creek Dairy plans to integrate an anaerobic digester into its business to drive improvements that will convert manure into renewable energy, reduce greenhouse gasses and provide a number of efficiencies that will benefit both the dairy and the local environment.

While anaerobic digesters are already converting manure to renewable energy on dairies across the nation, the Rock Creek Dairy project plans to connect multiple sites, in a community dairy model, to a centralized location. Integrating anaerobic digesters can tremendously improve efficiencies throughout dairy operations at multiple touch points, from using heat generated from the conversion process to repurposing land previously dedicated to storing compost. Here’s spokesman Chad Biggs who is very enthusiastic about the economic and environmental viability of community digesters: “Say there’s a group of small community dairies, perhaps there’s a central location that they can all pitch in to create a digester plant like this.”

New Energy One, LLC is leading efforts to build, maintain and manage the digester on the Rock Creek Dairy site and is working toward final approval of the plan with the Twin Falls County Planning and Zoning commission in the coming months.