Turning Manure Ponds to Water and Fertilizer Pt 2
I'm Bob Larson. The elimination of manure ponds at dairies and other cattle operations is the goal of Janicki Bioenergy.The Skagit County company is developing the technology and hopes to have a pilot dairy distilling cow manure into dry fertilizer and clean water by this time next year.
President Sara Van Tassel believes it's a game-changer ...
SARA VAN TASSEL ... "We think it could be really huge and everybody that's come and visited us, including a bunch of different dairy farmers, many of the local tribes, and environmental organizations, all agree. So, it really changes almost everything around how a dairy does its standard manure management. So, the lagoons completely go away. You don't have manure lagoons anymore."
And, Van Tassel says the savings could be huge ...
SARA VAN TASSEL ... "There's just a lot, a lot of changes that go away and really change the whole operating costs of this whole manure management into, what we think, is going to be a profit stream for the farmers because every dairy manages very different, but we've looked at several in quite a bit of detail and compared their current electricity costs, and trucking costs, and all of those impacts to the operating costs we're expecting from this unit which is primarily your electricity bill and it is substantial cost savings, so we're pretty excited."
After Janicki presented the technology to the House and Senate Ag Committees last month, some lawmakers expressed interest in helping to find funding to get the technology off the ground.