Given the sorry state of California’s air quality and its dysfunctional power supply, it was only a matter of time before dairy farmers would find a way solve both.
The methane digester, a contraption that captures the foul emanations from decomposing cow manure and converts it to electricity, is being used by more than a dozen large dairy farms, turning manure into money. It may not sound like much to those whose bovine experience is limited to those cutesy California Cheese ads on TV. You know, three or four happy Holstein bulls in a green pasture ogling a couple of well-endowed cows don’t seem to spell pollution. People who live in dairy country know better.
Most of the state’s 1.72 million milk cows live on factory farms in the San Joaquin Valley, and those that are being driven out of Chino, to make way for housing developments, are headed that way. If county supervisors and air quality control boards agree, that is. A few cow pies in a grass field-no problem. More than a thousand black-and-white moos on one farm-major pollution. Because that’s what cows do. They eat, they get milked, and they emit malodorous gasses. Incredible mountains of rotting cow pucky, 65 billion pounds a year, make Californians sick and combine with chemicals in the air to produce ozone, a principal component in smog.
Since the agriculture industry, once exempt from clean air and water regulations, is soon to be held accountable for its air pollution, the relatively new technology couldn’t come at a better time. State grants, up to $431,000 for each of 14 participating dairies so far, provide matching funds for farmers who qualify. At last, our taxes are going toward something that benefits not only farmers, but everybody who breathes. The methane digester works something like this: Manure is scraped into a long trough, sluiced with water into a lagoon and covered with a gigantic plastic bag. The methane produced is piped into a generator and burned to create electricity.
Now, it does take a village. That is, one cow can only light up a couple of light bulbs. But a dozen can power the average house. One Tulare County farmer with 1,200 cows has been saving about $30,000 a year on his energy bill since 2002. Once his system is hooked up to the local utility, he can bank energy credits for input in excess of what he uses. Like many solar and wind-powered systems, his meter will run backwards during peak production.
Kern County, already home to almost 300,000 dairy cows, is pondering about 16 applications for new dairy farms that would add more than 113,000 animals and their emissions. Not next week, because all large projects require an environmental impact report. But county supervisors and planners are stymied by opposition from residents and a lack of data on emissions and air pollution. How much gas does a cow actually produce? Researchers at UC Davis have constructed an air tight “bovine bubble” that houses 40 cows (here’s hoping animal rights activists don’t trash this one), and a dozen other studies are under way. Will the results come in time to inform the dairy applicants’ EIRs? If not, what will happen to the dispossessed cows of Chino. And once they’re gone from the L.A. Basin, will there be a noticeable improvement in smog levels?
Another thing officials haven’t seemed to deal with or even talk about is what happens to the antibiotics and bovine growth hormones fed to cows at almost all but certified organic dairies. Would a methane digester disappear them from the environment? What happens when those emissions enter the waste stream along with chemicals from the cows’ feed? if you can’t see it in the air or smell it, does it fail to exist for those who regulate these things?
Well, at least converting cow pucky to electricity is a big step in the right direction. Let’s hope the governor doesn’t terminate the matching grants to farmers and research results arrive before officials have to permit or reject the pending applications.
With any luck at all in a year or so, we may at least drive through the Central Valley without holding our noses.