Idaho Dairies to Get EQIP Funds for Anaerobic Digesters

JEROME -- Two Idaho dairies have qualified for $450,000 grants from the federal government to help pay for anaerobic manure digesters.

Greg Ledbetter of Jerome with C Bar M Dairy and Jim and Marcella Stewart of Nampa with Stewart Farms, Inc., will receive the grants to proceed with digesters to dispose of manure and generate electricity.

Rep. Doug Jones said part of the reason for pursuing the grants was to find out if they are effective in reducing dairy odor.

The money comes from the 2002 Farm Bill's Environmental Quality Incentives Program, better known as EQIP. "It's the first time anyone in Idaho has been awarded money for digesters," said Richard Simms, state conservationist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service. About 10 years ago, some digesters for dairies were built in New York state with federal money, and there were some a couple years ago in California, he said. Currently John Beukers is waiting to receive $500,000 from another federal government source to build a digester in Jerome County. And a private company is constructing a digester in Minidoka County.

Learn about the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and other Farm Bill programs.

The $450,000 from the EQIP program doesn't pay the entire bill. Marcella Stewart said she and her husband altogether will spend about another $3.5 million to construct their digester.

Ron Sheffield, an agricultural engineer hired by the University of Idaho to combat the state's dairy odor problems, noted that neither Ledbetter nor the Stewarts have dairy odor problems. And it's true that of the several applications from Idaho that were submitted to the NRCS, Ledbetter and the Stewarts came out on top because their farms proved to be the best managed, Simms said.

The digesters take manure and create methane gas through the anaerobic digestion process.

Marcela Stewart pointed out that running a digester takes good management.

"I think people have the idea you just put them in, and they will take care of everything," she said. "But there is a lot involved. It's another whole dimension to running our operation."

But even if the two dairies don't generate the kinds of odors that bother the neighbors, Jones said there are plans to monitor odors on the sites before the digesters are constructed and while they are in use.

"Part of the notion of the grant was to do research coupled with the university and find out if the digester is a solution to the dairy odor problem," Jones said. "We want to find out if they reduce odor for future grant work. If it turns out this technology isn't giving us any improvement, then we need to look at some other technology."

Today Jones, Ledbetter, Sheffield and Jim Stewart are meeting in Boise with others to work on setting odor standards that were legislated two years ago. The committee and the governor's office has already signed off on using an odor-measuring instrument called the Nasal Ranger to gauge the "intensity" of the odors in order to comply with the law.

The legislation was designed primarily to address dairy odors, but actually it is written to address all excessive agricultural odors. There have also been recent concerns surfacing that if dairies are forced to comply with odor standards that those standards might spread beyond agriculture to all of Idaho industry and municipalities with odors emanating from sewer systems.

Bob Naerebout, director of the Idaho Dairymen's Association, said, "It's not unreasonable to expect that if dairies have to comply that everyone else would, too."

Marcella Stewart said many dairymen are reluctant to invest in digesters because they are such an unknown technology in Idaho. The reason she and her husband decided to get involved was to help move the industry forward in managing waste.

"Somebody has to set the level so that others can see if it works," she said. "You can't expect people to invest in something if they don't know if it works."

Image: Jim Stewart, owner of a dairy at Stewart Farms, Inc., south of Nampa, will use a $450,000 federal grant to help build an anaerobic digester to refine manure into methane, with some water and a few solids as byproducts. State officials want to see if the digester can help reduce dairy odors.

Story by Jule Pence, Times-News.  Image from the Idaho Statesman.