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WASHINGTON LAWMAKER NOT ON BOARD WITH HIKING BEEF CHECKOFF FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2017 VOLUME 90, NUMBER 11 Page 5 WWW.CAPITALPRESS.COM THE GREEN STANDARD Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement revives spinach industry after outbreak By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press S ALINAS, Calif. — When a deadly food-borne ill- ness outbreak in late 2006 was linked to spinach from a California fi eld, the indus- try faced disaster. Worried consumers nationwide stopped buying spinach as food safety authorities raced to track down the cause. “I’ve lived through fl oods, I’ve lived through union strikes and boycotts,” said James Bogart, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of California. “This event … was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in 40 years rep- resenting the industry.” Three men were among those who led the effort to save the in- dustry. Joe Pezzini, now the presi- dent of Castroville, Calif.-based Ocean Mist Farms, had just been named chairman of a local grow- ers’ group when the outbreak oc- curred in September 2006. His farm wasn’t implicated, but he took it upon himself to meet with the press. Turn to GREENS, Page 12 Courtesy of Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement Spinach is harvested in the Salinas Val- ley. The 10-year-old Leafy Greens Mar- keting Agreement imposes standards for handling spinach and other leafy greens to try to prevent food-borne illnesses. Owyhee Reservoir set to fi ll for fi rst time in six years By SEAN ELLIS Capital Press ONTARIO, Ore. — Snowpack lev- els in the Owyhee River basin were far above normal this winter and the Owyhee Reservoir will fi ll for the fi rst time since 2011. About 1,800 farms and 118,000 irri- gated acres in Eastern Oregon and part of southwestern Idaho depend on water from the reservoir. In 2016, those irrigators re- ceived their full 4-acre-foot allotment of water for the fi rst time in four years. This year’s water supply outlook is even better and, because the reservoir was built to hold a two-year’s supply of irriga- tion water, next year looks promising as well. “It’s as good as it’s looked in a long time,” said Owyhee Irrigation District Manager Jay Chamberlin. Turn to WATER, Page 12 Courtesy Owyhee Irrigation District Water is released for fl ood control purpos- es from the Owyhee Reservoir dam March 13. The reservoir is expected to fi ll for the fi rst time since 2011. $2.00 L awmakers asked to fund manure- into-water technology By DON JENKINS Capital Press OLYMPIA — An engineer told Washington lawmakers Tuesday that public funding would spur technology to dis- till cow manure into dry fertil- izer and clean water, making polluted runoff from dairies a problem of the past. “Wow,” said one legislator. “Yeah, wow,” said another. The Washington State Dairy Federation arranged back-to-back presentations to the House and Senate ag- riculture committees by Pe- ter Janicki, CEO of Janicki Bioenergy in Sedro-Woolley, Wash. Janicki has worked with the Bill & Me- linda Gates Foundation to Peter convert sewage Janicki into drinking water in devel- oping countries. A YouTube video viewed 3.2 million times shows Janicki in 2015 in Africa serving Bill Gates water that fi ve minutes earlier had been human waste. Janicki said that he could use the experience and knowl- edge that he’s gained to create new technology for distilling cow manure. “Boiling something to sep- arate out its constituents is not new science,” he said. “We just fi gured out how to make it work from the beginning to the end in this application. “It makes the dairy farm a zero-discharge dairy,” he said. “You take the water coming out of the back end of the cow and feed it back into the front end of the cow. So there is nothing that ever leaves the barn. “There won’t be any (ma- nure) lagoons with this tech- nology,” Janicki said. “There may be lagoons, but they’re going to have clean water in them. They’re going to be like, I don’t know, swimming pools.” The Washington dairy in- dustry has been searching for improved ways to use manure, a target of new regulations and the basis for lawsuits. The dairy federation’s pol- icy director, Jay Gordon, said that Janicki caught the indus- try’s attention just last fall. “It has the potential to be a pretty big sea change,” Gor- don said. Janicki said industrial cus- tomers will be the most-lucra- tive market for his technology, while dairies will have to wait “without some kind of help in some form or another from a government organization. “I am very passionate about getting this on dairy farms. I think it’s a huge opportuni- ty,” he said. “Financially, it’s something that would happen naturally in 10 to 15 years, but not until we saturate the industrial market.” Janicki estimated that with $2 million he could build and install equipment to showcase purifying the manure from a 1,000-cow dairy. He predicted Turn to MANURE, Page 12 Our Rebin Program can turn your old trailer into a new trailer! We will remove all working mechanical parts, and replace the bin with a new Stainless Steel STC Bin on your existing running gear. All parts deemed reusable are reinstalled on the new bin. All of this at the fraction of the cost of a new trailer! WWW.STCTRAILERS.COM 494 W. Hwy 39 Blackfoot, ID 83321 208-785-1364 11-1/#16 EVER WONDERED WHAT TO DO WITH THAT OLD, WORN OUT COMMODITY TRAILER?
