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12 CapitalPress.com September 1, 2017 System significantly reduces greenhouse gases and odor BIOFILTER from Page 1 The system eliminates the problem created when some dairies fertilized their fields with wastewater, which can contaminate groundwater with nitrates. It also signifi- cantly reduces greenhouse gases and odor from what was the wastewater lagoon, which is now used to store the irriga- tion water. “It turns liabilities into assets,” says Allred, who fig- ures he will recoup in about five years the approximately $1 million he’s spent on the system. The system is called BIDA — for biodynamic — and was developed and patented by BioFiltro, a Chilean company now headquartered in Fresno, Calif. Alex Villagra, 50, a San- tiago civil engineer, developed the system and co-founded BioFiltro. It is one of several types of cutting-edge systems under development that treat dairy waste. “BIDA has the potential to change the future of dairy nu- trient management,” says Mai Ann Healy, BioFiltro USA manager. Frank Mitloehner, a pro- fessor at the University of California-Davis who has researched the system, says more research is needed to replicate his studies but that BIDA could be important in the San Joaquin and Yaki- ma valleys. It reduces nitrate groundwater pollution and nitrous oxide and ammonia air emissions by turning them into harmless nitrogen gas, which makes up 70 percent of the air people breathe in the atmosphere. “I measured air emissions from the top and bottom and entries and exits of the filter and found this filter can take 90 percent of the nitrogen out of the air, and that’s very unique,” Mitloehner said. Big business Dairy is a big business in Washington state and the U.S. Washington ranks 10th in milk production and sixth in milk production per cow, according to USDA’s Na- tional Agricultural Statistics Service. In 2016, Washington produced 6.65 billion pounds of milk valued at $1.1 billion from 276,000 cows. Overall, the U.S. produced 212.4 bil- lion pounds of milk valued at $34.7 billion from 9.33 mil- lion cows. One challenge facing dairy farmers is how best to han- dle the manure those cows produce. The issue came to a head in the Yakima Valley of Washington after dairies there were sued over the al- leged infiltration of nitrates in the groundwater. A 2015 set- tlement agreement between several Lower Yakima Valley dairies and the Environmental California red worms used in the BIDA system convert manure water into irrigation water. About 12,000 worms are used per cubic yard of wood shavings. Photos by Dan Wheat/Capital Press Dairy industry representatives check out Royal Dairy’s new BIDA wastewater treatment system near Royal City, Wash., on Aug. 22. Wastewater is sprinkled over the large beds of wood chips, worms and microbes in the background to take out most of the total nitrogen, which includes ammonia, nitrogen and nitrate-nitrite. Frank Mitloehner, University of California-Davis air quality professor. Protection Agency to keep ni- trates out of the groundwater is costing those dairies mil- lions of dollars every year for double-lined water storage lagoons, monitoring wells, consultants, attorneys and pa- perwork, Jay Gordon, policy director of the Washington State Dairy Federation, has said. A 5,000-gallon-per-day BIDA pilot plant at Allred’s Royal Dairy removed an av- erage of 93 percent of total nitrogen from dairy wastewa- ter over two years along with 97 percent of total suspended solids and 90 percent of to- tal phosphorus while using 95 percent less energy than similar systems and reducing greenhouse gases by 90 per- cent, Healy said. Total nitrogen in the two- year pilot was reduced to 160 milligrams per liter compared to 2,263 milligrams when it entered the system untreated, Healy said. That’s total nitro- gen, which includes ammo- nia, nitrogen and nitrate-ni- trite, she said. Total nitrogen is what is in wastewater dair- ies typically apply to their fields, she said. It’s done with no chem- icals in four hours and pro- duces irrigation water, which requires no minimum amount of acreage for application, she said. BIDA has also been used at human wastewater plants, slaughter houses, milk pro- cessing plants and wineries to turn wastewater into clean water that could, with fur- ther treatment, even be made drinkable, she said. No one else developed such a system sooner because “no one wants to believe worms and microbes can do what chemicals and machines are doing,” Healy said. How it came about In the early 1990s, Villagra was a student and teaching as- sistant of University of Chile professor Jose Toha Castella, who was studying whether worms could digest munic- ipal waste sludge. He deter- mined they could. The first commercial application was in 1996 and involved a rural municipal wastewater system in Chile, she said. Since then, Villagra has overseen 143 installations of the systems in Chile, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, the U.S., Spain and Antarctica. The first at a dairy was in Chile in 2003, followed by one in New Zealand in 2006 and one in Fresno in 2013. Another has been installed at a dairy in Hilmar, Calif. A dozen others were built for food processors, wineries and other services in the U.S. Allred’s is the largest BIDA dairy system in the world, capable of handling 200,000 gallons per day. The largest BIDA of any type in the world is a 2 mil- Harl Butte Pack operates where several herds graze WOLVES from Page 1 2016 and added at least four pups this past spring. As Wallowa County ranch- er Todd Nash put it, “big dogs” eat a lot of meat. The apparent spike in live- stock attacks in August raised questions. ODFW said Or- egon’s unusually warm and dry summer — even Portland went 57 days without rain — caused deer and elk to move to higher ground. With their nat- ural prey more scarce, wolves then turned to attacking cattle, went the explanation. But as Northeast Oregon research scientist Jim Aken- son pointed out, deer and elk go to higher ground every summer. That’s not new, al- though conditions were more severe this year. Instead, Akenson believes the packs may be “habituat- ed” to eating cattle. For that reason, he said, ODFW’s in- cremental response — kill- ing two adults at a time and monitoring the effect on pack behavior — probably won’t work. Once the pack members “flip that switch” in terms of prey selection, it is tough to deter them, he said. “They’re habituated to easy pickings,” Akenson said. “Plucking out a couple indi- viduals is probably not going to change that behavior.” Online Oregon wolf depredation reports: http://www.dfw.state. or.us/Wolves/depredation_in- vestigations.asp Capital Press file photo A wolf researcher says that an incremental approach to culling wolves from Oregon’s Harl Butte Pack will likely fail if the wolves have become habituat- ed to eating cattle. Akenson is conservation director for the Oregon Hunt- ers Association. His wife, Holly Akenson, is a wildlife biologist and member of the ODFW Commission, which is expected to revise and adopt the state’s wolf management plan this year. The Akensons live in Enterprise, in Wallowa County, and have extensive wildlife and wilderness ex- perience in the Pacific North- west. John Stephenson, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bi- ologist based in Southwest Oregon, said larger packs tend to go after livestock. “There’s a relationship be- tween pack size and increased incidents of depredation,” he said. Location is another factor, he said. The Harl Butte Pack operates where several herds graze on a mix of public and private land. All of its attacks over the past year were within 9 miles of each other, accord- ing to ODFW. The Imnaha Pack formerly prowled the territory and was known for attacking livestock. ODFW shot four Imnaha Pack wolves in April 2016 after repeated attacks on calves and sheep. Meanwhile, all of the Mea- cham Pack’s attacks in August took place on the same private pasture. Conservation groups op- pose killing wolves and have asked, without success, for Gov. Kate Brown to inter- vene in ODFW’s decisions. The groups, including Oregon Wild, believe ODFW should not be taking lethal action until Oregon’s outdated wolf management plan is reviewed and revised. The ODFW Commission is expected to take action on the plan this year. lion gallon-a-day system at a Chilean food processor. “I was at the 2014 World Ag Expo in Tulare, Calif., and ran into BioFiltro’s booth. Four months later, I visited their first unit at Fresno State University. I liked the simplic- ity, the ease of management and the positive environmen- tal impacts using biology and minimal energy,” Allred said. How it works BIDA consists of an above-ground concrete con- tainment structure of walls, floor and an open top. The base is graded to allow the processed water to drain from the exits. There’s a bottom layer of plastic-like pallets to maintain an air chamber. On top of that is a layer of rock and geotech mesh or cloth. On top of that is a 3.5-foot-deep layer of wood shavings. Wastewater coming from the primary solids separator is dispersed through sprin- klers over the wood shavings. About 12,000 California red worms per cubic yard are in the wood shavings. A mix of bacteria and microbes is in- troduced and together with the worms digest and remove solids, nitrogen, sugars, fats, oils, phosphorus and ammo- nia, Healy said. Metals and salt are about the only things not removed, she said. The worms aerate the shavings and with the mi- crobes form a casting, or biofilm, that’s usable as a soil amendment. The biofilm within the top foot or two of the wood shavings is harvest- ed annually with excavators and sold. Water that flows through the system in four hours is clean enough for use in irriga- tion and stored in what once was the wastewater lagoon. Concerns, potentials Allred was concerned whether BIDA would work in cold weather. He tested the 5,000 gallon-per-day pilot operation for two years. The worms, microbes and bacteria all continued to work down to 15 degrees below zero, Healy said. Allred said pumps and sprinklers were kept going by being partly underground and by maintaining minimal flow. In August, Allred began using his much larger new BIDA, which covers almost 2 acres. Once cleaned, the water is applied to 300 acres of farm- land, versus previously hav- ing to spread treated waste- water over 4,000 acres, he said. It eliminates the need for trucks to haul wastewater. The system would allow him, if he decides, to increase his 6,000-cow milking herd without having to add more land to disperse treated waste- water. While Allred is spending about $1 million to own his BIDA, BioFiltro also offers total system construction and management to dairies at about 1 cent per gallon and no money upfront, Healy said. What others say At an Aug. 22 open house at Royal Dairy, Scott Kinney, general manager of Dairy Farmers of Washington, pre- sented Allred with a check for $100,000 for his research on BIDA. “We’re really excited about this, and we have four or five other projects of di- gesters and other types of sys- tems with similar goals in the state,” Kinney said. Steve Rowe, CEO of Newtrient in Chicago, a col- lective of leading dairy co- operatives, Dairy Manage- ment Inc. and the National Milk Producers Federation, are watching Allred’s system since it’s the largest in the na- tion, Kinney said. Rowe was formerly gen- eral counsel of Darigold in Seattle. Sarah Taydas, a Darigold spokeswoman, said Allred’s system is an example of inno- vation that improves environ- mental performance. Kirk Robinson, deputy di- rector of the state Department of Agriculture, called Allred’s BIDA “very impressive” and that it’s one of several new technology options for dairies in managing nutrients. State Sen. Shelly Short, R-Addy, said the BIDA sys- tem “is huge,” given issues the state Department of Ecol- ogy has raised with dairies re- garding nitrates and ground- water. She said she likes that it can be tailored in size and cost to fit various dairies. Mitloehner said the num- ber of dairies in California has decreased from about 2,000 to 1,300 in the past 15 years, largely due to more regulations, which often start in Germany and migrate to California and Washington. For example, California has passed a law requiring a 40 percent reduction of meth- ane gas by 2030 — “a very ambitious goal,” he said, and dairy owners are “scratching their heads” on how to com- ply. “There is a perfect storm of issues in California — ani- mal welfare and environmen- tal quality — big issues to put farms out of business,” Mit- loehner said. “This is a tech- nology and system that can allow you to buy more cows on the same amount of land by decreasing nitrogen and ammonia. What’s attractive to many is BioFiltro will run the waste management and be responsible for it and you can milk your cows.” ‘I think yields may be down and that might be a saving grace this year’ ONIONS from Page 1 Myers said his company was “fortunate” in that its buildings were some of the first to collapse so it got a relatively quick start on re- building. Because most of the 1 bil- lion-plus pounds of Spanish bulb onions grown in the re- gion are stored and marketed later in the year, it’s import- ant for the storage sheds to be rebuilt in time to house this year’s harvest. Owyhee Produce will have its storage sheds rebuilt in time for harvest, but bare- ly. “We will have them done just in time for harvest,” My- ers said. Across the Snake River in Payette, Idaho, Partners Pro- duce lost four buildings to the snow and ice, including its main onion packing line. Despite its best efforts and people working seven days a week, Partners’ lost storage capacity will not be replaced before this year’s harvest begins in earnest. Its new packing facility won’t be ready until about Thanks- giving. “We’re scrambling, all right,” said Eddie Rodriguez, Sean Ellis/Capital Press File Onion growers and packers are racing to rebuild storage and packing facilities after many were destroyed or damaged by last winter’s heavy snows. A light crop this year may take some of the pressure off. director of sales and part owner of Partners. “I will have some problem finding storage and may have to rent some storage, if available, from other packers or grow- ers.” Partners’ packing facility in Ontario was not damaged and continues to operate. While some rebuilt stor- age sheds won’t be ready in time, industry leaders say onion yields could be down significantly this year, which means the lost storage capac- ity won’t be quite as import- ant. “I think yields may be down and that might be a saving grace this year,” said Stuart Reitz, an Oregon State University Extension crop- ping systems agent in Ontar- io. “That might take some of the pressure off.” “With the yields we are going to have, it’s likely to be less of an issue than it could have been during a normal onion production year,” Myers said. Myers and Rodriguez said the industry will bounce back stronger in the long run because companies like theirs that have to rebuild are putting in state-of-the-art equipment and more auto- mation.