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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (July 21, 2017)
Street Roots • July 21 -27, 2017 Methane digesters Page 7 Special Report C o n tio o e d f r o m p a g e 5 c Ivan Maluski, director at Friends of ows poop. A lot. Family Farmers, thinks the bulk of that tax The typical full-grown beef cow won’t produces about 75 pounds of manure a day, credit should be going to smaller operations rather than Threemile. and a dairy cow produces 120 pounds. solvethe “For operations of the scale of Threemile, Because many cattle ranchers and frankly, it should be a cost of doing smaller to mid-sized dairy farmers in problem Oregon graze their cows for at least a business,” he said. “They don’t need General Fund dollars when we’re having a portion of their lives, budget crisis in Oregon, for a tax credit for a much of that manure manure digester.” is deposited on Myers, whom Gov. Kate Brown drew pastures or saved criticism for appointing to the Oregon Board during the winter for of Agriculture, said Threemile isn’t saving fertilizer later in the any money by having a digester. year. “Theoretically, it’s a cost-saving asset, but But at confined it doesn’t really work that way,” Myers said. cattle feeding “It looks good on paper, but the reality is operations, the poop it’s a very intense operation that has all piles up. In these kinds of burps and upsets that go along with cases, methane «M i it. It hasn’t provided us a return.” digesters can be. used PH O TO BY A R K A D Y B R O W N He said his digester generates 30 percent to combust the waste, of the electricity the dairy needs to operate. turning it into biogas for electricity. NW Natural’s Smart Energy program These anaerobic digesters are often purchases offsets from five of Oregon’s touted as being the solution to the methane eight digesters - with participating problem, but they leave a lot to be ratepayers funding the projects. desired. While in some instances, “We destroy about 60,000 four or five dairies in close tons of carbon (equivalent) a proximity will share a year through our methane M i l I IA N digester, the vast digesters,” said Marty IT lIL L IV li majority of the state’s Myers, who manages dairies do not combust Threemile Canyon Farms. their manure at all, nor Threemile houses do any of the state’s beef 70,000 milk cows, from cattle in Oregon feedlots. replacement cows and “P art of the reason why each year calves. The waste of 25,000 th ere are not m ore m ethane ■ of those animals goes through the digester, which is roughly 3 million pounds of poop per day. Threemile is owned by North Dakotan Ronald Offutt, whose net worth is $500 million. He is also the primary supplier of french fries to McDonald’s and owns farms in the South, in the Midwest and on both coasts. Myers said the state gives Threemile Canyon Farms a tax credit of $3.50 (dropped down from $5) for each wet ton of manure run through the digester. But even with the tax credit, Myers said, it’s a barely breakeven financial endeavor. need a constant supply of manure. My grass needs the constant supply of manure,” said Jon Bansen, an organic milk producer near Monmouth. “I would have to put diapers on my cows when they go to pasture. I know it sounds all green to have a digester, but it’s really not so green because your cows have to be on concrete all day long in order to have it.” But the main reason digesters won’t solve the livestock of a cow’s methane methane problem is because 85 emissions percent of the methane a cow are in burps emits comes out of its mouth, not its rear end, according to DEQ’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program data. “The cows, they chew their cud and they have more than one stomach so they have a process in their system that creates some belching, but not a lot of flatulence - it’s mostly burping,” Myers said, “and there’s no way to capture that.” Nearly a decade ago, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill that created a task force to look at dairy emissions. It was composed of industry and farm representatives, public health professionals, policymakers and Oregon State University faculty. The task force “strongly” digesters on feedlots and on dairies in Oregon, and in the U.S., compared to Europe, is we have a low cost on our power rates,” said Jerome Rosa, executive director of Oregon Cattlemen s Association. “If our power rate was double, there would be more demand to go in and put in digesters, because then it would be economically feasible.” But even if they were more heavily utilized, methane digesters solve only a small part of the methane problem. “For a digester to really function, you "T h e Iro n y th e re Is d a r in g th is arch marked the first time Oregon was la s t d ro u g h t, p e o p le w e « asked completely drought-free in six years. does it 1© ta k e s h o rt show ers a n d p a t But scientists predict droughts like the state saw in 2015 will become more frequent with b r ic k s In th e ir to ile ts ; m e a n take to climate change. w h ile o u t th e re In th e C a lifo r n ia That year, the state was so dry Gov. Kate feed a Brown declared a state of emergency in two- d e se rt in Im p e r ia l V a lle y a n d p la ce s lik e th a t, th e y 're g ro w in g cow? thirds of Oregon’s counties while many cities such as Lake a lfa lfa , w h ic h Is a w r y w a te r- Oswego, Bend and th ir s ty p la n t." Keizer imposed GEORGE WUEHTHMER, E C O L O G IS T water-use limits on their residents. The following to grow Oregon’s third-highest-valued summer, Oregonian agricultural commodity, alfalfa and other reporters Kelly hay, to feed livestock. House and Mark Ecologist George Wuerthner, a longtime Graves revealed in thorn in the side of the cattle industry, said an exposé titled this is an issue across the West. He pointed “Draining Oregon” south to California. that the state was “The irony there is during this last BY A R K A D Y B R O W N drought, people were asked to take short deplete underground water reservoirs by showers and put bricks in their toilets, pumping water to grow cash crops m the meanwhile out there in the California desert in Imperial Valley and places like that, desert. lot of that water was being pumped they’re growing alfalfa, which is a very water- And a What M 85% recom m ended the creation of an “Oregon Dairy Air Em issions Program ,” b u t no program was ever initiated. Elisabeth Holmes, an environm ental law attorney in Eugene, said O regon needs to protect itself from attracting additional confined animal feeding operations. She often represents clients suing these facilities in states that have been inundated with them. “We have a couple that are coming in,” she said. “In other parts of the United States, they tend to move around a lot because what happens is they come in and they pollute the water, they destroy the land, and then they close up shop and move somewhere else.” thirsty plant.” Oregon was doing the same thing during its last severe drought, with more than a million acres growing hay to feed livestock - and state agencies had no idea how much groundwater there was to spare. A bill to fund groundwater gallons of water to studies died this legislative produce 1 pound session with strong opposition from the Oregon Farm Bureau, of hamburger farmers and ranchers who thought it would be burdensome. It would have required that water pumpers install a device that measures how much water they use and imposed a steep fine for exceeding water rights. Both National Geographic and Water Footprint Network calculated that it takes about 1,800 gallons of water to make just one pound of ground beef when considering the water it takes to irrigate the animal’s feed, what it drinks and what’s used in meat processing. 1,800 Cootmyed on page »
