Waste recycling not easy at farm

Central California is home to nearly 1.6 million dairy cows and their manure -- up to 192 million pounds per day. It’s a mountain of waste and a potential environmental hazard. But for dairyman John Fiscalini, the dung on his farm is renewable gold: He’s converting it into electricity.

At his farm outside Modesto, a torrent of water washes across the barn’s concrete floor several times a day, flushing tons of manure away from his herd of fuzzy-faced Holsteins and into nearby tanks. There, bacteria consume the waste and release methane, which is then burned in a generator capable of producing enough power to run Fiscalini’s 530-acre farm, his cheese factory and 200 additional homes.

Fiscalini’s resourcefulness should be drawing accolades, considering that state mandates are requiring California industries to boost renewable energy use and slash greenhouse gas emissions sharply over the next 10 years.

But efforts to convert cow pies into power have sparked controversy. State air quality control regulators say these “dairy digester” systems can generate pollution themselves and, unless the devices are overhauled, regulators are refusing to issue permits for them. The standoff underscores how conflicting regulatory mandates are making it hard for California to meet its green-energy goals.

Today, the European Union is leading the global charge to turn waste into watts; more than 8,000 bio-gas operations are up and running in Europe, and thousands more are slated to open in the next decade. The United States has only about 150 digester projects operating at livestock farms nationwide, said Chris Voell, a manager of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AgStar program, which works with farmers to get such systems up and running.

Funding is an issue. Government subsidies aren’t as readily available in the U.S. as they are in Europe. Just 16 digesters were operating at California dairies last year, fewer than in Wisconsin (which had 19) and Pennsylvania (18).

“California has about four times as much potential for emission reductions and energy generation as the next-largest dairy state,” Voell said. “I know the regulations are much more strict in California. But there’s so much potential there.”

Air regulators say they understand why farmers are frustrated but point out that methane is not the only worrisome gas that pollutes. Like an internal combustion engine in a car, the generators used to convert the methane into electricity produce nitrogen oxides, or NOx.

NOx exacerbates the state’s smog problem, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, which has some of the country’s dirtiest air. NOx levels for that valley are federally set and officials at the area’s air pollution control district say it’s their job to enforce these rules and curtail ozone pollution.

That stance has come as a shock to dairy farmers such as Fiscalini, whose $4-million digester system was set up out of frustration with regulators wanting him to fight pollution. But during the process of installing his digester, officials from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District blocked the farm from firing up the engine. The concern: NOx.

Fiscalini then spent several hundred thousand dollars on a catalytic converter and other filtering equipment to meet the air district’s limit of 11 parts per million of NOx for new digester systems. That works out to equal the emissions of 26 cars for every 1,000 cows, said Frank Mitloehner, an associate professor at UC Davis’ department of animal science.

But his worries are far from over. The digester has been running for only nine months, and he’s already had to replace some of the filtering equipment and repair the generator twice.

“I wonder, sometimes, why I ever thought this was a good idea,” Fiscalini said.

Air district officials said they’re just doing their jobs. Combating smog, not climate change, is the agency’s mission.

Dave Warner, director of permit services for the San Joaquin Valley air quality district, emphasizes that, stating, “The board has been clear that when we’re faced with these sorts of trade-offs between reducing greenhouse gases and reducing NOx, we’re going to choose NOx.”

p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com