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Lancaster County commissioners want to know if such a facility — called a regional digester — could function here.
On Wednesday, the commissioners unanimously voted to pursue a grant from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to determine if a regional digester is feasible for Lancaster County, from a business and logistics standpoint.
"We already know the technology works," said Commissioner Craig Lehman. "The question is, 'Will the business model work here?' "
The commissioners took the vote after hearing a presentation on regional digesters from Jason Wert, an engineer with Herbert, Rowland and Grubic Inc. of State College.
Wert's company designed the Martinsburg facility, which is known as the Cove Area Regional Digester.
The facility is owned and operated essentially by a public authority, whose appointed members include a township supervisor, a county commissioner and a farmer.
The Cove area is home to some 25,000 dairy cows that produce about 200 tons of manure every day.
Years of applying that manure directly to farm fields has elevated the amount of nitrogen in local streams and water supplies to alarming levels.
The Cove Area Regional Digester project was borne out of a desire to curb the introduction of nitrogen into groundwater and streams and to find new revenue streams for local farmers.
According to Wert, once built, the digester will take in manure from surrounding farms and break it down.
Methane gas from the digestion process will be harnessed and fed into an engine that generates electricity — 2.2 megawatts every day.
That power will be used on site to power the plant, and it will be sold for use in the region.
Also produced in the breakdown process will be about 17,000 tons of bedding and/or soil additives that can be sold each year.
Other potential revenue would result from the accumulation of federal and state credits for prudent nutrient management and generating renewable energy, which could be sold as well.
The farmers who provide manure to the digester will share in any revenues generated, which Wert said is estimated at $320 per cow per year.
Some of that income, Wert said, is expected to be used by the farmers to pay for fertilizer because they no longer will be using their manure for that purpose.
But even after they buy fertilizer, farmers still should see a profit, Wert said.
While the digester is making money for farmers, it also is expected to reduce:
• Nitrogen reaching groundwater and surface water by 579,000 pounds per year.
• Phosphorous reaching groundwater and surface water by 25,000 pounds per year.
• Ammonia released into the atmosphere by 506,000 pounds per year.
Given the push in Lancaster County by federal and state agencies to reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous that farms pump into the Chesapeake Bay and a desire to find new funding streams that will enable farmers to keep farming in the county and to support efforts aimed at producing renewable energy, all three commissioners said a regional digester could be a perfect fit in Lancaster County.
"It certainly sounds like there are a lot of benefits," Commissioners Chairman Dennis Stuckey said. "We want to find out if there's support for it in our farming community."
Don McNutt, director of the conservation district, said he has spoken to a few local farmers about the regional digester idea and the feedback he's gotten has been positive.
"The dairy industry has really been hit hard by the economy," McNutt said. "This is selling something that is sometimes viewed as a waste. Farmers are always interested in preserving the environment because this is their backyard.
"So I think this regional digester has been viewed by the farmers I talked to as a win-win."
The facility can only work, Wert said, if a sizable cluster of farmers who own a sufficient number of cows agrees to provide manure to the digester.
Wert said Lancaster County has more than enough cows to support a regional digester, but they are divided among more farms here than in the Cove area, which has three farms milking more than 2,000 cows apiece.
Transporting the manure from the farms to the digester is expected to be the Cove facility's biggest expense.
If trucks have to travel too far from the digester to gather manure, Wert said, the project becomes less cost-effective.
Stuckey said he's not sure when the commissioners might apply for the feasibility-study grant from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
By voting to do so Wednesday, however, he said the application can be submitted whenever the foundation wants it.
