MARTINSBURG - More than 10 years ago, a group of Morrisons Cove residents started work on plans to treat the massive amount of manure produced by the area's agriculture industry.
It would rid the region's waterways - and eventually the Chesapeake Bay - of some of the nitrates and other nutrients found in the animal waste.
Now just months before the expected groundbreaking of the Cove Area Regional Digester, plans include a wastewater treatment facility, aid to a Cove landmark, production of methane gas for generating electricity for the local power grid and the sale of composting or bedding materials.
"From the beginning, it was a narrow scope, and from there it turned into all sorts of other areas that they have gotten into," said state Sen. John H. Eichelberger Jr., R-Blair, who has followed the project since its beginning when he was a Blair County commissioner. "It just evolves and changes over the years."
But not everyone is happy with the plans because of its location so close to Martinsburg Borough, extra daily truck traffic expected to-and-from the plant and manure is a precious commodity for farmers who don't want the added expense of buying fertilizer.
Farmer Clair Martin can look out the large picture window in his Cross Cove Road home and see the future site of the digester.
"It is going to be our neighbor," he said.
Other neighbors include Central High School, which could get water for irrigation of athletic fields, and Ritchey's Dairy, whose washed-down water will be treated at the digester's wastewater treatment facility.
The dominant westerly winds will also blow from the digester toward Martinsburg.
"I feel the town should be more worried than it is," he said.
State Rep. Jerry Stern, R-Martinsburg, who has a staff member on the CARD Board of Directors, has supported the project from the beginning.
"It's a big expensive proposition, but it has to be done," Stern, a lifelong Cove resident, said. "We can sit back and do nothing and wait on [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] mandates [on the use and treatment of manure] to come down.
"Farmers can continue to do it the way they're doing it now, or they can try to look ahead and make it a win-win for them. The only thing we wanted to do from the beginning of the concept of the project was to make it beneficial for the farmers, protect the environment and protect our neighbors. I don't see how that's a losing proposition."
The project, which is estimated to cost between $45 million and $50 million, is expected to break ground by the end of this year and should be in operation in 2012, officials said.
How it works
The project is for the agriculture community and "doesn't fly without the farmers," CARD Executive Director Julie Nelson said.
The project will need about 8,000 cows to be successful, Nelson said. The Morrisons Cove area has about 20,000 cows, Penn State Cooperative Extension officials estimate.
No one has signed on the dotted line to ship their manure to the digester.
There is a lot of interest, Nelson said, adding that while it's "a little bit scary" to move forward with the $50 million project without official commitment, the digester will be full and successful.
"I don't know why a farmer wouldn't sign up," she said.
Martinsburg farmer Rodney Metzler of Pleasant View Farms, about a mile from the proposed digester, has more than 8,000 head of cattle and even had a three-month pilot program several years ago to see how much the manure could be cleaned.
"We haven't made up our minds yet," Metzler said, adding that he's still skeptical the project will even take off. "I don't know if it will ever go. I don't think the enthusiasm is quite there. This thing's been going on for years and years and years, and nothing's really happened yet."
Farmers can choose to sign up all or some of their animals.
Manure would be hauled from area farms - limited to the Cove only at this point - by a contracted trucking company or in some cases, Nelson said, a farmer might prefer to keep drivers they already use in the process.
It would be taken to the 9-acre site where it would enter an enclosed negative-pressure building that will be sealed down before manure is moved. Once there, manure would be pumped by hose into an underground storage facility. Trucks are thoroughly cleaned before leaving the site.
Manure is broken down by bacteria in a heated process, turning it into a dehydrated form and creating methane gas, said Project Developer Kevin Brown of DCO Energy, the New Jersey-based company that will be the long-term owner of the digester.
The final products will include a less odorous, treated manure that can be applied back to area fields and methane gas that will go toward powering generators, with 2.2 megawatts going to the local power grid. The gas will also power diesel engines that make the digester run.
"It's proven technology that's been around for a long, long, long time," Brown said. "This technology exists all over the world."
Nelson told Lancaster Farming in December that dehydrated manure would be sold to Chester County mushroom farms in the Kennett Square area.
The use of manure in mushroom farming is a "possibility" but would depend on the amount of nitrogen left in the material, said Dan Royse, a professor of plant pathology at Penn State.
"I don't know of any mushroom farmer that's using this at the time," he said. "There's a lot of unanswered questions."
'New appreciation'
for manure
Brown said that his company would annually pay the farmers an estimated $250 per cow dedicated to the project.
That money, he said, can be used to buy commercial fertilizer or even spreading equipment and gives the farmer his first chance at profiting from nitrogen and other nutrients he couldn't otherwise capture.
"We're investing our own money, raising the capital, maintaining equipment," Brown said. "We're willing to put our money at risk."
Profits will be coming in from the electricity sold and the wastewater treatment aspect of the project as well as through the sale of nutrient credits - as many as 90,000 credits nitrogen, for example.
"Without the nutrient credit, without the participation of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Pennvest, we wouldn't have the ability to get this project funded," DCO Senior Vice President Fred Eckert said.
But the economy may make the per-cow fee less inviting.
"I think it'd be a really good fit for some farmers," Metzler said. "We just don't have enough manure. Manure is pretty valuable to us, and we need as much as we can get for our field because we just don't have enough."
Brian Kelly, extension educator with Penn State Cooperative Extension, who works with dairy producers, said that when the regional digester project idea first came up a decade ago, manure was "just an extra hassle" to farmers.
"Some said they could have it for free if they just got rid of it," Kelly said.
Then came huge increases in prices for natural gas and oil, which are used to make the commercial fertilizers, in the last five or six years.
"The farmer suddenly had a new appreciation for his manure," Kelly said. "The farmers have the value of the manure as a fertilizer, and if they take the manure to the digester, then they're going to have to buy more fertilizer."
Commercial fertilizer costs between $400 and $800 a ton from previous averages of about $200, farmer Eric Frederick said.
Currently, many area farmers haul their manure to other farms to store there if they have too much, which means hauling, storing, reloading and hauling it back to the home farm, Metzler said.
Martin is busy on the family farm that he's owned for 12 years now, handed down to him from his father, and the manure his animals creates is essential to the continuing success of the business.
"We feel that we need the fertilizer for our crops," he said. "Why would we want to buy fertilizer?"
The digester won't benefit Frederick's farm, either.
"No farmer's going to give up their manure for fertilizer," Frederick said from his family's farm, started in 1966 and located between the proposed digester site and Route 164.
Nelson said CARD officials are going to be as fair as possible and are meeting with farmers so they can find out what farmers would like to be paid for their manure.
Until that process is complete, no contracts will be drafted or brought to area farmers, Nelson said.
Metzler said the bottom line for his decision will be the amount of money he receives for his manure. At $250 per cow a year, it would mean about $1 million for Metzler, who is contemplating having half of his 8,000 cattle in the program.
CARD has offered him figures already, and although he would not share those numbers with the Mirror, he said it wasn't enough to make him sign up yet.
"It's all going to boil down to how much they want to pay," he said.
'Lack of opposition'
Farmers are talking about the lack of vocal opposition for the digester given the big stink raised over a hog farm operation two years ago, which led to several public hearings and township meetings on the issue before being approved.
"I'm surprised by the lack of opposition because of the location near the dairy, the school," Metzler said. "It seems odd with such a big deal over a little hog farm. I just can imagine if somebody like myself was going to be trucking in 50 loads of manure a day. That alone would stir up people."
There's no need for worry when it comes to location, Nelson said, adding that all permitting is in place through the state Department of Environmental Protection.
"We have everything," she said. "We're being watched. We wouldn't do anything wrong. We're going to be so regulated."
There will be no noise, Nelson said, and definitely no odor escaping the facility.
"That odor is the methane, the gas," she said. "We're holding tight to the odor. The methane goes to the generators to make electricity. It's not going to be emitting any odor."
About 50 trucks will be hauling manure seven days a week from area farms to the digester, which will have its entrance near Cove Lumber, Nelson said.
"It's really not that much," she said, noting the large amount of trucks and farm equipment that now travels the road between routes 36 and 866.
Depending on how heavy the trucks hauling the manure are, which Nelson said has not been determined because a company has not been chosen, a highway occupancy permit would have to be obtained from PennDOT, agency spokeswoman Pam Kane said.
"We have not had any contact with [digester officials]," Kane said.
Most roads in the area, however, do not have any restrictions for legal loads and vehicles, PennDOT District 9 Traffic Engineer John Ambrosini added. There is no weight limit posted on Cross Cove Road.
The extra trucks are a big deal to Martin, his wife, Ellen, and their two young children, ages 2 and 4.
"We're raising a family here," Ellen Martin said.
"If it would be a threat to the community, I guess there would be other places to live," Clair Martin said.
