Emerald Dairy Tour, St. Croix County Wisconsin

I toured the Emerald Dairy yesterday with John Vrieze and was again reminded that I’ve got an interesting project right in my back yard.

The dairy produces methane that is delivered via truck to a national pipeline that just happens to run through Baldwin(some interesting homeland security issues regarding the pipeline that runs from Gulf of Mexico to Minneapolis). He’s even exploring the possibility of installing a local pipeline for area producers to send their biogas to a shared ‘gas cleanup facility’. John also has installed what he calls a ‘water treatment plant’ that removes much of the water from the manure saving him pumping costs and producing large volumes bedding material, fertilizer, and of 120 degree distilled water. He’s now experimenting with using some of these bi-products to grow algae to press into biodiesel and is even looking at other adjacency niche markets such as aquaculture (raising Tilapia) or vegetable production (use water to heat green houses). We’ll be developing a case study of this operation with the help of Eric Anderson at West Central WI Regional planning.

Anyway, John’s always got a lot to say and he's is very connected politically in the state and nation. His overall goal is to have a zero carbon footprint for his facility and the products it produces and position the dairy industry to take advantage of the coming carbon economy.