Nation's largest dairy wastewater facility christened in Royal City
Molly Dickens/Courtesy photo - Austin Allred, owner of Royal Dairy, digs for worms in the BioFiltro system.
Molly Dickens/Courtesy photo - Rafael Concho, COO and Executive President for US Operations of BioFiltro with a sample of worms.
Molly Dickens/Courtesy photo - Blake Baldwin (third from left), Regional Outreach Rep with Governor Inslee's office, speaks with Dairy Farmers of Washington staff, Chelsi Riordan and Scott Kinney. Senator Shelly Short (far right) talks with a local farmer about the system.
ROYAL CITY — The Washington State Dairy Products Commission alongside representatives from BioFiltro hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Royal Dairy Aug. 22 for the implementation of an 80,000 square-foot surface area wastewater treatment facility; the largest of its kind in the nation.
“We’re excited to get it up and running,” said Royal Dairy owner Austin Allred. “The system will clean our dirty lagoon water, which will allow for a reduction in smell and a huge reduction in greenhouse gases.”
Allred first became interested in the BioFiltro system after attending the annual World Ag Expo farm show in Tulare, Calif.
“I had been looking for a solution the past five years to clean our lagoon water to the point we could more or less have irrigation water,” Allred said. “That’s what BioFiltro was advertising, so we decided to give it a go.”
Mai-Anne Healy, county manager with BioFiltro said the treatment system can break down 200,000 gallons of wastewater per day through a filtration process that utilizes worms to produce irrigation grade water, organic fertilizer (worm castings), and animal feed protein. The energy-efficient treatment system, she said, removes up to 99 percent of contaminants from wastewater in just four hours and reduces greenhouse gases by 90 percent.
That’s quite a change from the old long arduous process Allred and the majority of dairy farmers have used to clean lagoon water over the years.
“All the manure and water collected on the dairy was taken to our treatment center where we separated it the best we could — get the solids out of the water by using a centrifuge and a slope screen to get the big chunks out,” Allred said. “Then we’d send the water to what we call a dirty lagoon. We’d then have to put 50 million gallons of water each year in tanker trucks and spread it over 4,000 acres of land to agronomical apply it to the crops. With the new system, we’ll be able to take the water out of our small lagoon — we actually have three lagoons — shortly after it enters — treat it through two acres of worm beds and then run the water through an exiting pipeline and turn on the circles and irrigate with it.”
The ceremony drew more than 70 attendees, including Senator Shelly Short, State Reps Joel Kretz, and Blake Baldwin, Biofiltro CEO Matias Sjoren and Mai Ann Healy, country manager with BioFiltro who provided an overview of the technology and explained the results already produced at the Royal Dairy farm. Dr. Frank Mitloehnher, Ph.D. Professor and Air Quality Extension Specialist at U.C. Davis, was also on hand to provide a detailed presentation regarding the system’s benefits to air quality.
The Washington State Dairy Products Commission also provided Allred a $100,000 grant to continue research funding.