A Snohomish County biogas plant converts cow manure from surrounding dairies into methane gas, which can then be burned to create electricity.  The plant was built by a nonprofit group, Qualco Energy, on land owned by the Tulalip Tribe.  It is now selling power to Puget Sound Energy to be used by hundreds of local homes.   

This is one of the win-win-win, innovative solutions that may, along with hundreds of others, get us out of the collective energy pickle we have gotten ourselves into. 

Dale Reiner, spokesperson for Qualco, told Debra Smith, Everett Herald writer, about the way all the groups involved benefit from the work that he and his colleagues at Qualco do, mostly for free.  The Tulalip Tribe, one of the partners in Qualco, owns the land.  It was signed over to the tribes by the state after the Monroe Reformatory closed.  Rather than build condos or houses on the 277 acres of fields and buildings, the tribe chose to join with Qualco to help clean up the streams that flow into the Snohomish and Skykomish rivers. 

Cows produce on average about 135 pounds of waste per day.  The dairies are forced to limit herd size because of the cows waste and the damage it inflicts on the water system and the salmon that rely on clean water.  So, when dairies are able to send their waste to the biogas plant to be disposed of, they are allowed to have more cows, which is hugely beneficial in this time of fluctuating milk prices and industry concentration. 

Thus, more smaller, local farms are able to stay in business, the streams are cleaner, more salmon survive, more local farms survive, and less fossil fuel is used to power local homes.  Yeah for innovative solutions and people like Dale Reiner and the others involved in Qualco, who work to bring them to fruition!

Dale is the man second from the right in the photo above, giving a small tour of the biogas facilities in November of 2008.