They have a big debate going on over large livestock growing and slaughtering plants in the state. On one hand, these operations are big and bring a lot of jobs and money to the state. On the other hand, they create a lot of pollution. The problem is when you get a huge number in one location, the waste becomes greater than the land can easily absorb or process. It gets into rivers and streams and the high nitrogen content kills fish and other wildlife. I'm familiar with the same situation in western Kansas where the cattle operations are so prevalent that they are polluting the soils with excess nitrogen. The problem there is so big that the nitrogen is showing up in the water table and some small towns that depend on well water are not able to remove it. In northern Missouri, we have some hog operations that were run so poorly that their waste containment dams broke and flooded the rivers with millions of gallons of hog waste, effectively killing the rivers.
Iowa's problem is similar and it's playing into the politics. The corporations threaten to move out of the state if they are forced to comply with environmental laws they see as excessive. The EPA and some citizen groups want the corporate farms to stop polluting.
It seems to me that the solution could come from a big government imposition of a separate entity to deal with the waste. You figure out what the cost of treating the waste conventionally would be, and then you subsidize the operation to the extent that it becomes less of a burden to the corporation, and you force them to pay into the solution. You take the solution out of their hands. The state government sets up a facility on the grounds of the corporate operation that will treat the waste. You bring in State University researchers and managers, and their goal is to develop leading edge technology to convert the waste into a slow release fertilizer and energy. After startup costs are realized, the energy is supplied back to the feedlot operation, in some equitable arrangement that offsets the cost of setting up the operation. Perhaps you even give them the ability to take over the operation once it's set up.
The catch is that the Universities develop the technology and they own it and can patent anything they come up with. However, this is done with the understanding that these are publicly disclosed patents that can be used for a nominal licensing fee to offset the development cost, then expanded and improved upon. In this way, you use a combination of private and public funds to develop the technological solution to the waste problem in a way that keeps the waste out of the water, extracts usable energy from it, and provides a slow release form of fertilizer that can be used by farmers without putting as much nitrates back into streams and rivers as typical methods now do. Another added benefit would be if the operation recovered water in a good enough condition that it could be cycled back into the feedlot operation.
The point is that the feedlot corporations don't want to deal with their waste. They are not experts in this field and they have no inclination to want to become experts in it. However, past models have let them pollute without having to pay the costs to the environment. This model, rather than forcing them to figure out how to deal with the problem, forces them to pay for some of the solution, and provides them with experts and a possibility of feedback.
I'm convinced that once the university scientists get ahold of this environment, you might find other technologies spinning off of it. It gives graduate and undergraduate students some real world experience and provides a revenue stream for the university.
Sometimes the solutions is a combination of government, academia, and industry.
No comments:
Post a Comment