Berwick energy project aims to break down, burn farm waste

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

There are electrons in that manure, those mink carcasses, that processing plant effluent and even Berwick’s own sewage.

Anaerobic digestion could be the way to harness that energy.

A new non-profit group representing agriculture, science, the Town of Berwick and the Berwick Electric Commission is willing to work on it.

The Berwick Agricultural Energy Centre is in the process of registering itself, but work is already well underway on what could be a $5 million, five-year trial. “It’s turning agricultural waste into energy,” says Jim Retallack, a consultant with Acadia Management Group and partner with Berwick on several other projects.

Anaerobic digestion gathers organic waste material in sealed, oxygen-free tanks, allows it to break down and captures the methane gas to generate energy. Berwick would run five 20-kilowatt producing digestors in the trial. There have been a number of international studies using single-source waste, such as cow manure. The Berwick digestors would look at a diverse waste stream - mink carcasses, poultry litter, the town’s sewage wastewater, Larsen’s pork-based effluent, multi-source manure and more. “The volume is there,” Retallack said, “to feed a generator. “The more I look at it, the more it makes sense - we just don’t have the numbers.”

The five-year project would get that data. Nova Scotia Agricultural College researchers are involved, along with the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture.

Farmers and agricultural processors are interested because it’s a way to get rid of waste, and a way to get back a better, nutrient-rich material that’s been digested - eliminating smells, pathogens and even separating nitrogens (in the liquid end product) and phosphorous (captured in the solids).

The whole thing depends on funding - 50 per cent could potentially come from the expected $42 million federal Eco-Trust money for the province, the rest could come from federal partners and other sources.

Come here with the money, minister

The federal government is expected to announce $42 million this month for a Nova Scotian Eco-Trust for community, institutional and business energy conservation projects.

Berwick - with an eye on the money - wants to host that announcement. Town officials pitched Kings North MLA and provincial Minister of Environment and Labour on Berwick as an Eco-Trust announcement base Sept. 19 at an energy seminar in Wolfville. “We present a public image that’s higher profile, more modern, more up beat,” said town chief administrative officer Bob Ashley.

Ashley said Berwick Electric’s June energy fair to “engage the public,” “green” energy plans for the new fire hall and Kings Mutual Century Centre, a town hall retrofit and talk of a thermal utility and anaerobic digestion trial are big projects for a small town. “If Berwick is front and centre in terms of governments’ eyes when it comes to the announcement, it’ll be harder for them to back off on our applications,” Ashley said.

Acadia Management Group consultant Jim Retallack, part of several of the projects Ashley listed, said hosting the announcement would be a chance for Berwick to “strut its stuff.”