Dairy cows generate an enormous amount of manure, which Rickreall Dairy will store in temperature-controlled steel tanks designed to help bacteria thrive, which will decompose the dung. As it breaks down, methane gas is released and piped to a biogas engine where it is burned for power. The gas will be used as fuel for a generator that will produce electricity for the dairy. Extra energy will be added to the general grid.

Regulations, funding issues and changing technology have caused some delay.

"Every time we were going to get started, a new technology would come out," Louie Kazemier, co-owner of Rickreall Dairy, said. "These things [digesters] are all over Europe, but no one in America has quite figured them out yet. So we went to Germany to get their technology."  

Kazemier has been working for the past six years to build a digester for the Rickreall facility and he expects the project to break ground this month.
According to Kazemier, "Ours is the pilot project [for RealEnergy in Oregon] and if it works, it's going to happen all over Oregon and the Northwest."

This process also improves fish habitat and water quality by keeping raw waste out of streams.