Sunnyside dairy uses worms to create clean water

12/18/2019

SUNNYSIDE, Wash. -- J&K Dairy in Sunnyside, Wash. is using worms to help clean and recycle their waste on their farm.
They have brought in the Biofiltro system to their farm to help with cleaning their waste and creating clean water.

“The Biofiltro beta system takes anaerobic water cleans it up with aerobic treatment and eliminates a bunch of the potential liability associated with it,” said Russ Davis with Organix. “For example, odor, methane, and loose nitrogen. And, it converts all of those things into things the plants can use and reduces those potential contaminants by about 90%.”

The system uses worms to naturally filter the water.

“So the worms are capable of doing what worms were built to do, which is to clean the ground or in this case, clean the water up,” Davis said. “So that we can produce as much clean water as a farm can use.”

“The idea behind the Biofiltro is to clean the water up for the dairy farmer so they are able to utilize their water in a better fashion.” Davis said. “And hopefully create some sort of revenue benefit as well.”

Matias Sjogren with Biofiltro says that within 4 hours of the water entering the system, it leaves clean.

“So basically, we are transforming a liquid waste, to a high quality water for irrigation,” Sjorgren said. “With this system we are taking out the environmental, greenhouse gases impact that they have right now.”

Jason Sheehan with J&K Dairy says it’s common for farmers to try new things for sustainability.

“I think the biggest thing is that we want to show that dairyman are innovators and are always trying new things, trying to get better at what they do,” Sheehan said.

Davis agreed.

“Dairymen, by nature, are environmentalists,” Davis said. “Probably the best recycling machine out there. We like the story that cows can take food that people can’t eat, for example alfalfa and corn stalks -- what we consider waste, and they turn that into something that can be utilized for humans.”