First District Association wants to solve a wastewater challenge by adopting an innovative approach to treatment.
Not only could it reduce discharge amounts from the dairy processing plant that have at times overwhelmed Litchfield’s municipal wastewater treatment system, the process could create a “carbon negative” result that captures energy and creates reusable byproducts to boot.
But it comes at a significant cost — one the dairy cooperative’s leadership says its members cannot bear on their own.
A collaborative effort between the city of Litchfield and First District to solve the wastewater issue — and requests for financial assistance — were what brought members of the Minnesota Senate’s Capital Investment Committee to the FDA Fieldgate Cheese Store last week.
The city is seeking $3.75 million for design and construction of a sewer separation project, while FDA would like state assistance for about half of the cost of a $49 million pretreatment system.
“I’ll just get right down to the nuts and bolts,” FDA Chief Executive Officer Bob Huffman told the legislators and assistants gathered around tables in the back meeting room of the new Cheese Store. “We’re asking for $20 million, which is essentially a 50% match of what the total project cost is. The total project’s cost is roughly $49 (million) to $50 million.”
First District received $5 million from the state after the 2023 legislative session, Huffman explained.
Getting the match on the total cost would allow the cooperative to construct a pretreatment facility that can handle the total capacity of wastewater from the cheese processing plant, which finalized a $200 million upgrade in 2021.
“If we don’t complete the project, if we’re not able to find a way to pretreat, we will be forced to lower the production process of this facility, which will impact the dairy farmers in the state of Minnesota,” Huffman said.
First District Association takes in milk from 650 family farms in 46 counties in Minnesota, processing 7.5 million pounds of milk per day at the Litchfield plant. The milk becomes a variety of products — cheese, whey, protein powder — sold to customers worldwide. On the back wall of the meeting room, Huffman pointed out, hung a poster that showed the markets to which FDA sells. Included on the display were well-known brands such as Hershey’s and Doritos.
But that worldwide reach by a plant in Litchfield could be greatly impacted without a wastewater pretreatment plan that reduces phosphorous and solids discharged to the city’s wastewater plant, which has run afoul of Minnesota Pollution Control Agency limits in the year since the FDA upgrades went online.
“We will have to significantly lower that (plant) capacity from that 7.5 down probably to that 4.5 to 5 million pound range,” Huffman said. “So completing the project would allow us to at least operate it at the capacity design we have and not put some farmers out of market.
“It also is a pretty neat project that creates renewable energy, so we would produce electricity and heat and then we would reuse that back into the plant,” Huffman added.
The city’s wastewater project aims to address new phosphorous discharge limits set by the MPCA. First District’s plans call for capturing and treating high strength wastewater and isolate industrial process water from sanitary wastewater. The sewer separation allows fat and protein separated from other solids to be used as animal feed, while remaining water — still high strength — will go through an anaerobic digestion process and converted to biogas that will run a generator to create “green energy.”
“We would create electricity and heat and then we would reuse that back into the plant, and it also is a regeneration project as well,” Huffman said. “We will produce algae and … make a fertilizer out of that. We also have some high protein solids that will be a product that comes out of it. And then also biosolids that will go into fertilizer and a bio-char, which is basically a landfill cover and a sequestered CO2.”
First District has not spent any of the $5 million it received from the state this year, Huffman said, but it has proceeded with design engineering for the pretreatment process and, “we’re ready to break ground and move forward.”
In answer to a question, Huffman explained that, while the project and requested state funding will go to FDA, “this is an absolute, 100% in partnership with the city, so we work side-by-side in the design, engineering.”
State Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Acton Township, who attended the meeting, said state funding would fund three projects. Two are First District’s — pretreatment, and the renewable energy and algae — and the other would be the city project, which would be covered in the general obligation bonding package. He also reiterated the scale of impact the combined projects could have.
“This is not a Litchfield thing,” Urdahl said. “This is a regional thing for Minnesota. But beyond that, this is a national and international company. This is very important. And, in Minnesota right now, we have a processing shortage for milk. Some of the milk that comes here, Litchfield has to ship out to South Dakota and other places. And then we had the Hastings plant which just closed, which was a dairy processor.”
The Hastings Creamery closed this past summer after the Metropolitan Council cut off sewer service in response to the facility leaking thousands of gallons of milk and cream in the city of Hastings’ sewer system, which resulted in several permit violations.
“So what is going on here is dealing with some state regulations that have to be complied with,” Urdahl said.
When members of the Minnesota House of Representatives’ Capital Investment Committee visited, state Agriculture Commissioner “Thom Peterson testified his support for this,” Urdahl said, adding that he was hopeful Gov. Tim Walz would include funding for the Litchfield-FDA project in his budget as well.
“Because of the importance of this project, not just to Litchfield, but to the whole state,” Urdahl added.
