Fueling The Animal Holocaust

Turkey Waste Will Power Electric Plant

The gray, sandy mix of turkey droppings and other bits and pieces flowing through Greg Langmo's fingers back onto the floor of his barn isn't just funky dirt, it's fuel.

With 16,000 hens gobbling around him, Langmo is standing on a 15-inch layer of turkey litter — some 750 tons of the stuff — that represents a new source of energy.

It will help fuel a $200 million power plant due to begin full-scale production next month. The 55-megawatt Fibrominn LLC plant will be the first poultry litter-fired power plant in the United States, tapping a novel source of renewable energy to produce enough power for 50,000 homes. Its developers are planning similar plants in other major poultry states.


One longtime critic of the poultry litter plants has been David Morris, executive director of the Center for Local Self-Reliance, a Minneapolis-based think tank that focuses on helping communities get the most from their resource bases.

Morris said burning turkey litter squanders a resource that's more valuable as a nitrogen-rich organic fertilizer than as kilowatts. And he said Xcel Energy's customers will pay higher rates because the electricity from Fibrominn will cost more than wind power or conventionally produced power.

"From a public policy perspective, this stinks," he said.

Full A.P. wire service article, SF Chronicle, May 23, 2007

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Of course there is solar, which doesn't involve murder of humans (Iraq) OR animals. "Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death"

TLC