RYLEY, Alta. – Seventeen hopper cars of rendered bone meal from Cargill’s High River, Alta., slaughter plant were shipped to Ryley July 3 to be buried at the garbage dump.
Officials with the Beaver Regional Waste Management Services Commission, which operates the landfill, expected two cars to unload on a trial basis. Instead, 17 cars showed up.
“It’s such a good fertilizer, it’s such a waste to put it in the dump,” said Chuck McBurney, reeve of Beaver County that operates the waste management facility.
The 1,530 tonnes of bone meal will be mixed into the landfill with household garbage collected from the city of Edmonton each day.
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McBurney said the county would prefer to put the rendered bone meal directly in a methane digester, to create electricity. Until Beaver county gets approval to build a methane digester for the waste animal products, the material will be hauled to the dump.
“There is such insanity going on,” said McBurney, who believes it’s a waste to haul perfectly safe material to a garbage dump.
Traditionally, the bone meal would be used as fertilizer or pet food, but since the discovery of a bovine spongiform encephalopathy case May 20, the market for the bone material has dried up. Waste products from livestock have backed up at rendering plants across the country.
Cargill has its own in-house rendering plant at High River to turn the bone meal into a dry powder that looks like coarse corn flour.
McBurney said Cargill has 88 cars of bone meal ready to be shipped to Ryley if the trial shipment goes successfully.
Officials with Cargill did not return phone calls.
When the cars arrived at Ryley, the unloading didn’t go as planned. The powder-like bone meal bridged in the hopper cars and wouldn’t run out the openings.
After several hours of pounding on the sides of the grain cars with a crowbar, only a single gravel truck had been partially filled and the crew quit for the day. A special vibrating device used by cement plants to keep powdered cement flowing has been ordered.
A permanent unloading facility will be built by the side of the main rail line if the rendered bone meal is to be hauled to the facility on a permanent basis.
McBurney said the waste management commission has also been approached by local producers and slaughter plants about hauling carcasses to the facility.
He said it all points to the need for a permanent methane digester beside the landfill where waste animal products could be hauled and turned into electricity.
Beaver county officials will make a presentation to the Alberta government standing policy committee on agriculture July 15 about the need for a digester facility.
