|
[ Home ] [ Leadership ] [ About Bill ] [ News ] [ Chuck ]
Vermont Cow Power contingent travels to
Rimouski, Quebec
By David Dunn
The idea of this trip started in the
fall of 2008 when Dominic and Najat Dufour traveled from the Gaspe Peninsula Quebec
Canada with their 3 year old daughter Leila to visit the CVPS Cow Power™
project at Green Mountain Dairy in Sheldon, Vermont. Dominic, an
electrical engineer semi retired from teaching at Cégep de Rimouski and his
wife Najat were very interested in the technology and how Cégep, the local
college, could work with their local farmers to develop similar, but much
smaller scale projects. Rimouski, a city of about 40,000 is surrounded by
many small dairy farms, the largest of which is about 200 milking cows.
The city sits on the St. Lawrence Seaway directly north of the northern most
border of Maine and is 400 miles northeast of Vermont.
After visiting Green
Mountain Dairy, the Dufours invited Bill Rowell to the city of Rimouski to
speak with a group of people interested in championing the idea of
developing anaerobic digesters on their farms. Bill encouraged them to sponsor the trip
and include dairy farmer/translator Paul Bourbeau, and myself, Dave Dunn, to round out
the utility side of the presentation. The delegation had the
endorsement of Vermont's
Governor, Lt Governor and Secretary of Agriculture to travel as
representatives of the State of Vermont. The Quebec group was very interested to
learn about how CVPS Cow Power™ works, and the process of bringing together
the various stakeholder groups to facilitate such a project. They had
previously faced a lack of interest from Hydro Quebec due to the smaller size
of their dairy farms. Bill, Paul and I made it clear that anything is
possible with an enthusiastic group supporting their efforts.
After driving for 10
hours we arrived at the Dufour family’s bed and breakfast in the early
evening of Thursday, August 20th , at water’s edge of the
Provincial Le Bic Parc. The view was stunning.
Our presentation had
been advertized for Friday morning, 8:00 am at Cégep de Rimouski. Cégep
college is comparable to a community or technical college such as Vermont Technical College.
A group of scientists and environmentalists from the college have organized a formal group
to champion the effort of building a digester on a farm, and have secured
a $50,000 grant to do more research.
The audience of 55 people included
dairy farmers, college professors and instructors, students, and provincial
officials. Bill Rowell started off the morning by describing his
project at Green Mountain Dairy and showing slides of the construction process
in chronological order. Paul
Bourbeau provided excellent timely translation for the attendees, while a few understood
English very well most spoke French. One professor had built a bench top digester and is
working with the civil engineering students to design a more
efficient system to work on the smaller dairy farms of their region. I followed Bill with
an overview of the Cow Power program, and we answered many questions for the
next three hours to satisfy their high level of interest.
Following a special luncheon, we were
taken to visit one of the local farms, which is famous for not only their
milk production, but also for their genetics. They have bred many national and international
champion Holsteins on the St. Pierre farm. The owner Yvon St. Pierre and his son in law
Jean Marc Bourdeau, spent three hours with us discussing agricultural
practices and showing their prize winning herd. They hope to build a digester
on their farm, perhaps in cooperation with a neighboring farm. 
After the farm tour, we were honored
with a lamb roast attended by many of the people from the morning's
presentation at the
college, as well as others in the community. There was a high level of
enthusiasm to implement environmental controls to protect the natural
resources of their region. They told us
our success on the farm in Vermont partnered with a public utility had rejuvenated their enthusiasm. It
is rewarding to know our work here in Vermont is recognized beyond our
region and serves as both an example and inspiration to others.
Regional media
link |