Organics Composting Is Coming

            You may have heard the news by now. Clay County recently received a $2 million grant to build an organics composting facility. Construction will soon be starting at the landfill site near Hawley, and once operational, it will initially focus on recycling food waste from institutional sources like schools. Drop sites allowing households to participate are also planned.

            I’m writing this to reflect on how it came about and what it says about citizen activism (and do a little bragging). You often hear it said that Democrats need to be more than the anti-MAGA party, that we also need to have a positive message about what we’re for. It was that impetus to do something constructive that inspired me to start a Climate Action Group. I called together some people I know who are committed environmentalists to think about what we could do.

            Our first project was to help a little with the first Flutter Fest promoting pollinator gardens, which was mostly the work of the U of M Extension Service. Collaboration has been a theme of our work, and that is one way a small group of people can make a difference.

            Then last summer someone brought back a flyer from the Becker County Fair announcing that they would be starting an organics composting program. We thought that if they could do it, why not us? From an environmental standpoint, the idea has two great advantages. First, it greatly reduces the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, if food waste is treated this way. Second, it produces usable compost which is free of pathogens and clearly preferable to some commercial alternatives.

As we looked into it, we learned that Becker County would be hauling their food waste to the Glacial Ridge Compost Facility in Pope/Douglas counties. Hauling waste there from Clay County was not ideal, but we thought that a pilot program in cooperation with them would be a way to get started.

            Fred Sternhagen, Crystal Rayamajhi, and I went to tour Glacial Ridge and learn more about the process. In our meeting with Steve Vrchota and his staff, one thing he said stood out to me. He called us “rainmakers,” his term for citizen activists, and he wished he’d had that kind of support. Indeed, we learned that Clay County had previously talked about doing something to reduce food waste going into the landfill, but nothing got off the ground until we came along.

            Not long after that, the state announced that a big pot of money was available as grant funding for Climate-Smart Food Systems. As this was a one-time opportunity, we dropped the idea of a pilot program and decided to plunge ahead with an application to build our own facility. That’s when we really began working in earnest with the Clay County Solid Waste Management staff headed by Corey Bang. They were great to work with, and a reminder that there are terrific people working in government.

            At first county commissioners we talked to were skeptical that the county could afford to put up its share of the 20% match that the state required. But I appeared with Steve Lindaas at a meeting of the county’s Solid Waste Advisory Committee, and Kevin Campbell, the commissioner who chairs the group, announced that this was something the county couldn’t afford not to do. From his point of view, the project was an economic necessity because the landfill could not simply continue to expand. That was a turning point.

            Preparing the grant application was a two-pronged process. Crystal headed up the writing with help from Steve, Alison Wallace, and Marissa Ahlering and major input from Corey and Ashley Magelky of SWM. I worked on lining up letters of support from area school districts and others, with help from Fred, Bruce West, and Bryce Haugen. It was, all in all, a great team effort.

            My conclusion, finally, is that Democrats could stand to do less complaining and get more involved with efforts to make government work better. You will likely find that people in government are quite receptive because they too see need for change. Since DOGE, the right has effectively gone to war against government workers, and they are not the enemy.

Paul Harris