Kewaunee County Board member Lee Luft hopes a large biodigester project that spurned the area for southern Brown County continues to stay away. Two weeks ago, the Town of Holland Board voted down a permit for B.C. Organics to build a $60 million manure digester in the community. It was two years ago when then-Governor Scott Walker spoke at the Agricultural Heritage Resources Center in Kewaunee about the public-private partnership with $15 million earmarked by the Public Service Commission. Luft says in the end, he feels there were too many concerns about a project of this size succeeding and addressing problems like truck traffic and odor.

Luft would rather see a large scale project like this occur in Dane County, which has about the same number of large farming operations as Kewaunee County but closer to the Department of Natural Resources and other state agencies. He also has no problem with individual farmers using their funds for their own, smaller scale digester projects such as the future natural gas production plant at Pagel’s Ponderosa Dairy.