I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
A company in west Texas is doing what its competition couldn’t over the border in New Mexico — using cow manure to power homes.
Using a process known as methane digestion, the New York company Microgy is planning to turn millions of tons of cow manure, food scraps and bacteria every year into natural gas at a plant now under construction about 40 miles southwest of Amarillo, The Amarillo Globe-News reports.
Cnossen Dairy, which has about 10,000 head of cattle near the town of Hereford, will remain in the milk business, and therefore in the manure business. Microgy, a subsidiary of Environmental Power, plans to install six large digesting tanks that turn the manure and other materials into clean methane gas. The resulting methane, which the company markets under the trademark name Renewable Natural Gas, will be pumped into an existing natural gas pipeline.
The Hereford operation is the second in Texas, and a third is planned, according to the Microgy Web site. The plant will produce enough natural gas to heat 11,000 homes, the company says. Byproducts of the methane digestion include fertilizer and a material that can be used as bedding for animals.
Eastern New Mexico had been slated to see an even larger biogas operation in Curry and Roosevelt counties. White Hat Energy, a New Jersey company, announced plans last year to invest in four methane digesters in Clovis and three more in Portales. But the company’s major source of financing fell through during the credit crunch and White Hat pulled the plug in April, according to a story in The Clovis News-Journal.
Construction has already started on the plant near Hereford, and it has people there excited, the Amarillo paper reported. "This is just the beginning of what we could see," said Sheila Quirk, executive director of the Hereford Economic Development Corp. "We’ve said we want to be the capital of renewable energy."
