MOSES LAKE - Agricultural production has long been a tradition in Grant County, and companies are now recognizing the need to adopt sustainablity practices to ensure a strong industry for the future.

More than a dozen business owners and employees visited three local production operations and learned about their respective conservation efforts during the 2012 Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce Ag Tour Tuesday.

At J.R. Simplot, chamber members got to see the plant's anaerobic digester, nicknamed Bertha, in action. The digester allows the company to recycle wastewater from their potato processing into high nutrient irrigation water.

The digester started operating in 2007, and is 490 feet long and holds up to 20 million gallons of process water. It also produces up to half a million cubic feet of biogas a day.

The biogas produced from the digestor offsets up to 15 percent of the plant's fuel needs. Farm Manager Andy Erickson said the gas is pumped through a pipeline back to the plant to produce steam necessary for Simplot's French fry production.

He added that about 220 million gallons of processed water is held in one of the facility's storage ponds during non-irrigation periods.

Overall, the processed water is recycled by irrigating nearly 9,600 acres of crops, including sweet corn, potatoes, wheat and alfalfa.

According to Keele, farmers who use the recycled water benefit because the water is rich in nutrients, meaning they can spend less on commercial fertilizers.

To demonstrate how far the recycled water can go, Simplot employees created a small garden near the digester. Bertha's Garden has strawberries, onions, radishes and even a pumpkin patch.

Keele said that with greenhouse emission laws becoming mandatory, and people becoming more involved in recycling and renewable energy initiatives, digesters like Bertha will become more mainstream at small and large operations throughout the nation.

"Going green is not just a fad," she said. "It's going to be a way of life."

Grant Pfeifer, Regional Director of the state Department of Ecology's Eastern Regional Office, spoke with the chamber after the tour about ways the government and businesses could work together to achieve sustainability goals.

"We're looking at innovative approaches to work corroboratively with industry, with community and with others to meet our mutual goals," he said.

He said it's taken the department a while to realize that their perspective isn't the only one when it comes to meeting environmental objectives for a certain area. Pfeifer said over the past decade, the agency has worked to change how they do business so more collaboration and partnership can happen.

In Walla Walla, Pfeifer said the department worked with the community on a project to protect the area's limited water supply without damaging their fishing industry.

"We've been holding staff accountable to partnerships and relationships with the community," he said. "This is the way we want to work now."

Chamber members also visited National Frozen Foods and Maizena LLC and Sunburst during the tour.