Dufferin County is struggling with ways to cope with the forthcoming ban on spreading raw manure, but a research scientist in B.C. might already have found a $100,000 solution.

John Paul, who holds a PhD in soil microbiology and is a former Agriculture Canada research scientist, is installing such a composting system on a 300-sow hog farm at Abbotsford. It's scheduled to open next month.

According to information from Mr. Paul's company, Transform Compost Systems Ltd., the newconcept system transforms wet manure into a dry, odourless fertilizer that's suitable for either private gardens or commercial farming operations.

The small system is capable of processing 500,000 gallons of liquid manure daily.

The 500,000-gallon target might not seem huge, but the plant is a pilot project, and it might demonstrate the effectiveness of the system for septage as well as animal waste.

Mr. Paul says he chose the B.C. location because of the challenge it posed in "an area where the population is dense, the land base is limited and rainfall can top 48 inches in a six-month period. A new liquid manure composting system that can transform the manure into a nutrient rich, dry organic fertilizer just might offer a viable solution to the challenge."

He says land sells in that area for about $50,000 an acre, and is at a supply premium. This might mean that something that works there would be ideal in Dufferin, where there's a lot of residential development pressure and opposition to the spreading of sludge and manure - along with the new rules of the Ontario Nutrient Management Act.

Mr. Paul's system pumps the liquid manure into covered concrete channels where it's mixed with a bulking agent of some sort, and then put through a bio-drying process which uses aeration pipes on the floor of the channels.

In Dufferin, the problems are with both animal waste and septage. The new Grand Valley sewage plant will be able to handle that township's only, and there's no capacity for such at the Shelburne and Orangeville plants.

It's not known whether the gasification proposals would be able to handle liquid manure and septage.