DEMING, Wash. — Conserving water is a multi-faceted effort at Coldstream Farms, a family dairy in northwestern Washington.

Currently, the family farms 1,500 to 2,000 acres and milks about 1,800 cows.

“About 50% of the herd is Holsteins, 40% are Jersey-Holstein crosses, and 10% are Jerseys,” says Galen Smith, son-in-law of the dairy’s founders, Jeff Rainey and his wife, Vickie.

They started the dairy in 1978, and “I came to the farm in 2000,” Galen says.

One aspect of conserving water is the breed of the cows.

“We like the crossbred animals,” Galen says. “They have better longevity, are a little smaller than Holsteins, more feed-efficient and tend to produce milk with higher protein and butterfat.”

But those characteristics are just part of the picture, he says.

“Having cows that are more feed-efficient and being able to sell milk with higher components is a way we can be more conservative in water consumption,” he says.

The dairy went through a major expansion in 2012 with a new facility and newer technology to become more efficient.

In terms of water usage and efficiency, it’s a “three-legged stool” approach.

“First, it must be financially viable. Second, we think about environmental stewardship, which includes water conservation. We also consider our obligation to our people and our animals,” he says.

“Those three things are part of everything we do, to hold up that stool,” Galen says.

In recent years, dairies have made great progress in water conservation, he says.

“Even in the past 10 years, data shows that we use 30% less water to produce a gallon of milk,” he says. “If you look back over 70 years, we are using 65% less water to produce that gallon of milk.”

Some of the strides have been due to changes in genetics in the animals, some is higher feed efficiency and some is technology, he says.

Wetlands are an important part of the farm, he says.

Wetlands are nature’s “filter” with vegetation and bacteria working to remove solids, nutrients and pollutants, preventing contamination downstream, he says.

“We protect those and keep them intact,” Galen says. “In areas we didn’t have wetlands and buffers, so we gave up portions of our land to create artificial wetlands to provide this function, along with more habitat for wildlife and to shade the water for aquatic species and minimize evaporation loss.”

They also use cover crops and crop rotation, increasing organic matter, and use manure as fertilizer.

“This tremendously improves soil’s ability to hold water, sometimes as much as 20% more, so we need less groundwater to grow crops,” he says.

The farm also has soil moisture monitoring systems in place.

“We use soil moisture meters and take advantage of Washington State University’s live weather-monitoring systems,” he says. The system measures soil temperature, moisture and the amount of rainfall.

“If we know we need 2.5 inches of rain for a certain crop within a 30-day window, this lets us know if we get it,” he says. “We check with the moisture meter to be sure we didn’t lose some of it, but those weather stations help us decide whether we need to irrigate.”

Another way to save water is timing.

“We don’t start irrigating until late afternoon, and irrigate overnight. This minimizes evaporation loss during heat of the day and gives the water time to settle into the ground,” he says.

The farm has also implemented several new technologies.

“A bio-link center captures all the recycled water from our parlor. In a closed-loop system we can use it over and over again until it becomes too dirty,” he says. “Then we pull a little dirty water off the bottom and continue to recycle the rest.”

They can reuse water sometimes as much as 15 times before it goes into long-term storage to irrigate the fields, he says.

“We use water to cool our milk, through a pre-cooler,” he says. “Before we built the new facility in 2012, that water went down the drain and into the ditch or a filtration field.”

Now the water to cool the milk is diverted right back for all our uses on the dairy.

“It becomes drinking water for the cows, or into our wash-down systems,” he says. “This cooling system uses 20 gallons a minute, so being able to recycle it saves a lot of water.”

Another innovation is a system for warming bottles of colostrum.

“We generally have about 10 new calves a day, and have colostrum that needs to be warmed and fed,” he says.

Rather than every time taking a bottle that was in the refrigerator and putting it in a 5- to 10-gallon bucket to warm it, we invested in a warm water bath — a 20-gallon unit with a thermostat that keeps the water at 104 degrees,” he says. “We fill it once a day, rather than 10 gallons every time for each new calf (about 100 gallons a day). Now we fill it once, with 20 gallons, and can add bottles to it all day long.”

A big savings is simply keeping the cows cool and comfortable, so they don’t need to drink as much.

One of the larger-scale projects, but currently not in operation because of the high cost to operate, is using reverse osmosis to remove manure solids from liquid manure.

The farm was awarded a grant from the Washington State Conservation Commission to help cover installation and operating costs and research on the project.

“With solids removed, we ran the water through the reverse osmosis system. This concentrated all the nutrients — ammonia, potassium, phosphorus, etc. and pulled them out, leaving us with distilled water,” he says. “We’d send about 45,000 gallons of tea-water to the reverse osmosis system, and we’d get back 30,000 gallons of clean, pure water.”

The water is clean enough for cows to drink, and could even benefit local salmon runs by increasing streamflow. One of the uses considered was a partnership with the Public Utility District and Department of Ecology to create a convergence between the dairy’s clean water and the nearby Nooksack River.

“We were able to prove that the technology worked, but were looking at 5 to 6 cents per treated gallon,” he says. “The equipment and technology for the reverse osmosis is still here; eventually, someone will develop technology to cheapen it.”

This system will be more feasible later on, he predicts.

“We are always looking for ways to be more efficient. We are passionate about what we are doing, trying to find systems that are a win for agriculture, a win financially and a win for the environment, as well as our animals,” Galen says.

“We are in it for the long haul. Amongst all our partners, we have 7 boys and if we are passionate and enjoy what we are doing, hopefully they will want to come back and be a part of this,” he says. “If we were negative about what we do, or not making any money, the kids would not want to be a part of that.”