Rutgers EcoComplex

Delicious Jersey tomatoes in November? That’s only one ‘green’ marvel of an innovative powerhouse

By: Carolyn Foote Edelman
   I encountered the most memorable tomatoes of 2006 during Thanksgiving week, at Lambertville’s Homestead Farm Market. Gasping at their vibrancy and heft, I asked where they had found such treasures at any time, let alone in winter. "Oh, you know, that Rutgers center in Columbus. They grow greenhouse tomatoes with landfill methane."
   Slicing the ruddy treasures, November’s kitchen filled with the scents, then the tastes, of bygone Augusts. Now I understood why food writer Pat Tanner heralds this produce as "the end of the cardboard tomato." An info-run to the Rutgers EcoComplex in Columbus became essential. I had to see these beauties at all phases — from seedlings to fully ripened masterpieces. I had to find out how those who tend the tomatoes of winter produce these miracles.
   In my Princeton gardening days, our vegetables took on their remarkable volume, flavor and color from seriously enriched deep soil — peat moss, humus and, above all, dried cow manure from nearby Walker Gordon Dairy. So I was skeptical when the Rutgers/Cook College EcoComplex’s Web site revealed plastic, glass, nutritive salts and landfill methane as the causes of savor and beauty. The secret ingredient lies in that adjacent, generous landfill.
   Officially termed the Resource Recovery Project, the landfill absorbs 1,000 tons of Burlington County’s food and municipal waste per day, arriving in 200 trucks. Each night, this detritus is covered with six inches of soil. (Although acutely sensitive to smells, I detected no odor the day of our visit.)
   Friends know that after the first frost, I never let a tomato touch my lips. So when I raved about November’s tomatoes, no one believed me. It was mid-March when I finally enrolled Princeton photographer Joanna Tully as witness and visual chronicler of these horticultural and gastronomic marvels.
The technology

   Burlington County’s Board of Chosen Freeholders located this landfill on Route 543 near the Columbus exit off Route 295, where it would have the least environmental impact.
   Situated above a 50-to-200-feet-thick substratum of Woodbury clay, "the clay keeps leachate out of the aquifer," says EcoComplex acting director David R. Specca, thereby protecting vital New Jersey waters. Rubber liners and sand work in tandem with the clay. Pipes maintain about two feet of water above the waste, which speeds its transformation into organic matter. The resulting methane is drawn off in pipes under a slight vacuum. It is then converted into heat to warm water — which warms the floors of the 46,000-foot greenhouse — or into electricity for supplemental lighting or cooling, as necessary. If not needed, methane-generated electricity is saved into the grid.
   Dave Specca walked us outdoors among microturbines which translate landfill gas into energy. Their anaerobic (no oxygen) digester daily accepts 500 pounds of food waste from an ecologically sensitive supermarket chain. Impacted by a disposal-like mechanism, the resulting slurry moves to a compartment where it, too, becomes methane. Ideally, anaerobic digesters could be installed behind supermarkets and restaurants, advocates say. Imagine them on the roofs of city buildings. Digesters reduce 100 pounds of trash to 10 pounds, which would also greatly diminish truck traffic. A byproduct is very healthy compost.
   Interwoven with this process is the EcoComplex’s pickup truck, which has been converted to run off these compressed gases. Ultimately, we could see waste itself powering waste pickup trucks, something that Mack Trucks is aggressively exploring at this time.
The botany
   On our visit to the EcoComplex, sun penetrated both clouds and glass, even on the heels of a serious sleet-storm. High over our heads ripened tomatoes as red as tail lights, infusing the greenhouse with the evocative pungency of strong green stalks.
   The vegetable that is really a fruit grows on stalks that are really vines. The EcoComplex’s most popular variety is a tomato named "Laura," bred by Harris Janes at Rutgers’ Cook College. He was after a single stem, a "limited cluster system." Laura’s clusters/bunches emerge at the right height to be cradled by a few crucial layers of supportive netting.
   Tomato-culture requires the pruning of shoots which I call "suckers" and the EcoComplex calls "thieves," regularly snipped from the main stem. Otherwise, side shoots steal energy and crucial nutrients.
   Mr. Specca admitted that "Laura was almost a factory design, to address labor costs. Pruning is our most costly production item — beyond heat, light and supplies." And Laura is clearly the EcoComplex’s star: "She has a ‘window of harvest’ of about nine months," explained Mr. Specca, tenderly removing two big-shouldered tomatoes for each of us. "We grow other greenhouse varieties such as ‘Big Beef’ and even ‘Big Boy’." But none has the eating quality of Laura."
   The landfill was launched in 1995. EcoComplex buildings were dedicated April 23, 2001. All was designed to resolve our crowded state’s environmental and agricultural problems. The greenhouse is adjacent to a building holding office and conference space. The staff practices and teaches "green" business development daily. The day of our tomato-quest, New Jersey Park rangers from all over the state were gathered in the main auditorium.
   Talking with Mr. Specca and Nancy Belonzi, manager of communication and education, it was obvious that education is paramount at EcoComplex. Students from kindergarten through 12th grade acquire new knowledge experientially, much of it hands-on.
   "We have them build a landfill out of Oreos — they love that," revealed Ms. Belonzi. "Then we teach them how to keep things out of landfills, ‘planting seeds of consciousness’. We help them calculate how many backpacks get thrown away each year … Pretty soon, they’re volunteering to keep their backpacks from year to year, and to tell their friends."
   Visitors are riveted by the greenhouse itself, where plump tomatoes ripen over the heads of children and adults. Dated crops burgeon on easily movable "benches," designed from Dutch models. Bearing leafy cargo, metallic trays slide effortlessly from one section to another, to permit pruning and other essential gardening tasks. Every few hours, timers turn on the flow of water enriched with nutrient salts, swirling around the bases of Laura’s vines.
   Mr. Specca brushed aside inquiries as to the make-up of this nourriture. Laughing, he referred to "our 10-year-old secret recipe." Acknowledging that "Hydroponic tomatoes are not considered organic," Mr. Specca declared, "We do not use pesticides." The EcoComplex’s literature highlights ladybugs as summer’s pest control.
   The EcoComplex is also the Occupational Training Center of Burlington County, involving special-needs people in many ongoing tasks. Trainees participate in day-to-day greenhouse operations. These eager men and women were using orange and yellow color codes painted on the floors of the metal "benches" as they separated 1-week seedlings, 2-week seedlings, and so forth. This is the greenhouse equivalent of thinning.
The greenhouse
   As described above, the literal greenhouse’s 46,000 square feet are warmed by water heated by steady doses of landfill methane. Even more important than those succulent tomatoes is this demonstration of the positive utilization of methane — the second most prevalent of the world’s greenhouse gases. Methane ranks 17 percent to carbon dioxide’s 53 percent, according to "The Rough Guide to Climate Change" (Rough Guides, Ltd.).
   One huge greenhouse segment shelters a forest of towering orchids. Nearby blue tanks with convenient windows reveal piranha-voracious tilapia and goldfish, 700 to 1,000 to each tank. Waters return from tomato-land, circulating growth factors into and out of the fish tanks. In leased growing troughs, stalks of kelly-green basil vie with blue-green rosemary, aromatically intoxicating. One corner is devoted to the "distance learning project" of a Manhattan teacher, who teaches math and science through aquaponics-hydroponics. In New York, his students planted seedlings. Transported to Columbus, the little plants now flourish, above methane-warmed floors, nourished by fish tank waters. Already identifiable as lettuce, carrots, parsley, nasturtiums and other flowers, these seedlings are destined for Mothers’ Day gifts.
   Cooperation is the name of the game throughout the EcoComplex. A $6 million bond issue evidenced the partnership between Burlington’s freeholders and the state’s Higher Education Trust Fund. "A marriage of the environment and economics, you could say," said Mr. Specca. The New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station is also involved.
   Maturing alongside Laura are trays of seedling broccoli and bok choy, cradled in rock wool, which feels like ancient peat moss. Gene Reiss, Research Greenhouse manager, told us that at their seeding medium is "spun like cotton candy. Basically a lava-like material, it really absorbs water." Drawing our attention to a buzzing bee, Mr. Reiss jokes, "Meet our pollinators." There are no shortage of bees here — they had arrived in yellow-and-black cardboard boxes, now set high on greenhouse walls. Mercury vapor lamps wait in the wings, whenever New Jersey sunlight proves scarce: "The tomatoes really like them."
   Mr. Reiss walked us from dated crop to dated crop, noting that that day’s plucked tomatoes had been the third harvest of the Nov. 11 crop. The interwoven processes fool Laura into thinking it’s always August, delighting chefs and home cooks of our region.
   Back home I call Tre Piani, where chef-owner Jim Weaver proudly serves Columbus tomatoes. As head of Slow Food’s Central Jersey Convivium, Mr.Weaver has had a hand in saving and promoting the healthiest, most savory, local foods.
   Tre Piani manager Alan Hallmark interrupts before I fully formulate my Columbus tomato question. "I remember when they brought them into the restaurant," he says. "There was so much. Jim said, ‘Here, take some home with you.’ We absolutely loved them. I sweated some onion and a little garlic, added tomato chunks, threw in a bit of parsley and oregano — not even any olive oil. We were having guests, so I grilled some shrimp. I tossed penne with what turned out to be the best tomato sauce of my life. I tell you, people were shoving the shrimp aside, saying, ‘Give me some more of that sauce!’"
   Science in the service of gastronomy, a 21st-Century marriage. And, by the way, solving other problems such as the employment of special-needs workers and resolving an excess of waste. In Columbus, they have seen the future — and it is now.
On the Web: http://ecocomplex.rutgers.edu.