By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

From atop an enormous pile of green waste, Moapa Paiute Farm Board Chairman Anthony Frank, right, and Oscar Sanchez, recycling foreman, survey the Moapa Tribe’s recycling operation off I-15. Photo by Mike Donahue.

The Moapa Paiute Farm program on the Moapa River Indian Reservation here has been awarded a $260,000 equipment grant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to use in its recycling business.

“We’re very excited about the grant,” said Anthony Frank, farm director and chairman of the Moapa Tribe’s Farm Board. “It will help us elevate our business to another level and make us more competitive with other recycling businesses in the Southern Nevada area.”

The Moapa Paiute Farm is one of 32 projects in 15 states selected by the USDA to receive grants designed to support small business and job creation opportunities in Native American communities, according to Tom Vilsack, agriculture secretary. Additionally, grants were awarded to help bring transportation improvements to Native American communities.

“USDA is working to ensure that members of Tribes have the tools they need to expand economic opportunities and improve their quality of life,” Vilsack said. “These grants represent USDA’s ongoing commitment to strengthen Tribes and support sustainable rural business opportunities that will create jobs.”

The massive tub grinder at the Moapa Paiute Farm’s recycling operation begins the final operation to turn a pile of rough compost into a final, saleable product for A1 Organics. Photo by Mike Donahue.

Frank said the USDA grant will be used to purchase equipment the Paiute Farm is presently forced to rent to operate its recycling business. Items named in the grant application and approved by the USDA include a front-end, locking-wheel loader; a heavy-duty trommel screen to fit the farm’s industrial wood grinder; a semi truck and 45-foot trailer, and an industrial scale on which to weigh outgoing product.

The recycling business began in 2009 when the Farm Board re-formed and began efforts to revitalize the Tribe’s reservation farm, which had lain fallow for many years.

Frank, Greg Anderson and the Farm Board, which today includes Preston Tom, Dalton Tom, Kami Sue Miller, Tyler Samson, Darryl Ohte and Ural Begay, initiated a program to manufacture wood mulch that was to be used to rejuvenate the fields. In mid 2009, the farm began accepting wood and green waste from several Southern Nevada contractors and landscape firms and, using rented and borrowed equipment, started grinding the product into mulch.

At that time, the farm generated income by charging tipping (dump) fees to the contractors and landscapers who were trucking clean wood waste to the reservation’s grinding area some two miles behind the Moapa Paiute Tribal Enterprise Store off I-15. In addition to stockpiling product to use on its fields, the farm started selling three grades of mulch — roughs, overs and fines.

Eventually, equipment rental costs began to negate the income, threatening the entire operation. In September 2010, however, the Farm applied for and was awarded a $100,000 USDA grant for a massive tub grinder, which was a turning point for the Farm operation.

“Incorporating our own grinder into our operation began to help us make the recycling business profitable,” Frank said.

In time, the Farm began to produce bio fuel that is presently being bought and used as a power source by a California company that manufactures cement. The bio fuel is made by mixing mulch made on the Paiute Farm with “fluff,” a tire-derived fuel (TDF) that is trucked to the Reservation by Phoenix Recycling out of North Las Vegas.

More recently, the Farm is partnering with a local company to manufacture compost and is nearly finished changing the reservation’s irrigation system from flood to sprinkler pipe.

“We expect to begin making equipment purchases with the new grant money as soon as next month,” Frank said. “The Farm Board sees this as an excellent opportunity to grow and branch out.”

A new loader and trommel screen will replace rented equipment while the new truck and trailer will allow the Farm to pick up material as well as make deliveries.

“Having our own scale will let us get an accurate count of everything that comes and goes in the entire operation,” he said.

The more than $3 million in USDA grants recently awarded is administered through USDA Rural Development’s Rural Business Enterprise Grant (RBEG) program. The program provides grants for rural projects that finance the development of small and emerging rural businesses, help fund distance learning networks and help fund employment-related adult education programs. More information about this program can be found at www.rurdev.usda.gov/BCP_rbeg.html.