PHILOMATH - To Jane McWilliams and Dan Holcombe, worms are small creatures that have huge potential both ecologically and economically for the mid-valley.

The duo have spent several years perfecting a worm casting reactor process that food waste into organic, chemical-free compost.

Working with the Business Enterprise Center, their Oregon Soil Corporation and OrAgGrow companies hope to turn their single homemade worm reactor into a large scale pilot process that will rescue tons of food scraps out of area landfills and create local jobs. The goal is to secure a federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus program) grant of $100,000 to get the pilot project off the ground.

"We believe a large-scale worm reactor could use up to eight tons of food waste per day," Holcombe said.

Their 8-feet-by-80-feet homemade reactor is up and running on the couple's country acreage and they are turning out product sold in area stores. But the current process requires considerable hand labor. They chop food waste in an old mixer wagon and spread it into the top 4 to 6 inches of the long steel reactor vessel.

Red wiggler worms - from 2,000 to 2,500 per pound - consume the food waste by feeding upward in the 4-foot-tall vessel. The waste - called castings - flows downward. On a regular basis a metal scraping bar removes the bottom layer of castings from the vessel and it is screened and bagged as nutrient rich compost.

New materials go on top, the worms consume it, and their waste flows to the bottom where it is harvested and the process is repeated.

The compost is screened and then bagged by hand. It is sold under the brand name Vermigrow at Garland Nursery, Shonnard's and First Alternative Co-op.

Even though the process involves decomposition of waste materials, there are no offensive odors. Because the reactor is housed inside a long greenhouse-like Quonset building, the worms need not worry about hungry birds.

"It's really just a big automated worm box," Holcombe said. "But it's a viable solution to dealing with waste materials. Burning waste is expensive. We're in a great location, the heart of the state's agriculture. We can collect materials locally and reduce our carbon footprint."

Holcombe is a former construction and oil field worker who worked on projects around the world. He has been experimenting with vermiculture since 1970s. Williams said she grew up on a farm and her family always used natural processes to fertilize their crops.

Their company started in the Oregon City area, where they picked up food waste from stores such as Fred Meyer, to create compost. Holcombe said the process not only provided raw materials for their worm reactor, but also saved the stores money by reducing the amount of waste they sent to the dump.

In 1994, Oregon Soil Corp. received a Best Innovation Award sponsored by the City of Portland, the Association for Portland Progress and the Portland Business Journal.

The couple would like to set up a large-scale pilot project at the Corvallis airport, starting with one ton of food waste per day and growing up to eight tons per day.

"We would phase it in and grow the worms over time," Holcombe said.

Long-term, Holcombe says worms may someday be used as a good protein source.

Bill Ford of the Business Enterprise Center, which helps incubate business startups, believes reactors could be set up throughout the state, each of them employing six to eight people.

"New jobs, green jobs for a new economy," Ford said. "In addition to working with Linn and Benton counties, we have initiated contact with Marion County along with Willamette University and we have hope of including the Salem hospital as a source of both pre-consumer and post-consumer food waste."

Ford added that "worm castings are a value-added product far superior to compost and provide an end of life solution that keeps waste out of the landfills and turns it into a superior natural fertilizer."

Alex Paul can be contacted at alex.paul@lee.net or by calling 758-9526.