The Wisconsin Ready Mixed Concrete Association (WRMCA) recently announced winners of the organization’s 2025 Concrete Design Awards. MSA Professional Services, Inc. (MSA) of Baraboo was chosen to receive an award in the Sustainable category for its design of a new anaerobic digester and lagoon at Peterson Family Dairy, a fourth-generation farm located near River Falls.

The Concrete Design Awards are part of the organization’s prestigious program showcasing the best uses of ready-mixed concrete in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The award program recognizes excellence in a variety of categories, with judging criteria including design and best-use, engineering design skills, unique design demands, project aesthetics, construction techniques, percentage of ready-mixed concrete used and use of ready-mixed concrete in relation to site challenges and landscape design. Winners are determined by a panel of Wisconsin/Upper Michigan construction professionals.

MSA served as the agricultural engineer for the Peterson Family Dairy project, which included site civil engineering, permitting of the digester and digestate storage, and design for a new digestate storage facility as part of an advanced de-packaging facility. The project provides food and beverage manufacturers, retailers, and processors across the Minneapolis-St. Paul region with an efficient, sustainable means to recycle food waste. The facility at Peterson Family Dairy can process up to 275 tons of organic food waste daily via anerobic digestion, which transforms food and waste into renewable energy. The River Falls operation has the capacity to generate approximately 289,000 MMBtu of renewable natural gas annually — enough to power 53,000 homes and businesses every year.

The digestate storage facility is 54,000 square feet in size and 26.5 feet deep. It utilized approximately 1,819 cubic yards of ready-mix concrete meeting the American Concrete Institute (ACI) 350 environmentally sensitive concrete design requirements and provides 6 months of available digestate storage at a volume of 11 million gallons.

In addition to MSA, the WRMCA award recognizes Vanguard Renewables as the project owner, Peterson Family Dairy as the contributing farm, Cemstone Ready Mix of Wilson as the concrete supplier, Excel Engineering of Fond du Lac as the site engineer, JP Tank, Inc. of Rosendale as the contractor, and MBA Energy & Industrial of Magnolia, Texas, as the project manager. All award winners were formally recognized at the 44^th Annual Concrete Design Awards Ceremony January 29, 2026, in Wisconsin Dells.