The presence of lactose made me curious as to whether all this whey could be used in ethanol production. It would help reduce the need for corn ethanol while taking care of this problem. Curiously, this possible solution wasn't mentioned in the article at all.

Here is a white paper describing a fermentation process (pretty standard ethanol production, from the looks of it). http://nzic.org.nz/ChemProcesses/dairy/3H.pdf

And here is an excellent USDA review looking at a lot of the different solutions to this whey surplus: http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/pub/RR214.pdf