First-Ever Court Victory Holds CAFO Accountable for Water Pollution

[marmar]

from Civil Eats:



First-Ever Court Victory Holds CAFO Accountable for Water Pollution

February 9th, 2012
By Kai Olson-Sawyer


In a precedent-setting decision last month that received scant national coverage, a federal district court judge in Washington State ordered a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation), also known as a factory farm, to monitor groundwater, drainage and soil for illegal pollution resulting from its grossly inadequate manure management practices in violation of the Clean Water Act. This first-ever ruling holding a CAFO accountable for its pollution was a result of a lawsuit by the nonprofit Community Association for Restoration of the Environment (CARE) against the Nelson Faria Dairy in Royal, Washington. The ruling upholds the terms of a 2006 settlement CARE had with the dairy’s previous owners, which the current owners subsequently ignored.

The case underscores one of the major problems with CAFOs, which is the massive amount of manure they produce and the manners by which operators dispose of it, which have major environmental implications. According to the EPA, “a single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day,” which is “equivalent to that of 20-40 people.” The quantity of manure produced by one dairy cow can be multiplied on a CAFO by hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of heads. This higher concentration of CAFO animals leads to a higher concentration of animal waste, a problem that holds true for all types of livestock raised in these operations. As CARE describes the scale of the waste problem:

Operations like the Nelson Faria Dairy produce as much waste as a city of over 200,000 people. Unlike cities, however, which treat their wastes, the dairy industry applies manure to agricultural fields primarily to get rid of it.

In moderation, manure is a great soil fertilizer, but the sheer amount (and concentration) of untreated waste generated by CAFOs is a serious liability. When too much manure is spread out over fields for soil to properly absorb it, or when manure lagoons leak, overflow or rupture, rain and stormwater runoff can carry the waste into groundwater and nearby waterways. This over-application or discharge of CAFO animal waste is an egregious example of nonpoint source (NPS) pollution, where the source(s) is diffuse and can have a wide distribution area. Untreated animal waste is a hazard for both public health and ecosystems because it can contain harmful quantities of nutrients, pathogens and heavy metals. (Ecocentric has covered the problems associated with large amounts of untreated CAFO animal waste.) ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2012/02/09/first-ever-court-victory-holds-cafo-accountable-for-water-pollution/

[jsmirman]

1. OMG, greatest thing EVER

please stick on appeal...

That is so exciting and so overdue...

They lie so disgracefully about pink bubbling shit lagoons being somehow held "in" by weak-ass hefty bag alternatives. They leak, they always do. And there is instance after instance of that, but they just quietly pay the ridiculously small fine. This ruling seems much broader than the ones that have been based on outright accidents, which... also happen all the time. Shit sprayer happens to get accidentally directed over the "wrong" earth and seeps into the groundwater? As if that's a one off occurrence.

[WCGreen]

2. Good!