YAKIMA, Wash. -- Concentrated animal feeding operations and dairies recently got a regulatory break from the state Pollution Control Hearings Board, and a local conservation group isn’t happy about it.
At issue are permit requirements the state Department of Ecology has devised for CAFOs and dairies that have discharged pollutants such as animal waste into surface and groundwater.
Dairy and CAFO operators have complained that requirements for soil sampling and the distance between manure storage ponds and groundwater tables are too stringent, while conservation groups argue the lack of surface and groundwater monitoring requirements violates the federal Clean Water Act.
On Oct. 19, the hearings board increased the required distance between manure storage lagoons and groundwater tables, but rejected other concerns on both sides, saying they were unfounded. The parties have 30 days from the date of the decision to appeal.
“This is just one change that we have to make, that we can make,” said Colleen Keltz, communications manager for the Washington Department of Ecology. “By no means is it a huge shift in our permit.”
The hearings board said conservation groups failed to prove that the soil monitoring wasn’t enough to prevent groundwater and surface water contamination, and that fall and spring soil testing weren’t too burdensome on the dairy and CAFO industries.
Jean Mendoza, member of local conservation group CARE — Community Association for the Restoration of the Environment — is disappointed with the ruling and accused the board of favoring the interests of CAFO operators and dairies.
“This permit has almost no groundwater testing involved,” she said Thursday. “Ecology believes it can do soil testing and protect the water. We disagree with that.”
Dan Wood, executive director of the state Dairy Federation, wasn’t available for comment Thursday.
Included in the permit requirements is a nutrient management plan governing limits on how much animal manure can be applied as fertilizer, as well as a pollution prevention plan.
Increasing the required distance between manure storage lagoons and groundwater tables beneath them brings relief to CAFO and dairy operators whose lagoons already meet federal requirements.
Ecology required a 2-foot distance between the bottom of the liner to the top of the groundwater table. But that’s a modification that would cost operators already meeting federal standards hundreds of thousands of dollars, Wood said in the complaint.
In the 45-page ruling, the control board ordered Ecology to follow federal standards and included the liners — typically composed of clay and about 2 feet thick — in the distance. The average manure depth in the county is about 11 feet, according to studies.
Mendoza and other conservationists worry the required distance won’t sustain the pressure of waste in such lagoons.
Ecology devised the permit to protect groundwater after a study linked a cluster of dairies near Granger and Sunnyside to nitrate contamination in nearby rural domestic wells.
High levels of nitrates are unhealthy for the elderly and pregnant mothers and can be fatal to infants.
CARE successfully sued the dairy cluster in 2013, and those operators were required to install double liners, which cost upward of $600,000 each. They are also required to conduct routine soil sampling and provide bottled water to affected residents.
The lawsuit sparked concern among Yakima County officials, which led to the formation of the Groundwater Management Area. The GMA covers a swath of land in the Lower Valley spanning from Parker to below Grandview along the east side of the Yakima River.
There, the county plans to install eight groundwater monitoring wells and is working with farmers, state and federal agencies and conservation groups including CARE to devise a plan to clean up the groundwater.
In Yakima County, there are 10 dairies under the discharge permit with a total of 24 throughout Central Washington, according to Ecology.
But CARE says the permit requirements should include mandatory groundwater and surface water testing because in some soils nitrates leach through quickly and are in the groundwater before being detected in soil samples.
“I quite frankly don’t understand it. I don’t see how a saturated clay liner protects the water at all,” Mendoza said. “But that’s the way the law is written, for now.”
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