Issues: Water

WASHINGTON

• Fecal coliform levels that exceed the human health standard have been found in the drainage system that dairies use to return irrigation water to the Yakima River.
  
  
• The state's commonly utilized system for granting clean water permits to large feedlots lacks a public review for each individual operation and until recently was generally ignored.

Over the past fifteen years, Washington has seen the number of farms decrease by half. At the same time, the number of animals per facility has grown, reflecting a shift toward factory-scale feedlots and dairies in the state.¹

Pollution Problems

Runoff and spills from Washington's dairies are a major contributor to the water pollution in the state.² In the central and south central part of the state, there is both a high concentration of feedlot operations and a circuit of irrigation canals that empty into larger rivers.³ "The lower Yakima basin is one of the most intensively irrigated... areas in the United States... A vast and complex irrigation network has allowed the Yakima Valley to become a leading producer of... milk [and other commodities]."⁴ However, the irrigation canals also have become conduits for polluted runoff.⁵ Granger Dam (one of seven main irrigation return drains that empties into the Yakima River⁶), as well as portions of the Yakima River, have both been determined by the Washington Department of Ecology to exceed the state water quality standards for fecal coliform.⁷ Additionally, in 1997 within the Sunnyside Irrigation District, nearly half of the 27 water quality testing sites regularly registered at twice the legal limit for fecal coliform of 100 colonies per 100 milliliters.⁸

Residents' quality of life has altered radically since the influx of factory dairies into the lower Yakima Valley over the past ten years. Helen Reddout, a long-time resident of the valley, speaks of her experience. "It was a hot summer night... about two o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by the most hideous smell oozing through the window. It smelled like I had fallen into an open septic tank. The next morning, I drove up the road to track where the stench was coming from. There in the middle of the field was a manure gun spraying huge streams of gray-green sewage onto the already over-saturated field. Sewage water rolled down the furrows into the drain ditch and puddled in other areas of the field. The ammonia smell was so strong it made me gasp. We can no longer entertain outside.... The family home we had hoped to enjoy during our retirement has become a prison where we try to barricade ourselves from the pollution pumped out by the unregulated `dairy factory' on a daily basis."

In the spring of 1998, two dairy feedlot operators reported catastrophic lagoon failures. Each of the spills dumped the contents of an entire lagoon. One spill dumped 1.3 million gallons of waste, while the other dumped 700,000 gallons. In one week, the spills dumped a total of two million gallons of raw lagoon waste into the Yakima River. The Washington Department of Ecology levied fines against the two dairies in the amount of merely $2,000 and $3,000, respectively.⁹

Regulatory Climate

In Washington, a factory farm of 1,000 animal units or more is required to obtain a federal Clean Water Act permit only if it discharges to water.¹⁰ Up until 1998, agencies only found out about discharges that were reported by the operators or if there was a complaint. Washington covers most dairies under a general permit.¹¹ Citizens may comment on the general permit when it is renewed, but are not informed or invited to comment when individual dairies obtain coverage. In order to obtain coverage under the general permit, an operator must simply write a letter to the Department of Ecology requesting coverage. The permit prohibits discharges except in the case of a 25-year, 24-hour storm event (a rainfall so severe that it is only likely to occur every 25 years).¹²

Individual permits are also available for dairies in Washington, but few dairies apply for them. In practice, the only difference in substance between the general and an individual permit is that an individual permit includes the specific name of the operation written in. The form used for individual and general permits is identical.¹³ Individual permits do require that the public be notified prior to permit issuance. For an individual permit, the state sends out notice letters inviting public comment.¹⁴

The Washington state general permit requires each dairy covered by the permit to "have a current animal waste management plan." The permit does not, however, require any particular provisions to be incorporated into these plans but rather defers that decision to the Natural Resources Conservation Plan.¹⁵ There also appears to be no public participation in the development of a waste management plan.¹⁶ Waste management plans do not always restrict such harmful practices such as applying manure to frozen ground.¹⁷

Until recently, almost no factory farms in the state were covered under either the general or an individual permit. Many of the large-scale operations decided, however, to obtain coverage under the general permit immediately after the Community Association for Restoration of the Environment of Outlook, Washington, and the Western Environmental Law Center of Eugene, Oregon, notified ten dairies of their intent to sue under the Clean Water Act.¹⁸ Additionally, the passage of the Dairy Nutrient Management Act of 1998 appears to have increased compliance.¹⁹

Up until the enactment in 1998 of the new waste management laws, there were no inspections for feedlots in Washington unless a discharge was reported or a citizen filed a complaint. When that happened, polluting dairies were turned over to their local conservation districts and given six months to complete a waste management plan. The dairies then were given 18 months to implement it.²⁰ Now, under the Dairy Nutrient Management Act of 1998, annual inspections are to be required and more inspectors for dairies are to be authorized.²¹ The state now has eight inspectors.²²

Primary interviewees for this chapter:

Michael Tedin
Columbia Basin Institute
213 S.W. Ash Street, Suite 205
Portland, OR 97204-2720
Phone: 503-222-6541
Fax: 503-222-6436
e-mail: cbi@sisna.com

Marianne Dugan
Western Environmental Law Center
1216 Lincoln Street
Eugene, OR 97401
Phone: 541-485-2471
Fax: 541-485-2457
e-mail: mdugan@igc.org

Helen Reddout
C.A.R.E.
2241 Hudson Road
Outlook, WA 98938
Phone: 509-854-1662
Fax: 509-854-2654

Notes

1. Washington Dairy Products Commission, "Dairy Trends in Washington State," Fact Sheet (1997).

2. Statement by Tom Charles Fitzsimmons, Director, Department of Ecology, Continuing Legal Education Seminar (May 7, 1998).

3. Columbia Basin Institute, Abstract: Environmental Consequences and Regulator Impacts of the Industrialization and Geographic Concentration of Milk Production in the Pacific Northwest: A Yakima Valley Case Study (1997), p. 2.

4. Washington Department of Ecology, "A Suspended Sediment and DDT Maximum Daily Load Evaluation Report for the Yakima River" (July 1997), p. 4.

5. Columbia Basin Institute, Abstract: Environmental Consequences and Regulator Impacts of the Industrialization and Geographic Concentration of Milk Production in the Pacific Northwest: A Yakima Valley Case Study (1997), p. 2.

6. Washington Department of Ecology, "A Suspended Sediment and DDT Maximum Daily Load Evaluation Report for the Yakima River" (July 1997), p. 4.

7. Washington Department of Ecology, "A Suspended Sediment and DDT Maximum Daily Load Evaluation Report for the Yakima River" (July 1997), p. 4.

8. Roza Sunnyside Board of Joint Control, "1997 Irrigation Season Environmental Water Quality Data for Sites 1-27."

9. "DOE Fines Yakima V. Dairies," Capital Press (June 5, 1998), p. 8.

10. State of Washington, Department of Ecology, Dairy Farm NPDES and State Waste Discharge General Permit (August 10, 1994).

11. State of Washington, Department of Ecology, Dairy Farm NPDES and State Waste Discharge General Permit (August 10, 1994).

12. Washington Administrative Code 173-220-050; State of Washington, Department of Ecology, Dairy Farm NPDES and State Waste Discharge General Permit (August 10, 1994).

13. Review by Michael Tedin, Columbia Basin Institute, of permits issued to View Point Dairy (individual permit WAG 015012) and Hollandia Farms Partners (individual permit number WAC 013000).

14. Revised Code of Washington 34.05 et seq.

15. State of Washington, Department of Ecology, Dairy Farm NPDES and State Waste Discharge General Permit (August 10, 1994); Section 53, "Animal Waste Management Plans."

16. An example of the lack of public participation in the development of a Waste Management Plan is the 1998 plan developed for the Henry Bosma Dairy, as reviewed by the Western Environmental Law Center.

17. For example, the Hank Bosma Dairy and Liberty Dairy, Dairy Waste Management Plan, Natural Resources Conservation Service (1998) does not prohibit spraying on frozen ground.

18. Review of Washington Department of Ecology files by Western Environmental Law Center (January 1998); Notices of Intent to Sue Henry Bosma Dairy, Liberty Dairy, Sunnyside Dairy, Sid Koopman Dairy, George DeRuyler Dairy, Viewpoint Dairy, S and S DeRuyler Dairy, Cox Palace Dairy and John Bosma Dairy under the Clean Water Act by the Western Environmental Law Center on behalf of Community Association for the Restoration of the Environment (October 31, 1997).

19. Personal communication between Western Environmental Law Center staff and Department of Ecology staff, Bob Barwin and Max Linden (September 9, 1998).

20. "State Legislators Wrestle to Regulate Dairy Waste," Tri-City Herald (March 3, 1998).

21. Revised Code of Washington 90.48.144, 90.48.465, 90.64.005 et seq., Washington State Legislature 2d. Substitute House Bill 2915 (1998).

22. Personal communication between Robbin Marks and Max Linden, Department of Ecology staff (November 18, 1998).