Ralph Lettinga & Family, Registered Holsteins
Farmer settles suit over river pollution
The Holland Sentinel - January 13, 2004
By REGAN FOSTER
Staff writer
Environmental officials say they're encouraged that an Allegan County dairy farmer has taken steps to comply with a settlement he recently reached with the Sierra Club and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over manure disposal.
But others are calling on the state Department of Environmental Quality to increase its environmental policing efforts.
The Sierra Club and EPA recently announced they had reached a final settlement a 2-year-old lawsuit against Walnutdale Farms Inc., a 700-head dairy farm in Wayland in eastern Allegan County.
Nearly a decade of manure dumping from the farm into the Little Rabbit River, a tributary of the Rabbit River, led to the lawsuit, said Anne Woiwode, director of the Sierra Club's state chapter.
Under the terms of the settlement, the farm must construct a holding tank to store manure for up to 180 days, develop a plan to manage and dispose of waste without affecting nearby waterways, post procedures for employees and meet state discharge permit regulations.
Phillippa Cannon, a spokeswoman for the EPA, said the farm will have to comply with the ruling by the end of the year.
"We're especially pleased that they have already taken some steps," Cannon said.
While the ruling was a good first step, Woiwode said there were larger issues that had to be addressed in Michigan.
Under federal regulations, any facility with more than 1,000 animal units -- known as a concentrated feeding operation -- is required to have a state permit for its discharge of waste. Walnutdale Farms qualifies for the permit because each dairy cow counts as 1.5 animal units, giving it a total of 1,050 animal units, said Kevin Lettinga, a co-owner of the farm.
In August, Walnutdale Farms became the first large-animal facility in Michigan to receive a permit, Lettinga said.
About 10 permits have subsequently been issued, but Woiwode said many more facilities throughout the state qualified.
"We're concerned that there is still a tendency to treat these operations, because they are agricultural operations, as if they are not polluting," she said.
The club is scheduled to release a study today that shows that despite successful lawsuits against facilities such as Walnutdale Farms, pollution from concentrated feeding operations continues and the state has done little to combat it, Woiwode said.
"Overwhelming evidence shows that even after a year ... untreated animal sewage from city-sized livestock operations still threatens water quality and that Michigan is still failing to protect human health, aquatic wildlife and the environment," the Sierra Club said in a statement.
Jodi Traub, director of the EPA water division, said she is confident that the DEQ will increase its policing of large animal operations.
Lettinga said that his company had been working to create a storage tank and build a management plan prior to the lawsuit being filed. In his mind, the EPA used producers as a ploy to make the state pay attention, he said.
"The meat and the potatoes of the thing is the state wasn't issuing permits the way the EPA wanted," he said. "They knew the right way to go about it, though, targeting the farmers.
"They got their point through, but they could have gone about it a better way than putting the farmer in the middle of it."
You are visitor # since January 25, 2004