CAFO

 Sierra Club fights for sensible regulation of animal feeding operations

When the Clay County Planning and Zoning Commission proposed major deregulation of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in the county, the Living River Group of the Sierra Club went into action. Members studied the county’s CAFO Ordinance and those of neighboring counties, analyzed proposed changes to the ordinance, and began an education campaign through social media and local newspapers. As a result, the Courthouse meeting room was packed for the April 13 hearing, and at every commission meeting since. More than a dozen Sierra Club members were among those who testified against the proposal. 

Clay County’s CAFO Ordinance has served the county well for more than a decade. In those years, no Clay County producer has requested a permit to confine more than forty percent of the county’s 5,000 animal unit limit, and the county has seen balanced, diversified growth. In contrast, the proposal pushed by one county commissioner was to remove all limits on the size of animal confinements, reduce some setback requirements and even permit confinements of unlimited size to be built in Aquifer Protection Zones. The apparent goal, backed by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, is to lure out-of-state and out-of-country money to build industrial dairies that would be operated primarily by poorly-paid immigrant workers.

Continuing opposition in subsequent meetings forced commissioners to back away from the push for complete deregulation of size; the modified draft now envisions increasing allowable size for dairies by sixty percent to 8,000 animal units, or 5,600 dairy cows. Applied to other species, 8,000 animal units translates to 8,000 beef cows, 20,000 hogs and one million chickens. In spite of testimony from officials of the Clay Rural Water System and the regional Lewis and Clark water system that serves Sioux Falls and numerous other communities, proponents are still arguing for placement of giant confinements over currently protected aquifer zones.

 According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a dairy cow produces 21.9 tons of manure each year. Under the proposed changes, the untreated waste from 5,600 dairy cows—the equivalent of the human waste produced by the city of Sioux Falls—could be stored in an open lagoon above an aquifer zone.

Proponents of industrial dairies argue that restrictions in the Clay County Ordinance are unnecessary. They claim that rules of the SD Department of Environment and Natural Resources already protect water resources, and in fact, DENR regulations do require protecting “waters of the state,” meaning all waters of the state, including wetlands, ponds and tributary streams. Yet the proposed revision would throw out protection for all but fisheries and navigable streams. Incidentally, DENR also states that “Wastewater or manure containment facilities should not be located over shallow aquifers.” 

The concerns of Clay County residents are not limited to potential odor, water pollution, loss of property values and threats to family farms. A new National Institutes of Health study by Texas Tech University molecular biologists demonstrates that “DNA from antibiotic-resistant bacteria in cattle feedlots is airborne.” Researchers found that “prevalent resistant sequences” downwind from large feedlots were up to 4,000 percent higher than upwind from the facilities. “We believe that this bacteria could remain active for a long period of time, and… it could be traveling for long distances,” the researchers said. They noted that “the well-known MRSA bacteria [Methicillin-resistant streptococcus aureus], which jumped from humans to cattle, where it grew resistant to antibiotics, now kills more than 11,200 people each year.” A Vermillion family physician who is already treating Clay County patients who have developed antibiotic-resistant infections expressed similar concerns at the hearing. 

 A primary purpose of zoning ordinances is to reduce conflicts among competing land uses. Clay County zoning combines agricultural, residential, second-home, commercial, and recreational uses. The current ordinance encourages normal-size animal operations, while working to reduce conflict. The Sierra Club supports sensible, regulated and balanced growth, and will continue to lead the fight against the imposition of big money from out of state that would exploit our clean water, air and health for their financial gain.

 The public is encouraged to attend meetings, and to send letters or emails to the Planning and Zoning Commission (to Cindy Aden, zoning administrator) and to the Clay County Commission (to Carri Crum, Auditor). 

Living River Group fights for sensible CAFO regulation (11/6/2017)

 

A three-year battle over regulation of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Clay County is over. Members of the Living River Group led the fight, providing research and education and filling hearing rooms with informed and articulate citizens who presented well-crafted arguments against weakening the county’s sensible CAFO regulations.  

Under the guise of “clarifying” a working county CAFO ordinance, commission chair Travis Mockler made major deregulation of CAFOs priority number one. The Sierra Club-led fight dragged the process through a total of ten public hearings before commissioners buckled to special interests in August and passed revisions that were virtually identical to the changes they had rejected two months earlier. The revised ordinance raises the upper limit on dairy confinements from 3,500 to 5,000 animals, reduces setbacks from rivers and streams and permits some nonconforming small feeding operations to more than triple in size without conforming to standard setbacks from neighbors’ homes, properties and other land uses.

In spite of a valiant and principled fight, we lost this war—in the sense that an ordinance that already allowed responsible animal feeding operations now puts the county’s water, air and health at greater risk. But Sierra Club members and other conservation-minded citizens can be proud that our fight derailed the most egregious aspects of the proposal—including throwing out all limits on confinement size, and the location of large CAFOs over shallow aquifers. Neither should we discount the fact that the protracted struggle educated and activated a broad spectrum of the public.

Our next goal should be obvious. We must replace short-sighted and self-interested commissioners with citizens who will put the public interest first. An open question to our friends: Might one of those candidates be you?

 

 

––Jerry Wilson

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Member Letter (7/27/2015)



To:  Clay County (S.D.) Planning Commission and Clay County Commissioners

From:  John Davidson

Re:  Proposed Changes in County Zoning Code  --  Reduction in Setbacks Which Protect Waters of the State.

    A radical change proposed by the Planning Commission is the elimination of many important waters and waterways from the protection offered by CAFO setback requirements.  At a time when protection of our waters from pollution and waste is ever more important, this abandonment of setback protection is not advisable.  At the very least, it requires careful and specific justification, none of which has been provided to date.

    The South Dakota water pollution control statutes [Chapter 34, S.D. Codified Laws] define “waters of the State” in the following way:  “[A]ll waters within the jurisdiction of the state, including all streams, lakes, ponds, impounding reservoirs, marshes, watercourses, waterways, wells, springs, irrigation systems, drainage systems, and all other bodies or accumulations of water, surface and underground, natural or artificial, public or private, situated wholly  or partly within or bordering upon the state.”

    This definition describes the waters which the legislature has determined must be protected from pollution by human activities.  The legislature prohibits discharges into “waters of the state,” although it does provide for carefully controlled discharges when the discharger has first obtained a discharge permit, which is subject to strict limitations.  Non-permitted discharges are subject to enforcement through both injunction and financial penalties.

    The Clay County Zoning Ordinance extends this water protection policy by adopting the identical definition of “waters of the state.” [Section 2.02].  In Section 3.07, 5, C, it then establishes CAFO setbacks from “waters of the state.”  By so doing, the Ordinance sensibly and logically reflects the legislature’s scheme for protecting waters from  pollution. The Clay County Ordinance simultaneously assists landowners  by protecting them from exposure to the legislature’s stiff penalties for unlawful discharges.  

    The existing Ordinance makes sense, and accurately reflects the existing legislative approach to avoiding water pollution.  The Planning Commission has nonetheless proposed to abandon the existing approach, and substantially reduce the waters to which the setbacks will apply,  They propose to do this by eliminating “waters of the state” from the setback provision, and substituting “lakes, rivers and streams classified as fisheries by State of South Dakota.”   The effect is to eliminate the setbacks from a substantial amount of the hydrology in the county,  despite the obvious fact that most of this excluded hydrology  --  drains, tiles, ditches, named and un-named creeks, wetlands, and connected groundwater  --  discharge directly into waters listed as fisheries!

    The language of the existing ordinance should be retained.