Diary Development, LCC Permit Site | KDHE permit issued to Kansas Dairy Development, LLC (pg. 11) obtained by an open records request
Craig Volland, Agriculture Chair, Sierra Club Kansas Chapter
The dairy industry is booming in Kansas. About 11 miles west of Garden City, Kansas Dairy Development, LLC (KDD) is expanding to become the largest concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) in Kansas. This expansion will add two square miles to its already large footprint next to the Arkansas River (see above for the plan view) and confine up to 98,000 female dairy calves and 163,000 mature dairy cows. By EPA's scale, the new total of 261,000 head is equivalent to 212,000 animal units in its CAFO waste production.
And it’s not even a dairy. It’s a specialized facility for new-born calves shipped in from dairies in other states. They're kept in tightly packed “hutches” for 90 days and moved to other parts of the lot to become maximum producing milk cows. Then they're shipped back to actual dairies. These cruel cages are about 4 feet wide, 7 feet long, and 4.5 feet high with a narrow, fenced-in space outside. This kind of facility is like an auto assembly plant in which parts are shipped in from all over the country and finished cars are shipped out.
In 1994, the Kansas Legislature passed a law that requires any new cattle feedlot confining 1000 head or more to lie at least 4000 feet from the closest habitable structure. KDHE relied on the law’s grandfather clause to approve KDD's expansion, allowing a shorter distance of 1020 feet from the closest habitable structure, instead of the current legal requirement of 4000 feet. So an existing cattle feedlot 212 times larger than a new facility gets away with a inadequate separation distance that jepordizes nearby ground water and air quality. If the grandfather clause did not apply, the KDD expansion would not be allowed without a waiver from nearby residents.
The dairy industry in Kansas is booming, and dairy calf boarding is the latest thing. Public notice just came out for the expansion of Kendall Dairy, not far from the Colorado border and just ½ mile from the Arkansas River. It’s adding 58 acres of calf hutches. A drawing in the application shows 11,700 tightly packed hutches in long lines with each allowed 5.5 feet of space. This CAFO is still classified as a dairy because it will be milking existing cows for that purpose. Really.
The dairy industry boom in Kansas is mostly due to the recent construction in Dodge City of the Hilmar Cheese plant, a major wholesale supplier of cheese to grocery store brands. High Plains Ponderosa Dairy, LLC is expanding to confine 94,000 head in Meade County in southwest Kansas. Long gone are the days of the traditional small dairy with cows feeding on green pastures.
With such a massive new facility like KDD, you’d think KDHE would take extra precautions to protect groundwater and air quality in the vicinity. Think again. KDD was permitted as a cattle feedlot since no dairy products are produced for sale. The wastewater lagoons, along the southern boundary, designed to capture manure entrained in rainfall runoff, lie over sensitive groundwater associated with the Arkansas River alluvial aquifer. No groundwater monitoring is required for this huge site. And this means we don't know how much CAFO waste is contaminating our groundwater.
Separation distances are the only legal protection rural citizens in Kansas have against manure dust and odor from cattle feedlots. So why, 32 years later, hasn’t the Kansas Division of Health and Environment asked the legislature to repeal that grandfather clause?
Henry Ford would be proud of the dairy industry's assembly lines, but I can’t get excited by take-out pizza anymore.
References:
1. Karen Bohnert, Success is All in the Details at Kansas Dairy Development, Dairy Herd Management, March 28, 2024. https://www.dairyherd.com/news/business/success-all-details-kansas-dairy-development
2. Hampel’s Calf-tel, Calf Housing. https://calftel.com/product/outdoor-calf-hutches/standard-outdoor-calf-hutch/