The Dairy Campaign:Protecting Valley Residents from Animal Factory Pollution
The campaign began when CRPE represented Corcoran residents in their victory that forced the agri-business giant J.G. Boswell Co. to abandon plans to build a four-dairy complex that would have housed 45,000 cows and produced the equivalent waste of a city with 900,000 people. (The average California dairy has only about 700 cows.) CRPE also represented Arvin residents, together with allies at the Sierra Club, who forced Kern County to prepare three environmental impact reports for the 28,000 cow Borba Dairy Project that disclosed massive environmental impacts, imposed protective measures for air and water quality impacts, and provided Kern County residents an opportunity to participate in the permit process. Together with CRPE's successful lawsuit against Tulare County, the Dairy Campaign halted approximately 100 proposed new and expanding dairies in the San Joaquin Valley by 2004. In 2002, CRPE represented Association of Irritated Residents (AIR) and Communities for Land, Air & Water in a lawsuit that forced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to withhold California's highway funding unless the Legislature removed a state law exemption from air pollution permitting for agricultural sources. CRPE then assisted Senators Dean Florez and Byron Sher who championed Senate Bill 700, which removed the exemption and imposed substantive air pollution controls on existing dairies. Since the effective date of SB 700, January 1, 2004, the dairy project has entered a new stage: forcing new and expanding dairies' compliance with pollution control requirements in the Clean Air Act. According to the California Air Resources Board, dairies are the largest source of ozone-forming volatile organic compounds in the Valley. For comparison, the next largest source category is passenger cars. A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Davis found that corn silage alone would be the largest source – emitting about 80 tons per day of VOC and creating about twice as much ozone as all of the passenger cars in the Valley.1 The Dairy Campaign now works closely with Kern County residents in Wasco, Arvin, and Shafter who are very concerned about the county's plans to issue permits to another 12 dairies, most of which are proposed near Wasco. Even though the proposal has been on the drawing board for years now, CRPE continues to empower and educate communities who struggle against animal factory pollution. CRPE also represents AIR in its challenges to scofflaw dairy operators that constructed their dairies without required permits, without required Best Available Control Technology (BACT), and without required offsets, which is pollution that a permitted source must reduce at existing sources elsewhere in the air basin to ensure that there is an overall reduction in air pollution in the Valley. In AIR v. C&R Vanderham Dairy, AIR achieved a major victory: the Court ruled that the California State Implementation Plan (SIP) required that the dairy obtain a permit, install BACT, purchase offsets, and that conflicting exemptions in state law must yield to the SIP, which is federal law. Immediately after the Vanderham victory, the Bush Administration rode to the dairy industry's rescue and proposed a rule that would amend the SIP to give agriculture another exemption. The rule was so illegal, that even the Bush EPA could not force it out before the sunset on that Administration. Despite a campaign promise by President Obama to protect rural communities from animal factory air and water pollution, the Obama EPA appears to be unable to say no to the powerful Agricultural Lobby; in late January 2010, it reproposed the same action as the Bush EPA. CRPE stands ready to stop the EPA's illegal effort to deprive rural residents of current protections in federal law. Until this meddling with EPA is resolved, the Vanderham case remains stayed. Recent research in California that has just become publicly available shows that dairies, in addition to emitting volatile organic compounds, also emit a toxic chemical called methanol in large amounts. Click here to read the expert report and rebuttal report prepared by Dr. David Parker. 1Howard, et al., Reactive Organic Gas Emissions from Livestock Feed Contribute Significantly to Ozone Production in Central California, Environ. Sci. Technol. 2010, 44, 2309–2314.
Primary Contact: |
English | Español | Contact Us
 |
 |
 |
GOAL: Protect rural communities from dairy-related air pollution