http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/12/1384182/-Lawsuit-Forces-Mega-Dairies-to-Supply-Manure-Free-Drinking-Water-for-First-Time-in-20-Years?detail=emailmc#
Huge factory-like dairies in Yakima, Washington, that confine tens of thousands of cows were storing millions of gallons of liquid manure in open air cesspools and then dumping it several feet high onto a few fields, and calling it “fertilizer.” In fact, the dairy industry referred to it as “liquid gold.” The best thing that can be said of that characterization would be that it was a euphemism; it might be better characterized as, metaphorically, a bigger load of shit than they were dumping into the environment.
The cost to the environment, the water, the community, and the animals of operating in this dirty manner was huge. The picture painted above doesn’t even account for the acres covered in piles of dry manure or the cow pens so filled with manure that the dairy cows lived standing knee deep in their own waste. Each dairy cow produces as much raw sewage as 20-40 people, so these dairies were producing about the equivalent amount of waste as all of the residents of Hoboken, NJ and dumping it, untreated, onto the ground. The tons of excess waste drained out of the cesspools and manure piles and overloaded the fields, leaking into the groundwater and contaminating it with high levels of nitrates. That groundwater just happened to also be the nearby community’s sole source of drinking water.
Excess nitrates in drinking water pose serious human health risks, and can cause blue baby syndrome, several forms of cancer, and autoimmune dysfunction, among other things. The government sets the limits at 10 parts per million (ppm). Some of the homes in this community had wells testing above 70 ppm. Some government regulators at both the EPA and the state level, saw the problem but couldn’t do much against the politically powerful factory farm lobby. If you aren’t familiar with the political lay of the land here, industrial animal agriculture generally gets what it wants in America. Nice job, American Farm Bureau.
But a cool thing happened: The community fought back. After twenty years of fighting for the basic right of clean water and a clean environment, local community groups and some terrific Washington state lawyers teamed up with national environmental warriors, and in February 2013 they filed a case under a great federal environmental law called the Resource Conservation Recovery Act. It gives courts the power to restrict “solid waste” pollution that may be endangering public health or the environment. The dairies argued that no court had ever before held that cow manure can be a solid waste under RCRA, which was true. As they put it, how can “liquid gold” be a solid waste?
Excess nitrates in drinking water pose serious human health risks, and can cause blue baby syndrome, several forms of cancer, and autoimmune dysfunction, among other things. The government sets the limits at 10 parts per million (ppm). Some of the homes in this community had wells testing above 70 ppm. Some government regulators at both the EPA and the state level, saw the problem but couldn’t do much against the politically powerful factory farm lobby. If you aren’t familiar with the political lay of the land here, industrial animal agriculture generally gets what it wants in America. Nice job, American Farm Bureau.
But a cool thing happened: The community fought back. After twenty years of fighting for the basic right of clean water and a clean environment, local community groups and some terrific Washington state lawyers teamed up with national environmental warriors, and in February 2013 they filed a case under a great federal environmental law called the Resource Conservation Recovery Act. It gives courts the power to restrict “solid waste” pollution that may be endangering public health or the environment. The dairies argued that no court had ever before held that cow manure can be a solid waste under RCRA, which was true. As they put it, how can “liquid gold” be a solid waste?
this is what American justice and our regulatory agencies are all about and republican drive to eliminate them is why they fight so hard for deregulation calling it "getting the gov't off their backs, giving business to freedom to do business" completely ignoring the danger to the land and the people's health and well being while also trying to take away healthcare that would treat you for their poisoning of the earth your water and air. like republicans and their recession they did nothing to help repair their screw up
not to mention cows standing in their own waste for who knows how long has to affect them and their dairy by products meaning they are screwing those people around their depravity but those who by products from stores that buy the dairy crap infused products get the shaft too. republicans want to kill EPA FDA and any regulatory agency that protects us from their deregulated business of death.
it took those people 20 yeas to realize their politicians gave less than gnat crap about them and started making some noise and things changed. wonder how many are dead or diseased over those 20 years of deregulated poisoning????
