Friends of Rural New York

Subsidy gives a boost to production of methane for generating power

Nick Reisman
Albany bureau

(October 29, 2005) — ALBANY — Farmers may soon look to make money out of an unlikely source — manure — as New York continues its search for unorthodox sources of energy.

State utility regulators this week approved a subsidy that’s intended to encourage small to mid-size farms to convert their manure into methane gas. Essentially, it provides farmers with the same subsidy that a private homeowner gets for using solar-energy panels. About 200 farmers could benefit.

That’s good news for folks like Rob Noble, who purchased a “methane digester” three years ago to generate energy and reduce his reliance on other forms of electricity.

“The project will pay for itself with this ruling,” said Noble, who runs a 1,250-cow farm in Linwood, Livingston County.

Oh, and there’s one other big benefit to converting manure, he said: a substantial reduction in odor.

Previously, only large farms could generate enough megawatts of power from methane to qualify for renewable energy credits. Now, farms that generate less than one megawatt of energy per hour are eligible for state funds to install the methane generators.

Methane gas, usually made from bacteria-rich cow manure, plant waste and garbage, can be used to generate electricity for a farm, according to the New York Farm Bureau, which had lobbied the state Public Service Commission to include small farms. The waste leftover becomes a nutrient-rich fertilizer.

The program was set up after Gov. George Pataki announced a plan last year to have renewable fuels make up 25 percent of the state’s energy needs by 2013.

“We’re very happy that the PSC took the actions that they do and it’s a tremendous opportunity for New York’s agriculture,” said Farm Bureau spokesman John Tauzel.

But some farmers report mixed results.

“I don’t know if the return is great as everyone would like to say,” said Bob Aman, a dairy farmer in Candor, 18 miles south of Ithaca. “Everyone likes to say the payback is in six to seven years, but it isn’t.”

Environmental Advocates release report.

Are Staff Cuts at the DEC Threatening Your Safety?, released at a press conference in Albany earlier this week, is a follow up to last year’s EA report that exposed for the first time how staffing cuts at the DEC have affected the agency’s ability to protect New York’s environment and human health.
We at Friends of Rural NY know that CAFO neighbors have certainly complained about the lack of DEC response.

Visit http://www.eany.org to read the full report and press release. More information on Environmental Advocates Regulatory Watch Program is available at: http://www.eany.org/issues/regwatch.html{{PERIOD}}

Have you heard the news about e-coli in Syracuse water?

Syracuse water comes from Skaneateles Lake. There are numerous CAFOs in the lake’s watershed. All CAFOs are now dumping slurry in the rain, all day every day in order to empty their storage tanks before winter...now and in the spring are the heaviest slurry dumping times...when the run-off risks are highest.

Can it be the e-coli contamination is coming from CAFO slurry runoff?  And, we all know, CAFO slurry generated e-coli contamination in well and surface water has been an enormous problemin Central New York.

10/21/2005

By Patrick Abdalla

OWEGO, N.Y.- There was one piece of land on everybody’s mind at Thursday’s public hearing in Owego, N.Y.

The land Nichols, N.Y., farmer Martin Kulhman plans to sell to the Drost family, who are attempting to bring a large-scale chicken farm to Tioga County, N.Y., was the hot topic at the meeting. The hearing was scheduled so the county could discuss its adoption of the agricultural district that is in Owego and Nichols.
Kuhlman’s property is one of several that are being added to the agricultural district. If it is passed into the district, local zoning laws will not be able to prohibit the operation to come into the town. Because of public worries over possible environmental issues certain residents say are a by-product of the operation, residents were there to voice their opposition to the issue.
However, the parcels that have applied for the land are not voted in on a singular basis, they are done so as a whole group, Elaine Jardine, of the county’s Economic Development and Planning Department, explained.
Residents, such as Deb Stevens, said the land should not be accepted because of the plans for its future. However, some county officials, as well as and other citizens, said the land qualifies for the district so it should be allowed in.
“I don’t think it’s mean to protect industrial operations,” Stevens said of the district. “This isn’t a small, quaint family farm.”
Eli Walsh countered her argument, saying it is no one else’s business who Kuhlman sold his land to.
Earlier this month, the Nichols Town Board voted 4-1 to impose a moratorium on high-density development and commercial farming.
Before their sights were set on Nichols, the Drosts considered moving to Barton, N.Y., where they were also met with opposition from townspeople. One resident, Don Foster, purchased the land the family was considering, to keep them out of the town.
Every eight years, an agricultural district is reviewed, Jardine explained. Residents can opt into the district any year, but cannot leave it until the years it is being reviewed.
Since the last time the district was reviewed, the district has grown roughly 9 percent, planner Bryan Coates reported. In 1996-1997, there were 18,000 acres in the district, but now there is more than 20,000.
statistic he reported was that during that time, the amount of dairy farms dropped by just one, from 30 to 29. In most cases, he said, the drop in dairy farms has been much more significant.
There are also five horse farms in the district, whereas eight years ago there were none.

©Daily and Sunday Review 2005

A new report from the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS) describes how the country’s disconnected environmental policies may in fact encourage pollution. The report tells us that, “Regulations to restrict animal farm emissions to the water might inadvertently increase emissions to the air, and vice versa.” Laws such as the Clean Water Act may thus encourage farmers to take measures that increase air pollution. In response, ERS officials recommend that farms take an integrated approach to environmental protection. The ERS report provides a simulation showing both economic and environmental benefits from simultaneously taking into account all current and upcoming regulations, including those that cover both air and water pollution.

According to the report, “animal agriculture produces a variety of pollutants, including organic matter, urea, ammonia, nitrous oxide, phosphorus, methane, carbon dioxide, pathogens, antibiotics, and hormones.” In particular, animal farming is responsible for up to 70% of all US ammonia emissions. Concentrated Animal Feed Operations (CAFOs) represent the largest farms measured by number of animals and broken up into small, medium, and large CAFOs (see below for a full definition of CAFOs). These farms account for a disproportionate amount of pollutants generated by large volumes of animal waste. Despite representing less than 5% of all farming operations in the US, CAFOs produce nearly half (47%) of the country’s animal waste.

The total amount of waste produced by farmed animals is approximately 500 million tons, (presumably per year, but no timeframe is indicated in the report). CAFOs alone account for about 235 million tons of animal waste.

“Managing Manure to Improve Air and Water Quality,” USDA / ERS, Sept-2005
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/ERR9

Published October 19, 2005 (Note- the editor changed Gregg’s words. Gregg said that the Farm Bureau says we have “the most stringent environmental laws”. Note the way the editor changed his words.)

The Post Standard
Readers Page

To the Editor:

Your recent article about manure lagoons and the lack of regulatory enforcement was dead on.  Anyone living near one of these industrial-size dairy farms can testify to the misery they cause.  Garbage flies and swarms of mosquitos, stench beyond description, health problems from hydrogen sulfide fumes, water pollution and destruction of property value are just a small example of what happens when these farms expand. 

NY has the most stringent environmental laws is the nation.  But these laws are rarely, if ever enforced.  The farm is simply issued a warning, then awarded thousands of taxpayer dollars to be used for cleanup with no oversight.

I live near an expanding industrial dairy farm located in the center of the town of Eden, NY.  This farm has had DEC pollution violations documented since 1992 with the most recent violation issued in August of 2005.  The DEC has never initiated enforcement action or fines despite years of water pollution to the 18 Mile Creek watershed.

The time for a major change to this failed model of agriculture and waste storage is long overdue.

Sincerely,

Gregg Kaczmarczyk

Food & Health : Agri. & Environ. Last Updated: Oct 18th, 2005 - 02:01:15

Action Alert :USDA’s organic program sides with factory dairy farms
By The Cornucopia Institute
Oct 18, 2005, 01:55

SOS: Another Attack on Organic Standards: USDA Sides with Factory Dairy Farms & May Pack NOSB with Industrial Ag Advocates

From: The Cornucopia Institute

608-625-2042 Voice
866-861-2214 Fax October 14, 2005

Action Alert

USDA’s organic program sides with factory dairy farms

Ask Secretary Johanns to intervene

Way back in the year 2000, concerned consumers and farmers asked the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) to address a new and troubling trend—factory farms producing “organic” milk in confinement conditions.

The board responded in 2001 by adopting a guidance document that would have helped farmers and certifiers understand what is expected of them and closed loopholes being exploited by industrial-scale farms. The USDA sat on this document, never posting it on their web site or enforcing its provisions.

This spring The Cornucopia Institute filed legal complaints with the USDA alleging that a growing number of factory farms were ignoring the organic law that requires ruminants (dairy cows) to have “access to pasture.” Finally, after years of delay, the USDA asked the NOSB to revisit their recommendations. The board responded by passing a rule change and new guidance document.

Again! The USDA has thrown a monkey wrench into enforcing organic integrity. They rejected the language adopted unanimously by the NOSB, a respected and diverse expert advisory panel (saying it was “ambiguous"), and now have refused to allow the board to vote on new language at their next meeting this November. Years of delays continue as the factory farms expand.

Farmers and Consumers Have Lost Their Patience No More USDA Foot Dragging!

No more delays can be tolerated! The USDA allotted two hours for more public comments at November’s meeting but has forbidden the NOSB from taking a vote and adopting final rule change language. The bureaucrats and the corporate farm operators know very well that this will be the last meeting for NOSB Chairman Jim Riddle and a number of other experienced board leaders, whose terms are ending. These folks have been the champions of cracking down on factory-farm abuses in the dairy industry. Public comments can be submitted prior to the meeting, reserving the two-hour time slot for board action on this issue.

Please send a message to USDA Secretary Mike Johanns appealing for the Secretary to step in and demand that the will of the people, as evidenced by thousands of comments, letters, and petitions in support of pasture enforcement, not be subordinated to corporate interests.

Letters and e-mails can be directed to: USDA Secretary Mike Johanns, 1400 Independence Ave SW, Whitten Building – Suite 200A, Washington, DC 20250, .

P.S.: The organic community is about to lose five of the most knowledgeable and well-spoken leaders on the NOSB who have been addressing this and other critical issues. In the past, the organic community worked in concert with the USDA in order to recruit and retain the highest possible caliber members for NOSB—this is a nonpartisan body of exemplary quality. Serving on the NOSB is a tough job requiring quite a time commitment, with much more authority than the average USDA advisory panel.

Previously, the Department released the names of candidates for the NOSB. This resulted in highly qualified candidates being appointed. Last year, a large pool of candidates was nominated for open board positions, but unfortunately the entire process was done behind closed doors, breaking the precedent of transparency in the process.

Engaged members of the organic community want to be involved and want to help the USDA Secretary make the best possible choices. We also call on Secretary Johanns to intervene and have the names of all current candidates released publicly so that organic farmers, processors, marketers, and consumers can participate in the appointment process. We don’t want this excellent board politicized!

Please see sample letter appear below or at http://www.cornucopia.org

In a letter to the editor in the Post-Standard on Sunday, October 9, 2005, a
representative of the Farm Bureau, attempting to counter the call for better
regulation of manure disposal in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs),
claimed that New York State has the one of the best regulatory structures of
all states.  This claim, often repeated by the Farm Bureau, appears to be in
conflict with the fact that a CAFO operator can operate a manure storage
lagoon in New York that dumped a reported 8 million gallons of manure into
the Black River last month.  The answer to this apparent conflict is not
difficult to find.  The Farm Bureau doesn’t claim that the regulations in
New York are good or sufficient, only that many other states have
regulations that are worse.  They also do not claim that there is good
enforcement of the existing regulations or that the Department of
Environmental Conservation or the Environmental Protection Agency have
sufficient resources for effective enforcement.  They only are stating that
many other states are worse, and this may, in fact, be true!

Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Not your typical farm

A few weeks ago, residents of Nichols bordering a field were informed it was going to be sold to a factory farm owner who intends to place a large size chicken operation there.

There will be six barns holding 30,000 chickens each that will be shipped to New York City at 6 weeks of age. So, assuming a week cleaning time between new flocks, seven to eight times a year there will be 30,000 new chickens per barn. That equals roughly 1,350,000 chickens housed and shipped away in our neighborhood per year.

Some Tioga County officials have said to the residents that almost a million and a half chickens per year will produce little smell and no environmental impact and is not a health or economic concern to the area. I say “prove it.”

This is not illegal use, as the field is zoned agricultural. But this is not your typical small family farm. Thank you to our local town board for its wisdom in declaring a moratorium to study the impact of this factory farm on the residents, the environment and the local economy.

Deborah Stephens

Nichols

© 2005 Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin

Mega-farms stoke worries over waste spills

Sunday, October 09, 2005
Fran Henry
Plain Dealer Reporter
From a distance, all you can see are the long nondescript buildings that pass for barns these days in many rural areas. But you don’t wonder what’s inside. All you have to do is breathe.

The smell of manure fills the air.

And the people in five Ohio counties are bracing themselves for more.

Since April, the Ohio Department of Agriculture cleared the way for five more industrial-size dairies: a 4,500-cow dairy in Hardin County, which will be Ohio’s largest; a 2,100-cow dairy in Greene County; a 3,900-cow dairy in Williams County; a 1,600-cow dairy in Defiance County; and a 2,100-cow farm in Mercer County. Pork Champ will add 1,541 hogs to its Marion County operation.

Altogether, the farms’ 14,200 cows and 4,032 swine will produce enough manure each year to fill uncovered earthen storage ponds with 135 million gallons of manure - manure that’s liquefied as it’s hosed off the barns’ concrete floors.

Ideally, the liquefied manure is used in spring to fertilize upcoming crops for other farmers since very few large-scale animal operations have enough land for this purpose.

But plans can go awry, and the liquefied manure may be applied to fields in inappropriate weather - often on frozen ground. Or manure can be overapplied, allowing the putrid liquid to go where it’s not wanted, dripping viral and bacterial pathogens along the way. It can flow into ditches which in turn flow into streams and rivers and lakes.

It has happened in Ohio often enough to keep the rural population rallying in opposition - impotently, it seems - and sometimes taking dairy farmers to court. From 2003 to 2004, the state’s manure-related complaints doubled, from 51 to 103, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. And in the past 30 years, the number of agriculture-related fish kills has increased, from 180 to 311 per decade.

Manure accidents are happening nationwide, even as rural Americans coast to coast draw together in protest.

The Ohio Department of Agriculture’s livestock permitting department, however, retains complete confidence in the system.

Ohio has not had a major manure catastrophe because of the state’s “rules and regulations,” said Kevin Elder, director of the state’s permitting department. “We don’t have leaks unless someone makes a mistake and lets it spill. You can’t eliminate human error out of everything. It’s one of the reasons we have rules and criteria.”

So does New York, which touts its farm-permitting program “among the strongest of its kind,” according to Denise M. Sheehan, commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

But mistakes happen, as a Lowville, N.Y., restaurant owner observed from a front-row seat - the deck of his riverside restaurant.

Stinky situation

for nearby restaurant

Steven Fuller was no stranger in town when he opened his restaurant on the Black River. He knew a small dairy farm was a quarter-mile away, but he was unbothered.

What he couldn’t know was that the small herd would grow to 4,500 cows in seven years, putting the farm into a whole new category - a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO.

As time passed, the restaurant’s riverside deck was not always the place diners chose to enjoy their steak Diane and Caesar salad.

Around Aug. 10, Fuller noticed that the already pungent smell of manure had intensified tenfold and a funky film coated the river. The cause quickly became the talk of the town.

Three million gallons of liquefied manure had escaped from Marks Dairy’s earthen-walled storage pond into a drainage ditch before gushing into the river. As the spill wended its way to Lake Ontario, it left a trail of 200,000 to 250,000 dead fish in its wake.

The Lowville spill is not the first in the nation’s large-scale livestock farm industry. Nor is it likely to be the last, considering the industry’s track record and the huge amounts of manure it must manage - 575 billion pounds a year, three times more than produced by the U.S. human population.

The storage pond system has become firmly entrenched since large-scale farming began to replace small farms about 50 years ago, placing livestock farming into fewer and fewer hands.

“It’s a very primitive, rudimentary way of dealing with waste product,” said Laura Krebsbach, associate regional representative of the Sierra Club, of Nebraska. “It’s called the latest technology and there’s no technology involved. They call it ‘state of the art,’ but it’s just a hole in the ground.”

Manure management specialists, however, disagree.

Ron E. Sheffield, an assistant professor at the University of Idaho biological and agricultural engineering department, said that “an engineered earthen storage structure has specific slopes, an emergency spillway, and the soils are compacted and placed in a certain way to achieve a very low leakage rate.”

Everything leaks, he said, even glass. “Solid doesn’t exist.”

The issue comes down to “a socially and environmentally acceptable rate of leakage,” he said. And this rate varies across the country according to local geology, availability of earthen materials and different soil characteristics.

Regional economist Bill Weida, retired head of the Colorado College economics department, believes the reason the system endures is very simple. “The cheapest way possible to get rid of manure is to throw it out the back door. What we’re left with is the [pond] system. They’re cesspools,” he said.

Academics could research alternatives, he said, but they don’t because agriculture professors depend on agribusiness to finance research.

“Land grant colleges were set up to . . . help small farmers become more efficient. But as state budgets got tighter and tighter, research budgets were cut and profs became required to find their own research money. The small farmers can’t pay for research, but agribusiness can.”

Agriculture educators are “paid hacks that will say anything for a buck as long as they keep getting research money,” said Weida, director of the Grace Factory Farm Project team that helps groups organize opposition to mega-farm development.

Although Karen Mancl, an Ohio State University agricultural engineering professor, supports the storage-pond model, when she tried to get money to research alternatives, she came up empty.

“I tried for about 10 years to find funding because it was part of my job description,” she said. “Then I got my job description changed.”

As for spills and leaks, Mancl blames mismanagement, not the pond. “You don’t have to fill the [storage pond] before you empty it. When the time is right, you should be taking manure out,” she said. “Too many operators wait till they’re full.”

Don Jones, an agricultural engineering professor at Purdue University in Indiana, doesn’t think the system warrants scrutiny. “I’m not convinced, based on the data, that this is an enormous problem.

“We’ve never had a breach of a lagoon in the state. We have more than 2,000 lagoons in the state without breaks. We take quite a bit of care in designing them and enforcing the [rules].”

Indiana storage ponds have indeed racked up thousands of leaks and spills, including two spills at ponds at Purdue’s Cooperative Extension Service, according to a 1998 National Resources Defense Council report.

Jones acknowledged that this report is accurate.

Storage and handling

mishaps nationwide

Indiana is hardly alone. Following is a small sampling of failures, recent and past, in manure storage and handling:

On July 21, a spraying device got stuck while spewing liquefied manure onto a field in Greeley County, Neb. The problem was discovered 26 hours later after 1.5 million gallons of manure had traveled five miles.

In August, Iowa suffered three manure spills. More than 8,000 fish died in Roberts Creek in Clayton County after an outside storage basin was allowed to overflow. Another spill at a hog and cow farm caused Coffee Creek in Delaware County to run black with manure for about a mile and a half, and some 1,300 fish died in Bear Creek in Delaware County when manure ran off a field and leaked from a dairy’s manure containment structure.

In April, an estimated 100,000 gallons of dairy cow manure spilled from a manure storage tank into a creek near Rockville, Minn.

Two Nebraska feedlots, holding 7,501 cattle, were fined in August for allowing manure discharges into tributaries of the Elkhorn River.

In 2001, an Illinois dairy farmer pumped about 2 million gallons of liquefied manure into a ravine to keep the farm’s 40 million-gallon storage tank from overflowing. However, the ravine’s small dams failed to hold back the manure, which spilled into a nearby creek. A similar incident in Hancock County in 1997 caused 800,000 gallons of hog manure to spill into Bear Creek.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources documented 259 out of 329 spills from Iowa CAFOs between 1992 and 2002. The spills claimed more than 2.6 million fish.

Two CAFOs in Lenawee and Hillsdale counties in Michigan have had so many spills and leaks into local waterways that the owner, Vreba-Hoff Dairy LLC, has been ordered to install a wastewater treatment system costing $1 million.

In 1995, an 8-acre storage pond broke open and spilled 25 million gallons of hog manure into North Carolina’s New River. The incident killed 10 million fish and closed 364,000 acres of wetlands to shellfishing.

In 1997, 100,000 gallons of hog manure overflowed from a lagoon and spilled into Minnesota’s Beaver Creek, killing about 690,000 fish.

All of the incidents had far-reaching consequences, as the Lowville incident illustrates.

The spill there forced Watertown, N.Y., to temporarily shut down its water intake pipes. And the state declared the river unsafe for water activities for two weeks. It reopened just in time for the North American Freestyle Kayak Championships.

But Steven Miller, the restaurant owner, doesn’t feel too secure about the area’s immediate future.

“People aren’t going to rush to the Black River to do sport fishing any time soon.”

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

, 216-999-4806

© 2005 The Plain Dealer
© 2005 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.

Project Collaborators

Hello Listerserv recipients.

This is Duncan Hilchey with the Community, Food, and Agriculture Program (CFAP) at Cornell. CFAP received approval to submit a full proposal to the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (NE SARE), and we are looking for groups interested in exploring the potential for cooperative farm stores in their community.

We are proposing to form a regional learning community of retail enterprise teams (comprised of farm groups and their advisors) to explore the European cooperative farm-owned grocery store model and experiment with a North American version of the concept. Representatives of the learning community will visit France’s Rhône-Alpes region and their network of farmer-owned cooperative grocery stores and a French consultant will come to the U.S. to assist in the business planning, capitalization, and opening of at least one cooperative-owned farm grocery in the Northeast

Europeans have been successfully proliferating the concept of farmer-owned cooperative grocery stores for the last 15 years. The Rhône-Alpes region of Southwest France, with a population similar to the state of Indiana, has a network of 20 stores that are owned, supplied, and operated by farmers. Typically, 10 to 12 farm families own the store, each providing one or two specialties: meats, poultry, eggs, cheeses and other dairy products, wine, juices, canned goods, baked goods, fruits, and vegetables. The hallmark of the stores is real food that is sustainably produced, and one of the farmer-owners must be in the store at all times to answer customers’ questions about production and processing methods.

The strength of the cooperative farm retail model is that it allows the farmers to focus on production while maintaining the advantage of the direct consumer and producer relationship.

Here are two hypothetical examples of producers likely to benefit from a cooperative farm store:

Sarah Thompson has produced and sold pastured poultry directly from her farm for the last seven years. She is an experienced producer and has had numerous buyers, including butchers and restaurateurs, ask her to expand her production. She has the capacity to produce nearly 10,000 birds, but has hesitated to grow that big because she did not want to get into the distribution end of the business. The cooperative farm store concept is attractive to Sarah and her family because she will be able to expand production and bring in more income without needing to work with a distributor or jobber. As a member of the coop she hopes to deliver her birds to a USDA-inspected slaughter plant where they will be picked up by the coop’s truck twice a week. The convenience of this arrangement is just what Sarah has been looking for.

Willard Scrum’s 75-acre, mixed fruit orchard has been in the family for 230 years. Like other farms in the area, they used to sell to a small local processor, but it closed years ago. Since then, he and the family diversified their markets into u-pick, farmers’ markets and grocery stores. But, the children who helped out with retail sales are heading off to college and Willard is wondering how the farm will adapt. Willard is hoping the cooperative farm store will be just the ticket. Willard will be able to pack for the store’s needs each week and will be able to move the same volume of product as before with even better prices.

Activities in the 3-Year Project Include:
1. Two-day summit of enterprise teams.
2. Field trip and tour of coop farm stores in Southeast France.
3. Retail store business planning workshops.
4. Draft and formal review of business plans written by enterprise teams.
5. Selection of projects(s) to assist in capitalization, and opening.
6. In-depth evaluation and financial analysis.
7. Educational programming around the regional on alternative retailing strategies for farmers and small-scale processors.

We would like to identify up to 5 farm organizations, businesses, or cooperatives in the Northeast comprising a diverse group of savvy and experienced producers who work well together and are interested in exploring alternative retailing strategies.

If your group is interested, please contact project coordinator Duncan Hilchey at or (607)255-4413.

Liquid Manure Spill Larger Than Initial Reports
Last Update: 10/6/2005 2:01:54 PM
This story is available on your cell phone at mobile.9wsyr.com

The liquid manure spill that fouled the Black River in August and killed dozens of fish, has been determined to be twice as large as was first reported.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation says seven to eight million gallons of liquid manure poured from a manure lagoon on Marks Farm near Lowville in early August into the nearby Black River.

The spill killed up to 250,000 fish, and forced Watertown to isolate its drinking water system from the river.

The DEC says the farm didn’t have a permit to have a manure lagoon. The farm’s owners also face millions of dollars in fines from the DEC for the spill.

Farm Practices Require Greater State Security
Syracuse Post Standard
Oct 4, 2005
Editorial Page

When 3 million gallons of liquid manure spilled from a Lewis County dairy farm into the nearby Black River in August, it killed around 250,000 fish, threatened drinking water and sent alarm signals throughout the state.
The signals should be heeded. The state Department of Environmental Conservation can do a better job of collecting and publicly disclosing information about the use of liquid manure.
The state requires the largest dairy farms to maintain detailed plans for handling and storing manure, but it doesn’t collect those plans or keep them on file for public inspection.
Also, DEC records show that since 2002, the state has inspected just a fraction – 146 out of 620 – of large dairy operations with 200 or more cows. In nine counties in the Central New York region, the DEC has inspected 30 out of 134 farms since 2002.
As it stands, DEC officials say the state has no rules that prevent farmers from building manure storage pits or lagoons near a stream, lake, and river or in the watershed of a public water supply. There are no rules to limit how much manure farmers can store in lagoons, either.
The rapid growth of larger dairy farms has increased the chances that something can go wrong with a liquid manure lagoon. It’s good that farms are required to develop plans for safe storage and handling, but improved state monitoring of those plans could help prevent another catastrophe like the one that struck the Black River in August.

Health: Report Warns of Health Toll From Factory
Meat Farms
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep. 28, 2005 (IPS/GIN)—The explosive spread worldwide of factory farming of meat and poultry is posing a serious threat to human and animal health and surrounding ecosystems, according to a new report released here Wednesday by the Worldwatch Institute.
The 91-page report, “Happier Meals: Rethinking the Global Meat Industry,” notes that “concentrated animal feeding operations” (CAFOs) currently account for more than 40 percent of world meat production, up from 30 percent in 1990, and have become “the fastest- growing form of meat production worldwide.”
Their growth has been particularly strong in countries where environmental, animal health and labor regulations and their enforcement are relatively lax, increasing the risks of exposing animals and the humans who tend them to contagious diseases, such as avian flu and mad-cow disease.
“As environmental and labor regulations in the European Union (EU) and the United States become stronger and more prohibitive, large agribusinesses are moving their animal production operations overseas, primarily to countries with less stringent enforcement,” according to Worldwatch research associate Danielle Nierenberg, the report’s main author.
She compared the current situation to those depicted by muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair in “The Jungle”—a wildly successful expose of labor and production practices in Chicago’s stockyards and slaughterhouses that contributed to the creation of the federal agency nearly a century ago that would later become the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“Factory farms were designed to bring animals to market as quickly and cheaply as possible,” she said. “Yet they invite a host of environmental, animal welfare, and public health problems.”
The report comes amid growing concern about the spread of emerging diseases capable of jumping from animals to humans, as well as the obesity epidemic that increasingly afflicts consumers of high- protein fast-foods in developing countries, as well as the United States.
According to a major new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) released last week, the number of overweight and obese people worldwide is set to increase by half—from 1 billion to 1.5 billion—over the next 10 years.
Fueled by rapid urbanization, global trade and advertising, cheap feed grains and antibiotics, plus limited grazing land, world meat production has quintupled since 1950 to some 258 million tons in 2004. Pork has led the pack, followed by chicken and beef.
As demand for meat and poultry has increased, the methods of production have also changed. Small farmers have given way to CAFOs that “crowd hundreds of thousands of cows, pigs, chickens, or turkeys together, with little or no access to natural light and fresh air and little opportunity to perform their natural behaviors,” according to the report.
Such conditions create the perfect environment for the spread of disease, including avian flu, according to the report.
CAFOs now account for 74 percent of the world’s poultry products; 68 percent of eggs; 50 percent of pork products; and 43 percent of beef.
The growing industrialization of meat production has been accompanied by increasing concentration of the major corporate producers. Just four producers currently control the U.S. beef market; four others control 56 percent of the chicken meat industry.
Tyson Foods touts itself as the “largest provider of protein products on the planet,” with more than $26 billion in annual sales and operations in Argentina, Brazil, Britain, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Russia, Spain and Venezuela.
CAFOs also depend to a great extent on artificial and potentially toxic ingredients, including persistent organic pollutants (POPS), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), arsenic, hormones, and other chemicals that can pollute ecosystems, according to the report.
Moreover, the overuse of antibiotics and other antimicrobials to prevent or fight off possible infections in factory-farmed livestock and poultry is reducing the effectiveness of those same medicines in humans who consume the products.
“We’re sacrificing a future where antibiotics will work for treating sick people by squandering them today for animals that are not sick at all,” according to David Wallinga of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
Hormone additives may also lead to health problems in consumers, including certain kinds of cancer and premature puberty in children - - concerns that led the European Union to ban imports of U.S. and Canadian beef.
Factory farming is also inefficient in terms of resource usage, according to the report. Producing just one calorie of beef takes 33 percent more fossil-fuel energy than producing a calorie of potatoes.
Eight ounces of beef requires up to 25,000 liters of water. By contrast, enough flour for a loaf of bread normally requires only 550 liters.
And, while fisheries around the world are under unprecedented stress and some virtually fished out, about a third of the global marine fish catch is used for fish meal, two-thirds of which is used to fatten chickens, pigs and other livestock.
Factory farming has other negative impacts as well, including reducing biodiversity, according to the report. In Europe, for example, more than half of all domestic animal breeds that existed 100 years ago have disappeared, and nearly half of the remaining breeds are considered endangered because they are not as productive as breeds used in factory farming.
The report notes that developing countries may now be undergoing a similar process, with industrial breeds crowding out indigenous ones, just as large corporate interests that have introduced factory farming are making it far more difficult for small farmers to compete, particularly in Asia and Latin America.
According to Nierenberg, the ill effects of factory farming are unlikely to be overcome by technological fixes such as food irradiation or genetic engineering.
The report argues for several measures to redress the problem, including educating consumers about the benefits of organic and grass-fed livestock and of vegan and vegetarian diets; supporting small-scale livestock production and other alternatives to factory farming; and improving both animal welfare and occupational standards and their enforcement.
It applauded several companies, including U.S.-based McDonald’s Corp.  and Whole Foods Market, which have introduced animal-welfare standards with which their suppliers are expected to comply.
It also noted the World Bank’s policy decision in 2001 to stop funding large-scale livestock projects in developing countries. And it welcomed the adoption by the World Organization for Animal Health, which includes 167 member countries, of voluntary standards for the humane transportation and slaughter of animals.
Source: Global Information Network

09/29/2005
Nichols, N.Y., board votes in moratorium
By Patrick Abdalla

NICHOLS, N.Y. - After a lengthy public hearing, the Nichols Town Board late Wednesday night voted 4-1 to impose a moratorium on high-density development and commercial farming.

The move comes shortly after local resident Martin Kuhlman agreed to sell part of his property to the Drost family, which runs a chicken farming operation in Canada.
Voting for the moratorium were Supervisor James Branston and board members Charles Quick, Ken Snowdon and Horst Wagner. Matt Kuhlman, a relative of Martin Kuhlman, voted against the moratorium.
The Drosts have been trying to move their operations into Tioga County, N.Y., because it is a halfway point between their Beamsville, Ontario, home and New York City, where they sell their chickens.
The moratorium is for nine months.