Friends of Rural New York

A new website created by Public Citizen tracks pollution from factory farms in the United States. The site ranks New York State 30th out of our 50 states. However when ranked according to animal type, New York ranks 4th in its industrial dairy pollution and 19th in laying hens in terms of numbers of animals.

If you click on the counties tab, New York’s Wyoming County ranks as the 22nd most polluted county in the US and of course the most CAFO polluted county in our state.

If you click on New York State, the map will show the counties and their rank within the state. Please take the time to read their methodology. (http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/factoryfarms/factoryfarm-methodology)

They did not count all CAFO operations in the state- only those ranked by the USDA and the data is from 2002. Only dairy CAFOs with 500 plus cows are counted. New York actually had 600 plus permitted CAFOs by 2004 and many of the smaller CAFOs have greatly expanded.  Therefore New York is far more full of **** than the map indicates.
See:
http://www.factoryfarmmap.org

Do not overlook the tool bar under the page title. There is a wealth of information under each key word.

Dairy Council Loses Weight
The USDA and The National Dairy Promotion and Research Board were forced to cease using advertisements that claim consuming three servings of dairy per day can help with weight loss efforts, according to a recent New York Times article. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to end the campaigns, “3-A-Day. Burn More Fat, Lose Weight” and “Milk Your Diet, Lose Weight”, citing that there is no scientific evidence to prove that dairy consumption aids weight loss. It’s unlikely that we’ll see advertisements about the outright negative effects of dairy on a healthy diet anytime soon, but let’s raise a glass of soymilk to a small step in the right direction.

“It could always be worse” says Carmichael.  Actually it probably is worse. State agencies have a habit of obscuring the truth about CAFO spills.

Thursday, July 12, 2007
By Delen Goldberg

A burst pipe at a Skaneateles farm caused 25,000 gallons of liquid manure to leak into a small creek, killing about 100 fish, state Department of Environmental Conservation officials said Wednesday.

The manure collected in a pond on a nearby golf course before it could flow into Dutch Hollow Brook, a tributary of Owasco Lake. Owasco Lake supplies drinking water to about 44,000 people in Cayuga County, including residents in Auburn and several smaller municipalities.

Cayuga County health officials said the leaking manure posed no threat to the drinking water.

“It’s certainly not a good thing that this happened, but it can always be worse,” said Jeff Carmichael, executive director of the Onondaga County Soil and Water Conservation District.

The spill happened Monday night at Twin Birch Dairy Farm, 1001 Lacy Road, near the Cayuga County border.

Ken Lynch, the DEC’s regional director in Syracuse, said an underground pipe pumping manure from a storage tank to a lagoon burst. A 20-foot section of pipe became fractured, farm owner Dirk Young said.

The manure had already passed through a methane digester, so many pathogens and contaminants had been filtered out.

The waste flowed from a drainage ditch into a small, unnamed tributary of Dutch Hollow Brook, where it killed about 100 minnows and chubs. Young said the manure seeped into about 200 or 300 yards of the creek. The manure then accumulated in a sediment pond at the Dutch Hollow Country Club.

phoning the manure from the sediment pond back into the lagoon.

In 1998, Young’s family built a 6-million-gallon lagoon to store manure. They use the liquid waste to fertilize crops.

“We’re continuing to monitor and pump some manure,” Young said Wednesday. “We’ve got it minimized to the best of anybody’s ability.”

Twin Birch Dairy Farm houses about 2,000 cows and produces about 25,000 gallons of manure each day. It works closely with the DEC to create plans for handling and storing its manure, Lynch said.

Young spoke to The Post-Standard about manure lagoons shortly after a 2005 spill in Lewis County that leaked 3 million gallons of manure into the Black River. Young said at the time that he couldn’t imagine any farmer cutting corners when trying to protect the environment.

“We’ve been here for 50 years now,” Young said at the time. “We’ve got a lot of equity built up here. A disaster would clean us out. It’s not what we want. If we ever had a manure spill, it would be bad for Owasco Lake.”

About 65 percent of the Twin Birch Dairy Farm is in the Owasco Lake watershed, with the remaining land draining into Skaneateles Lake. DEC officials said the spill did not affect Skaneateles Lake or its drinking water.

Lynch said the DEC will continue to investigate. No tickets or fines have been issued.

“That’s one of the things we’ll be doing in our follow-up, trying to find out what actually caused the break - if it was an old pipe or there were maintenance issues,” Lynch said. “We’ll certainly look at ways of preventing it in the future.”

Young said he has no clue what caused the pipe to split.

“It just happens, I guess,” Young said. “We’ve had this system in for eight, nine years. This is our first incident. We feel sick about it, but I’m hopeful that this is almost past us now and it’s not a life-changing event for anybody.”

Delen Goldberg can be reached at or 470-2274.

© 2007 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence
encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

--Elie Wiesel