Friends of Rural New York

response to the 8/19/07 Auburn, New York Citizen article, “Farm planner has faith that state’s system works.”

I read the article, “Farm Planner has faith that state’s system works”, (Auburn Citizen 8/19/07). The question isn’t whether the State’s (or Federal) system for agriculture, works. The question is….. WHO does it work for? It works very well for large CAFOs like the Willet Dairy who single-handedly raked in over $253,000 in government subsidies for 2005! Of course it doesn’t work nearly as well for the 73% of NY farmers who receive NO government subsidies. And, of the 27% who do get government subsidies, once again, the State and Federal systems work well for the CAFOs/large farms, but for the 80% of this “subsidized group” who average less than $1,000 per year in government subsidies - it does not work at all !
And for my family?
Whose time on our homestead dates back to 1797;
Who until the last few years, had a beautiful creek that ran thru our property and a wonderful pond;
Who had a well they could drink from without the fear of becoming sick; For my family? The state system has NOT WORKED in the past and ……..  IS NOT WORKING now!
· The state system hasn’t protected Schaeffer Creek or Schoolhouse Brook - both were feeder streams to Salmon Creek and were part of the Cayuga Lake Watershed. (Mr. Boerman is a member of the Cayuga Lake Watershed Board.)
· And worst - When each of these actions was reported, the state system Mr. Boerman believes in ……… looked the other way.

Lewis Brown-Coon

TUESDAY AUGUST 21, 2007 Last modified: Saturday, August 18, 2007 11:33 PM EDT

Jason Rearick / The Citizen
Connie Mather said she has abandoned her house, which sits near Willet Dairy in Genoa, because of health problems for her and her son that she says are a direct result of pollution from the dairy. In the background and across the street from her abandoned house is Willet’s silage bunkers, which she says produce some of the pollution. A lawsuit filed against the farm, however, was dismissed.
‘It’ll go as long as it needs to go’

By M. Liebler / The Citizen

From a passenger window, the southern Cayuga County landscape looks friendly and familiar - robust crop fields, grassy hills, healthy trees swaying in the summer breeze. But to Connie Mather, something more sinister lurks behind the trees, in the dirt and just beyond the lush hillsides.

“This is CAFO country,” she said on a scenic drive down Genoa’s rural roads.

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations of 200 or more dairy cows dot the many vistas and valleys here. According to a lawsuit filed by Mather and some East Genoa neighbors five years ago, these large dairy farms also pollute the land, air and water with thousands of tons of manure each day.

But a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit against Willet Dairy and two of its operators July 17. An appeal is in the works.

The dairy has more than 6,500 cows at four facilities, including 379 Route 34 next to a home owned by Mather and her husband, Scott, as well as 4150 Lamphier Road near the home of Karen Strecker and her ailing father, Fred Coon.

The complaint filed in September 2002 alleges water, odors and other air pollution as well as obstruction of various waterways by Willet that drove Mather from her East Genoa home and made life for the Coons and other co-defendants miserable. Mather filed a similar lawsuit arguing the pollution had caused health problems for her teenage son in 2004 and both have proceeded through court together.

“It’ll go as long as it needs to go,” Mather said in a recent interview at her home in Aurora.

Senior U.S. District Court Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. issued a summary judgment that dismissed the entire list of complaints.

A complaint alleging Willet polluted runoff and discharged pollutants in violation of the federal Clean Water Act was dismissed on the grounds the plaintiffs failed to prove repeat or continuous violations. Another alleging Willet filled streams and wetlands was dismissed on the grounds no permit is required to construct or maintain farm ponds.

Several similar complaints that claimed state law violations were ruled irrelevant in light of the other dismissals.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, Gary Abraham, believes the dismissal is too brief and merits revisiting in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

“The court refused to look at the facts and there’s a lot more there,” Abraham said. “We found these violations and they were ignored by the court.”

His side collected data and investigated the Willet comprehensive nutrient management plan to make a case centered around what they view as U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean Water Act violations.

“The ruling did not meet the merits, did not address the factual information that we presented,” Abraham said. “This is the largest dairy farm in the state. It has overspread manure on its fields.”

The defendants successfully argued they’ve followed the CNMP laid out in their CAFO permit.

“It’s a huge victory not only for this farm, but the entire industry,” Willet attorney David L. Cook said. “We took the position that the plaintiffs were absolutely dead wrong in the claims and had no basis.”

He said the defendant compiled factual data as well, information that ultimately discredited the claims of Mather and company.

“We took the position that all the data didn’t prove the violation,” Cook said. “They might show an elevated hit (of nutrients) here or there, but an isolated incident doesn’t qualify as a violation.”

“Whenever the DEC or EPA has looked at these farms that these people say are a mess, there is nothing wrong with them,” Cook said.

The Mathers and Coons argue that the oversight never takes place at all.

“The DEC is not looking,” Abraham said. “What we did was a mathematical analysis based on their (nutrient management) plan. Then we compared the plan to their own logs,” he said, adding his legal team performed four inspections.

“Every time we came back, we found the same problems.”

The Coon and Mather families argue the CAFO system introduced in the 1990s as a safeguard is flawed and offers a false sense of security to large farm neighbors.

“There is a bad problem,” said Fred Coon, 82. “They keep letting these guys go.

“They’re going to ruin our land, steal our water,” he said. “They’re getting away with murder.”

Coon’s garage is decorated with woodwork crafted in protest. The state Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC by acronym, becomes Dangerous Environmental Consequences on one piece. “Got water?” poses another in a parody of the “Got milk?” dairy marketing slogan.

“Not only is it toxic, outside they’ve contaminated our wells,” Coon’s daughter, Karen Strecker said. “I’m ashamed they sold America out like this.

“You have some smaller farmers grazing in the area, so you always have hope,” she said.

Cook said after representing both sides of the farm debate, he’d still take a CAFO over the traditional farm.

“I’ve represented a lot of dairy farms over the years; I’ve represented some of the biggest farms in the state and many of the smaller farms,” Cook said. “I can tell you almost without exception, large dairy farms are much better stewards of the land.

“It may look great to have cows wandering and grazing, but when that happens, where does the manure go?” he said. “It goes into the ground, into the streams, wherever the cows may go with no control.”

The CAFO permit system uses science to determine appropriate manure spreading depending on the soil.

“You’ve got a system where you’re managing the manure instead of letting cows wander,” Cook said. “This concept that big is bad is nonsense.”

Others beg to differ. Fred’s son, Lewis Coon, left New York decades ago, but has shared the family’s frustration over the phone and during visits.

“I would come home and I would step out of the vehicle and sometimes my eyes would water,” Coon said. “It’s obvious there’s chemicals in that stuff.”

For Coon the greatest evidence of agricultural pollution rests in the poor health of his father and siblings who stayed in New York compared to his own.

“I’ll be 62 in August, the Willet Dairy wasn’t there when I left,” he said. “I don’t have any of the kinds of issues that my mother or father have had health-wise.

“The rest of my family that stayed there ... these people have incredible health problems,” Coon said.

In addition to raising pigs on the Coon property in East Genoa, Coon also spent most of his youth working with area farmers.

“I had a good working relationship with these people,” Coon said during a telephone interview from his home in Idaho. “They were neighbors. Did they get cow manure on the road? Sure. But, nothing like it is today.

“It’s like they have no liability. I guess that’s why they call them an LLC, limited liability corporation,” he said. “These aren’t the kind of farmers I grew up with.”

He insists his sister and father’s suit is about principle more than money.

“The only major concern is that the damages are punitive enough that it really hurts them and gets their attention,” Coon said.

“If I destroyed a large pond or marsh on my private land, the DEC or someone would be on my (butt),” he said. “They’ve destroyed hundreds of acres, hundreds, and nobody says a word.”

The DEC defends its oversight of CAFOs. The agency has issued four Clean Water Act violations to CAFOs since the beginning of the year, department spokeswoman Diane Carlton said. CAFO permits require annual reporting and inspections.

“We’re out there,” Carlton said.

The state has added several CAFO-dedicated field officers in recent years, including one in the Region 7 office this year, she said. In addition to the annual protocol, conservation officers also do spot inspections on CAFOs.

“This is a highly regulated industry, these farms have spent thousands and thousands in compliance,” Cook said.

The DEC State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System general permit for CAFOs depends heavily on record keeping and reporting by the farms themselves. The maximum penalty of $75,000 and up to four years in prison for each violation is the only official deterrent to keep corporate farms from falsifying records.

But, there are additional safeguards, Carlton said. The annual reports are created and submitted by state-certified CAFO planners on behalf of the farms, which essentially means false statistics would put their jobs on the line.

The DEC also responds to complaints that neighbors and others phone in, Carlton said.

“The better thing to do is call our environmental conservation officers’ numbers,” she said, adding they’re listed on the DEC Web site.

While the DEC stands by its regulations, a growing group of New Yorkers, namely the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition, is calling for a moratorium on CAFO creation and expansion until the rules are changed.

Shortly after her legal battle with Willet began, Mather incorporated Neighbors United for the Finger Lakes. The grassroots group hopes to unite like-minded rural residents in calling for a moratorium.

Like Mather, Barbara Lonsky never pictured herself becoming an activist. Neither considers themselves activists now.

“I think there needs to be some type of checks and balances in place, there needs to be some accountability,” Lonsky said. “There’s a lot at stake.

“I know there are repercussions, but if I don’t stand for truth and that’s what I’m trying to teach my children ... ,” Lonsky said. “I have to stand up for what I believe in.”

The advocacy and education organization aims to enlist more rural citizens to speak up about environmental worries linked to manure.

“We just decided that where we went for help, there was no help,” Mather said.

Lonsky started to take notice of her CAFO neighbors when their properties lines gradually grew closer to her Connell Road home in Venice.

“And it’s really starting to encroach,” Lonsky said. “I’ve watched them just kind of absorb the property around us.”

She noticed the crops were being sprayed three times each day with manure and her son was getting sick more frequently. Her suspicion that her wells were being contaminated with nitrates was confirmed with testing.

“When it comes to the point that it affects you personally, you have to stand up and say, ‘That’s not right,” Lonsky said.

Now a PowerPoint presentation tells her story through photos from around her property. Lonsky is also upset with the changing face of smaller tributaries that no longer run through her land.

Mather calls them “unstreams” and identifies them from her vehicle at spots near Southern Cayuga CAFOs.

“We’re trying to protect what’s left and maybe restore what can be brought back,” Mather said.

But her biggest worry is the spreading.

“There are definite health risks associated with the overspraying of fields and the impact to the environment around them,” Mather said. “I don’t think enough attention is being paid to what’s going on.

“If it’s allowed to go unchecked, we won’t have anything left,” she said.

NUFF recently joined with the nationwide Dairy Education Alliance, a point of contact for similar groups across the country. With the affiliation, Mather hopes to turn up the pressure on farmers and fellow citizens who could help with regular water testing and pollution pin-pointing.

In addition to the environmental worries, NUFF also points to indirect costs to the tax base brought on by the wear and tear CAFO machinery causes to town roads.

“We’re paying for all this stuff and the people they are giving the tax breaks to are the people that are causing the problem,” Lonsky said, referring to government dollars that go to dairy operations across the county and state.

CAFO alternatives, like grazing, should have more government and industry support, Mather said. Existing grazers and organic farmers prove the plans are feasible.

“If you’ve got rich soil, Honeoye soil as we do in this area, you don’t need a lot of fertilizer,” Mather said. “You would do better with a smaller hear and less pressure for production.”

Later she illustrates her point while driving along Route 34.

“This guy has a little lagoon and he sprays once a year,” Mather said. “That we could live with.”

Staff writer Shane Liebler can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 248 or

July 31, 2007
Editorial
A Factory Farm Near You

Once upon a time, only a decade or so, it wasn’t hard to know where factory hog farms were because they were nearly all in North Carolina. But since those days, the practice of crowding together huge concentrations of animals — hogs, poultry, dairy cows, beef cattle — in the interests of supposed efficiency has spread around the country.

Wherever it appears, factory farming has two notable effects. It threatens the environment, because of huge concentrations of animal manure and lax regulation. And it threatens local political control. Residents who want a say over whether and where factory farms, whose stench can be overwhelming, can be built find their voices drowned out by the industry’s cash and lobbying clout.

These farms are spreading so rapidly that it’s been hard to get an accurate, up-to-date picture of where they all are. A research and advocacy group called Food and Water Watch has released an interactive map — http://www.factoryfarmmap.org — that allows users to track the proliferation of factory farms by state and county, number of farms, type of operation and even number of animals. The only thing that would make this map more useful — and we hope it will be an ongoing project — is the ability to track changes over time, showing how rapid and pervasive the growth of factory farming has been.

It’s important to read this map not as a static record of farm sites or a mere inventory of animals. It is really a map of overwhelming change and conflict. It raises two of the fundamental questions facing American agriculture. Do we pursue the logic of industrialism to its limits in a biological landscape? And how badly will doing so harm the landscape, the people who live in it and the democracy with which they govern themselves?