Friends of Rural New York

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.