Friends of Rural New York

04/02/2008
Toxic fumes, blisters & brain damage : The cost of doing business?
By: Rebecca Lerner - An investigative report
Ithaca Times

Willet Dairy’s cows are lined up together, eating feed, in one of
the
farm’s barns. (Photo by Rachel Philipson)

Karen Strecker is bracing. She’s about to turn on the faucet, and
there’s a chance liquid manure is going to stream from the spout.
“I’ve been taking a bath and actually had cow shit pour into the tub,’’

Strecker says, matter-of-factly. She uses well water. “It’s nasty.”
Yet the threat of a sewage bath pales in comparison to a more dangerous

problem: Breathing poisonous fumes. After years living next to Willet
Dairy, the largest industrial farm in the state, Strecker and her
neighbors in Genoa are reporting the kinds of health problems
eco-watchdogs lose sleep over, from blistering eyelids to brain damage.

Manure is known to release gases that, in high concentrations, are
linked to those scary symptoms.
Strecker’s plight takes on national relevance as the EPA prepares to
roll back air-pollution-reporting requirements for industrial animal
farms like Willet in October - even as environmentalists warn that
regulation is already too lax in New York.

The Road to Industrial Farming

Located next to Lansing in Cayuga County, Genoa is a rural town with
sprawling hills and a population of 1,914. Its main street is spare but

quaint, with an antiques shop, a fire hall advertising a NASCAR event,
and a church with the motto, “Exercise Daily: Walk With God.”
The roadsides here are dotted with farms. Willet Dairy’s giant white
barns sit close to Route 34, the main thoroughfare. Pickup trucks and
heavy machinery sit in dusty lots.
With 7,800 cattle, Willet is a relative behemoth. The other two major
livestock operations in town are Osterhoudt Farm, with 470 cattle, and
Ridgecrest Dairy L.L.C., with 1,090, according to the state Department
of Environmental Conservation, the agency charged with regulating
agricultural pollution.
Willet began in 1974 as a small, family-owned operation that grew
steadily over the years, acquiring its neighbors’ property and
expanding
as American agricultural practices became increasingly mechanized and
efficient. Today, Willet spans approximately 6,300 acres over four
sites, including a facility on Route 34 near Lansing, one on Lane Road
in Locke, Belltown Dairy in King Ferry and W.D. Corey Dairy. “Why
larger
dairies?” said David M. Galton, a dairy management professor at Cornell

University. “Well, why Wegmans? Target and Circuit City and Home Depot
and Lowe’s - they’re doing it to dilute out cost and to maintain or
improve standard of living. It’s like every other segment of our
economy. Larger dairies are trying to address the ever-rising cost of
producing milk and standard of living.”
In 1993, farms with 200 or more cattle made up 3.6 percent of the
state’s dairies, according to USDA statistics. By 2002, they made up 9
percent.
“The larger the dairy farm, the lower the costs are. And so, as the
costs keep rising - fuel costs, feed costs, taxes - it puts more
economic pressure on the individual farms to produce more milk,’’
Galton
said. “If you take the milk price of 1980 and adjust it for inflation,
the milk price would be $38.92 per 100 pounds. The milk price today is
approximately $20 per 100 pounds.”
Galton is director of PRO-DAIRY, a government-funded outreach arm of
Cornell University that works to increase profitability in the dairy
industry and educate farmers on the latest manure-management
techniques.
Willet Dairy is a privately held business headed by Dennis Eldred, a
Genoa resident. The company is listed as Willet Dairy L.P.; Willet
Dairy
L.L.C.; and Willet Dairy Inc., in legal documents. Eldred did not
return
phone calls to his home and office and declined to be interviewed
through his attorney, David Cook of Nixon Peabody L.L.P.
Scott, Todd, Susan and Peter Eldred are also listed as co-owners of
Willet, according to 2005 USDA records as compiled by the nonprofit
Environmental Working Group. Todd, Susan and Peter Eldred are “all
family members, members of the LLC,” according to Cook. Neighbors
identified them as Dennis Eldred’s adult children. Scott Eldred is
Dennis Eldred’s brother, and his status with the company is not clear
at
this time because Scott Eldred is in the Carribbean working as a
missionary, Cook said. Town Supervisor Stuart Underwood has known
Dennis
Eldred and his family for decades and described them as “good people.’’
Willet Operations Officer Lyn Odell, who spoke to the Ithaca Times,
declined to discuss the company’s annual profits. Public records show
Willet received $1,114,807.88 in USDA subsidies from 1995 to 2005,
according to a database maintained by the nonprofit Environmental
Working Group.
Property tax records show Willet paid more than a third of the locally
funded portion of Genoa’s 2007 town budget.
Large-scale dairies like Willet are known colloquially as factory
farms,
a term that refers to the industrialized nature of their daily
operations. The state Department of Environmental Conservation refers
to
large dairies as “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs,
because they confine their animals in warehouse-like facilities for
more
than 45 days each year. If you peer into Willet’s barns, some of which
are open-air and visible from the roads, you will observe bovine faces
neatly aligned, as far back as the eye can see.
At dairy farms in general, cows are impregnated once every 13 to 14
months in order to keep milk production at a profitable level, Galton
said. But whereas small farms may house cows and calves together, it is

standard practice for CAFOs to isolate calves in individual crates for
the six weeks immediately following birth, Galton said, in order to
avoid compromising their fragile immune systems.
This is a practice assailed by animal welfare groups, including Farm
Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, as cruel. It irks Strecker as well. Down the

street from her house, small evergreens do little to block the view of
the crates, arranged in orderly rows along a grassy plain that
stretches
several football fields in length. At night, floodlights illuminate the

scene.
“We do what we have to do to improve standard of living and dilute out
cost,” Galton said of the industry.
To address the ecological impact of thousands of cows relieving
themselves in one area, large dairies like Willet are required by law
to
manage the excrement using techniques developed in large part by
Cornell
University.
Willet cows produced 157,126 tons of manure in 2006, according to the
DEC.
Willet liquifies the untreated waste and pumps it into manure lagoons,
as is standard practice among large-scale dairies. There it sits - some

hundreds of feet from Strecker’s home - uncovered and decomposing,
releasing hydrogen sulfide, a poisonous, acidic gas known to burn the
eyes and respiratory tract, until some of Willet’s laborers spray it
onto farm fields with tanker trucks.

Toxic Gases

The stench in Strecker’s yard makes you cough at first, then your eyes
water and nausea sets in. Dizziness knocks you over if you stick around

for more than five minutes, and if the wind is blowing the right way,
you might find yourself nursing a headache. Of course, that’s just if
you’re visiting on a mild day. The effect is more severe if you
actually
live there.
“No matter which way the wind blows, we’re screwed,’’ Strecker says.
Strecker has been on a constant dose of antibiotics for years to treat
chronic respiratory problems caused by exposure to her surroundings,
according to a series of letters written by her doctor, Ahmad Mehdi of
Groton Family Practice. The letters span from Aug. 15, 2000 to Jan. 22,

2007.
“Do people get sick when manure gets spread? Yes, it’s a fact,” Mehdi
told the Ithaca Times. “It’s the huge, mass production. When you have
10,000 cows in one place, that’s a lot of manure. Everybody knows that.

But it’s the way of life around here.”
Cayuga County is home to 28 industrial farms, and Tompkins has 10,
according to the DEC. There are more than 600 such facilities in the
state. Detailed information about each is available online at
http://www.factoryfarmmap.org, a website compiled by the research and advocacy

group Food & Water Watch.
You can’t see manure lagoons from the roadsides, but you can smell
them,
and the dangers of their fumes have been documented. A 2002 study by
the
University of Iowa and Iowa State University examined the impact of
aerial ammonia and hydrogen sulfide on residents living near industrial

hog farms after former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack requested information on
their public health impact. The researchers noted that aerial ammonia
and hydrogen sulfide gas - both routine CAFO emissions - are poisonous
in high concentrations, causing sinusitis, asthma, chronic bronchitis,
inflamed mucous membranes of the nose and throat, headaches, muscle
aches and pains in those who live or work nearby.
The National Association of Clean Air Agencies - which represents
local,
state, federal and agencies - cites manure-pit emissions containing
hydrogen sulfide and ammonia for the deaths of at least two dozen
people
working or living near the operations in the Midwest over the past 30
years.
“The release of toxic substances from manure in amounts dangerous to
human health is not a theoretical exercise - people have been killed,’’

said the NACAA’s Catharine Fitzsimmons, in testimony before the U.S.
Senate on Sept. 6, 2007.
A June 2006 fact sheet put out by PRO-DAIRY on health and safety issues

describes hydrogen sulfide as “a poisonous, acidic gas that can kill in

a matter of seconds,” “accumulates in low, confined spaces” and
dissolves “rapidly in eye moisture and in the respiratory tract.”
Yet the DEC does not closely monitor toxic emissions from livestock
farms. DEC spokesperson Lori O’Connell said the fumes are regarded “as
either ‘trivial activities’ ... or as ‘fugitive emissions’ in the case
of outdoor manure piles and waste lagoons. Both of these designations
have the effect of relieving farms in New York from needing an air
permit or minor source registration.”

Brain Damage and Poisoned Eyes

If you ask Fred Coon, Strecker’s 82-year-old father, why he’s missing
his lower eyelids, he will tell you about the time he “got my eyes
poisoned.”
“It was a terrible process,’’ Coon said. “I was raking leaves by the
barn, and my eyes started stinging. I came inside and looked in the
mirror, and there were a million little tiny blisters over here, and
here,’’ he says, pointing to the magenta tissue his lower eyelids used
to cover. The blisters burst and became infected, prompting doctors to
amputate the thin flaps of skin containing them.
Neighbor Connie Mather, a perky former schoolteacher from Philadelphia
who owns a property around the corner, also had a run-in with the
blisters. In her case, they converged on the inside of her throat and
nasal passages.
But Mather had another cause for alarm. In 2004, a medical expert
diagnosed her teenage son, Samuel, with irreversible brain damage
caused
by exposure to hydrogen sulfide gas.
The physician was Dr. Kaye Kilburn, a professor at the University of
Southern California who has published 61 peer-reviewed papers on
neurobehavioral toxicology. Kilburn is president and director of
Neuro-Test Inc., a company that evaluates chemical exposure for
lawsuits
and disability claims. Kilburn also diagnosed Connie Mather and Coon
with neurological damage from the fumes.
During the evaluations, Kilburn reviewed a 15-page questionnaire on
each
patient’s medical history and administered 43 different tests,
according
to legal documents.
“Each patient’s brain impairment has been caused by exposure to
hydrogen
sulfide,” Kilburn wrote. “None of the patients have been exposed [to]
other significant chemical exposures, and none of the patients have
[sic] suffered spontaneous or associated neurological or psychiatric
disease. After analyzing of other possible causes for brain impairment
[sic], I found that for each patient the clinical signs of all possible

alternative causes are absent.”
Kilburn told the Mathers to vacate their property immediately. The
family is renting elsewhere.
Angered into action, Mather became a founding member of Neighbors
United
for the Finger Lakes, an anti-CAFO organization with membership in a
national coalition called the Dairy Education Alliance. She worries
about plans for an 84,000-head cattle CAFO in St. Lawrence County - an
operation that would be more than 10 times the size of Willet.

A Losing Lawsuit, A Bitter Fight

Strecker spends her days taking care of her father, Fred Coon. Both
retired carpenters, they live on a 7-acre property with a main house, a

trailer, a garage decorated with Coon’s artwork and a muddy stream in
the backyard. The land has been in the family since the 1800s. Coon
still sleeps in the house he built in the 1940s. His late wife, and
Strecker’s mother, Pearl Coon, spent her last days here.
In the good old days, the air here smelled like lilac trees, flowers
grew in the garden and marathon barbecues brought the town together,
Coon said. They even had neighbors. But that was before Willet
expanded.
Now they’re surrounded by Willet on three sides.
“I’m just angry they took our lives away,’’ Strecker says. “I can’t
even
get a friggin’ clean glass of water.”
To no avail, Strecker and Mather tried complaining about Willet to the
state DEC; Office of the New York State Attorney General; New York
State
Soil and Water Committee; Cayuga County Health & Human Services
Department; former New York Governors Eliot Spitzer and George Pataki;
the U.S. EPA; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; federal and local
legislators; the New York State Police; the Cayuga County Sheriff’s
Department; and the Genoa town supervisor.
“They all say they’ll ‘look into it,’” Strecker says. “Nobody cares.”
Frustrated, the neighbors tried the legal arena, banding together to
file a citizen’s lawsuit alleging violations of the Clean Water Act,
the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Rivers and Harbors Act, and the

New York State Environmental Conservation Law. Suing Willet were Karen
Strecker; Fred Coon and his late wife Pearl Coon; Connie Mather and her

husband Scott Mather; and three other neighbors, Karen and Kenneth
Keppel and Dale Mangan, according to legal documents.
After five years of litigation, the case was dismissed in July. Their
attorney is Gary Abraham, a T-shirt-wearing environmentalist who works
out of a room in his house in Allegany, N.Y., and who took the case at
his own expense. Willet Dairy was represented by attorney David Cook of

the firm Nixon Peabody L.L.P., a 700-attorney powerhouse with offices
in
17 cities, including Rochester and Shanghai, China.
Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. of the Northern District of New York
dismissed the suit, ruling in Willet’s favor that the farm’s neighbors
did not have the legal authority to bring an enforcement action. This
leaves the door open for the neighbors to try again in another
jurisdiction.
Abraham is challenging the court decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Second Judicial Circuit. Both Abraham and Cook have filed
briefs; oral arguments are expected to begin in May.
Abraham said he is optimistic, bolstered by a Jan. 15 decision by a
Michigan appellate court reaffirming the power of citizen suits to
enforce Clean Water Act violations.
On behalf of Willet, Cook described the dairy as “a leader in
environmental stewardship.” Inaction by the broad array of local, state

and federal government agencies bolsters the argument that Willet did
not violate any laws, Cook said. He called the neighbors’ allegations
of
pollution and detrimental health effects “utter nonsense.”
“Now, do I believe these people believe it? Absolutely. But the science

doesn’t back it up,” said Cook. “When we went out to hire experts to
tell us what the levels of exposure were, do you know what the levels
were? Non-detect.”
Researchers took samples of soil, air and water at Willet and then
extrapolated the results to estimate what Willet’s neighbors
encountered, Cook said. When the Ithaca Times asked to see the data,
Cook declined to release it. “We are still in the midst of litigation,”

Cook said.
Odell, the Willet employee, said he believes the company is being
subjected to unreasonable scrutiny.
During a recent four-day-long surprise inspection of Willet in
November,
the DEC found that Willet “continues to be a well-managed and operated
dairy” in “satisfactory” compliance with permit requirements, according

to a Dec. 11, 2007, letter sent to Dennis Eldred from the DEC’s
Environmental Program Specialist Scott D. Cook.
“We don’t farm any different than anybody else does up and down this
road,” Odell said, referring to Route 34. “This is about the nature of
our business, about how we farm. It’s not about Willet. It’s about the
dairy industry.”
While Genoa’s other two CAFOs, Osterhoudt and Ridgecrest, have never
been cited for environmental violations by the DEC, Willet has paid for

two. On March 8, 2001, the DEC fined Willet $25,000 for leaking “a
significant amount of manure” into the Cayuga Lake watershed when a
pipe
burst, resulting in a fish kill and a water quality violation, the DEC
said. The company paid $15,000; the remainder of the penalty was
suspended due to satisfactory compliance with clean-up efforts, the
DEC’s O’Connell said.
On Dec. 11, 2006, the DEC fined Willet $2,500 after manure spilled from

an overturned tanker, leaking into a tributary of Salmon Creek in the
Cayuga Lake watershed. The company paid just $500 of that amount;
$2,000
was suspended because Willet complied with the clean-up to DEC’s
satisfaction, O’Connell said.
From January 2005 through June 2007, the DEC filed 30 enforcement
actions against CAFOs.
The Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, the National Resources Defense
Council and other national environmental organizations have long
criticized industrial farms as major polluters, particularly because of

the run-off problems associated with liquid manure. A 1998 study by the

federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of nine large Iowa
CAFO sites turned up chemical pollutants, pathogens, bacteria, nitrates

and parasites in lagoons and other areas in and around the sites.
In an effort to mitigate pollution, CAFOs are required to file annual
reports with the DEC, and the agency sends regulators to inspect the
facilities once a year. However, the agency does not keep farms’ waste
management plans on file, and the documents are not available for
public
view. The Sierra Club, in its 2005 report “Wasting New York State,”
says
this makes enforcement difficult.
It’s a familiar refrain from environmentalists: There are too many
loopholes; too little oversight. Or as Abraham put it: “The system is
broken.”