State agency
won’t act on community concerns about facility adding 900 animals and
generating 5,402,597 additional gallons of manure
March
6, 2019
Media Contact: gail.philbin@sierraclub.org,
616-805-3063
Lansing, MI—The
Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) has allowed an industrial
dairy operation in Barry County to expand by 40% despite an illegal discharge
of waste into West Gilkey Lake in 2015 that led to a fine and consent order.
More than four dozen comments were submitted to the MDEQ last fall objecting to
the proposed addition of 900 dairy cows by Prairie View Dairy LLC, a
concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) in Prairieville Township. In
addition to past environmental violations, comments cited many other concerns,
including:
- Significant risk to Crooked Lake and other waters based on CAFO’s large storage volumes, minimal buffering area, and close vicinity to lakes and wetlands of high value for habitat and fishing
- Potential for high nitrate levels in drinking water wells
- Limited fields available to spread waste
- Need for increased monitoring to ensure Prairie View's waste management practices do not threaten surrounding lakes and land.
Despite the community’s concerns, in MDEQ’s Responsiveness
Summary issued four months after the close of comments, the agency claimed
it did not consider such a massive expansion and increase in the production of
untreated livestock wastes by almost 5.5 million gallons per year to be
significant enough to warrant reconsideration of the facility’s permit
conditions. Prairie View is covered under a Michigan General CAFO National Pollutant
Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit instead of an individual permit,
which could include stricter requirements for monitoring, reporting and design
of the facility.
“Gov. Snyder may be gone, but the legacy of his MDEQ
and its approach to favoring polluters lives on,” said Gail Philbin, director
of Sierra Club’s Michigan Chapter. “You see it in Michigan’s struggling rural
communities and compromised waterways, which are substantially less protected
from the public health threat of hundreds of polluting factory farms that
operate with impunity across the state.”
The increase at Prairie View means it will generate
27,610,432 gallons of waste per year, an annual increase of 5,402,597 gallons
in a lake-filled region of the state already saturated with CAFOs and animal
waste. Across Michigan, animal waste from nearly 300 CAFOs frequently
makes its way into waterways, leading to a host of environmental and health
problems.
Manure feeds the algae blooms that plague our inland
waters and was a key factor in the growth of the toxic algae that poisoned
drinking water for Toledo and southern Michigan in 2014. Water and soil
pollution can occur at any point in a dairy operation, including from
over-application of waste to fields of manure slurry containing untreated
feces, urine, disease-causing bacteria, anti-biotics, and hazardous chemicals
such as ammonia and methane.
Sierra Club has been at the forefront of battling
CAFO pollution in Michigan for nearly three decades. To learn more, visit sierraclub.org/michigan/why-
For more information about CAFOs and what you can do
to fight back, email gail.philbin@sierraclub.org
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