Big Dairies May Face Tighter Reins: Fresno Co. Supervisors to Consider More Stringent Air Quality Requirements.
By Dennis Pollock, The Fresno Bee, Calif.
Sep. 15–The Fresno County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider putting more teeth into a proposed dairy and feedlot ordinance.
Supervisor Henry Perea favors putting more stringent air quality requirements on new or expanding operations that add more than 1,000 cows. He also proposes less rigorous requirements for existing dairies and feedlots that add fewer than 1,000 cows.
“We don’t want to put small and midsize dairies out of business,” Perea said.
He said that the most stringent air and water quality regulations should be on larger dairies.
The existing proposal has the support of the Valley’s dairy industry and was to go before the county Planning Commission next week.
Three operations are seeking to put new dairies into Fresno County, and two want to expand, said Samir Sheikh, permit services manager with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. The operations would add a total of 35,428 cows. That includes about 18,000 milk cows.
Perea said the proposed ordinance is “weaker than some of us would like to see.”
Steve Nash, a Selma dairy operator, said he was “shocked” by Perea’s two-tier proposal, which makes a distinction on dairies based on size. He called it “worse than the beginning draft of the ordinance.” He said the added requirements for larger dairies mean venturing into “uncharted waters, where we have no knowledge of the costs.”
Mary Savala, chairwoman for the Fresno Healthy Dairy Commission, said her organization sees the Perea proposal as a way to address its concerns over large dairies coming into the county and adding to its poor air quality and the toll on human health.
The commission is an advocacy group of doctors, business leaders, clergy and other county residents.
Nash and Savala on Friday participated in a discussion in Fresno staged by the Agriculture, Water and Environmental Council of the Greater Fresno Area Chamber of Commerce.
Savala’s group has favored some controls that did not make their way into the proposed ordinance, including housing animals in barns and a mandate that dairy lagoons be covered to capture biogas.
Dairy operators, including Nash, have argued that the cost of cooling animals inside air-tight structures would be excessive. They also say that the costs for putting in methane digesters to generate electricity are prohibitive and that operators would be unable to recoup costs because they cannot sell excess energy to utility companies.
There are a total of 60 planned startups or additions to dairies in the eight-county area served by the district, Sheikh said. The total is evenly divided between the new and those expanding.
At Friday’s chamber meeting, which drew 25 people, Nash said there is ample room on the county’s west side for more dairies.
“And those that are existing want the opportunity to expand to keep up with overhead costs,” he said. Nash, a third-generation dairyman, has about 1,500 cows at farms in Selma and Fresno. He contends tightened regulation is driving dairies out of the state.
Brian Ross, a planner with the county, said the original proposed ordinance still may be considered at a meeting of the Fresno County Planning Commission on Thursday, depending on actions taken at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
Savala said the greatest impact on air and water quality is likely to come from Southern California dairies moving to Fresno County. She contends that those dairy operators should have the means to pay for steps that would lessen their environmental impacts.
Perea’s proposal calls for requiring significantly larger dairies to take steps that could include use of devices to control release of volatile organic compounds (VOC), enclosure and venting of milking parlors, vacuuming animal waste and applying it to land within 72 hours and storing all animal waste in enclosures vented to a VOC control device.
Savala favors buffer zones separating dairies, but Nash argues that contiguous dairies can better pool resources for projects that could include methane digesters.
Kevin Hall, with United Healthcare Workers, said that if dairies are clustered, regulators should take into account the accumulative environmental impact that has.
The reporter can be reached at dpollock@fresnobee.com or(559) 441-6364.
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