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Brent Newell, CRPE, (661) 720-9140
The lawsuit alleges the County violated the California Environmental Quality Act
Madera The Association of Irritated Residents (AIR) and Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE) announced today that the two organizations had filed a lawsuit against Madera County on August 3, 2001. The lawsuit alleges that Madera County and the Madera County Board of Supervisors violated the California Environmental Quality Act when the County issued a conditional use permit to the Diamond H Dairy, a planned 9,180 cow mega-dairy southwest of Chowchilla. The lawsuit asks the court to void the permit and require the County to review the project lawfully.
The lawsuit marks another step in a series of events where CRPE has challenged the validity of Madera County’s actions. After Diamond H Dairy! o! wner Greg Hooker applied for a conditional use permit, the County commissioned an initial environmental study from Quad Knopf. The County issued the study in May 2000, which claimed the mega-dairy would not significantly impact the environment. CRPE challenged this finding during a Planning Commission meeting on July 12, 2000. After the Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve the mega-dairy’s permit, CRPE appealed the decision to the Board of Supervisors arguing that the County must prepare an environmental impact report, a much more thorough environmental review that other San Joaquin Valley Counties have required from new dairy proponents. Facing the threat of a lawsuit from CRPE, the Board of Supervisors reversed the Planning Commission’s decision to approve a conditional use permit and required an environmental impact report on November 15, 2000.
“The purpose of an environmental impact report is to identify the dairy’s effects on t! he! environment and to indicate the manner in which those significant effects can be mitigated or avoided,” said Brent Newell, an attorney with CRPE and National Association for Public Interest Law (NAPIL) Equal Justice Fellow. “All of a sudden, the Diamond H EIR showed that there would, in fact, be massive pollution, especially air pollution impacts the Board of Supervisors continues to allow.”
AIR and CRPE allege other failures to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act. Newell points to the environmental impact report’s use of a complicated mathematical formula to show the amount of manure wastewater which would seep into the ground, eventually reaching groundwater. This same failure was ruled illegal by a Kern County Superior Court judge in May 2001 when a court order stopped the Borba Dairies project southwest of Bakersfield. The lawsuit also alleges that the County failed to study, and the Board failed to consider, the total e! ff! ect of San Joaquin Valley dairies on air quality and public health. This so-called cumulative impact analysis, says Newell, was an essential, overlooked component of the environmental review process.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Basin is currently in serious nonattainment under the Clean Air Act for ozone (smog) and fine particulate matter (soot, dust). The American Lung Association, in State of the Air: 2001 ranked the Southern San Joaquin Valley cities of Bakersfield, Fresno, and Visalia-Tulare-Porterville as the 2nd, 3rd and 4th most ozone polluted cities in the nation. According to a November 2000 California Air Resources Board study, San Joaquin Valley Dairies emit substantial amounts of gases which react in the air to form smog and soot.
“San Joaquin Valley residents should not be forced to bear dairy-related pollution without a full and fair disclosure,” said CRPE Advisory Board Member Sandra Meraz. “Every resident has the right to ! kn! ow what they breathe and what they drink, and how it affects their families. Without this disclosure, the public cannot decide whether they should bear the dairy industry’s pollution burden while dairymen profit by avoiding the cost of prevention.”
CRPE has opposed, and represented individuals and groups opposed to, San Joaquin Valley counties’ dairy permitting since 1998. A lawsuit filed against Kings County caused the J.G. Boswell Co. to abandon a 47,000 cow, four-dairy planned development near Corcoran. A lawsuit filed in Kern County halted the 28,000 cow Borba Dairies project when a court ruled that Kern County violated the California Environmental Quality Act. Following that ruling, Tulare County quickly agreed to settle a third lawsuit, committing to analyzing dairy-related air and water quality impacts and ways to prevent those impacts. AIR is an unincorporated association dedicated to protecting air quality and environmental healt! h ! in the San Joaquin Valley.
Brent Newell |
