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Ag Alert
California Farm Bureau Federation
Throughout the San Joaquin Valley, county governments are being stopped in the courts, which has deterred many dairies from trying to relocate or from trying to expand their herds.
“Ever since CRPE came along in the last year things have kind of drawn to a standstill,” Merced County Deputy Planning Director Butch Cope said. “Currently, there are 11 dairy projects on hold. Six are for major expansion and five are for new dairies. They all represent 40,000 animals.”
Bill Zumwalt, Kings County director of planning and building inspection, said would-be dairies have been scared off from trying to establish or expand dairies in his county.
“Here in Kings County we got sued big time in 1999 over the Chamberlain Ranch project. That gave us a lot of bad publicity,” Zumwalt said. “Before that we were averaging anywhere from two to eight permits a year to both new and expanded projects. Now we’re at zero.
“Economically, Kings County is depressed; we have double-digit unemployment countywide (12 percent). If it’s not related to agriculture, it’s going to be difficult to expand the economy.”
Tulare County has also seen a decline in dairy growth.
“The delays and the extra cost of doing environmental impact reports have maybe discouraged dairies from locating a dairy in this county,” said Roberto Brady with the Tulare County Planning Department. “Currently, there are 79 dairy applications on hold in Tulare County, where people are waiting to see what happens. A third of those applications in the holding pattern are for new dairies. Each of those requires CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) and possibly an EIR. Some are waiting for the private dairies that choose to do the EIR; waiting to see what happens with their review. To do an EIR can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The Tulare County Planning Commission held the first of several public hearings on one proposed Lindsay dairy last week. The next hearing is scheduled for Dec. 5. Rob Hilarides is requesting permits to build a dairy and farmstead cheese making and sales building on 1,428 acres where Lindsay Olive Co. used to have its brine ponds.
Armed with the verbage of CEQA, CRPE attacks proposed dairies at the county level, demanding that EIRs be done. They then pick apart the costly reports. The county, in turn, is required by law to answer and address every public complaint.
After the final report is issued, CRPE normally disagrees with suggested mitigation measures, often challenging accepted state standards for air and water quality.
Many counties are responding to the challenge by trying to adopt some kind of countywide EIR, designed specifically to address the issues around dairies of various sizes. Individual dairies would not have to get a full EIR.
“As a planner I would much rather seen it handled very differently rather than handled on a case-by-case basis,” Brady said. “Maybe like we’re doing in this county, to have an overall plan and a program EIR that covers dairy development overall.”
However, these EIRs will also be under attack.
“In this county we now have the Confined Animal Facilities Plan,” Brady said. “We proposed this plan over a year ago as part of the general plan. CRPE also filed a lawsuit on this overall plan so that it became risky to use the plan for approval of individual plans until the matter is settled. Just this past June, Tulare County agreed to do some supplemental work in the areas of air and water quality for the overall plan.”
Tulare County has been working on a countywide animal confinement ordinance EIR that deals with issues such as how dairies handle both solid and liquid waste, how much property is needed for waste disposal, the impacts on air and water quality and what kind of mitigation measures need to be taken for each issue. If approved, each dairy would still have to do a “focus EIR” on the specific impact of that dairy.
Cope said that Merced County had completed a draft EIR and then, after looking at cases such as the Tulare County Borba Dairy suit or the Hooker Dairy challenge in Madera County, decided to revise the draft EIR.
“We looked at the court case and revised it to look more at cumulative air and water quality impacts.”
Zumwalt said the new general plan amendment he is working on in Kings County “includes all of the policies relating to the establishment of new dairies or the expansion of existing dairies. The idea is if your application is consistent with all the policies and plans in the general EIR, if you comply with all those policies, then we will issue a site plan review that does not have to have environmental review.”
In Madera County, Hooker Dairy has been trying to open a large-capacity dairy for more than a year. The county was impelled to do an EIR, but, according to the CREP lawsuit filed against the county, the final draft EIR failed to adequately address the comments made regarding the EIR.
The group says that the large capacity of some of the newer dairies is an issue and uses the term “mega dairy” throughout the Hooker or Diamond H Dairy. It also proposes that dairies revise their plans by cutting down on the number of cows.
While it may be true that dairies in general are increasing in size, smaller dairies are not necessarily more environmentally friendly than larger ones, say county planners. At least a couple of officials at the county level say that some of the worst dairies in terms of pollution are often the smaller, older dairies.
Nowadays, a dairy—due to newer restrictions and requirements imposed on the milking industry—is going to be built with more attention to sound solutions to waste and its storage.
Cope recalled a dairy that wanted to expand its herd while improving the dairy at the same time.
“Usually if people want to improve the dairy they want to expand the herd. We had one that was going from like 500 to 1,000. The group (CRPE) was threatening them to stay at 500 or else they were going to sue. We told them, ‘Hey this is a better dairy. Are you still against it?’ And they still didn’t want it,” Cope recalled. “No EIR is good enough for them. They start off saying, ‘Do an EIR,’ and then they don’t like it. They want no dairies.”
The attorney hired by Madera County, Tom Terpstra of Herum and Crabtree in Merced, said it appears to him that it is indeed hard to satisfy the group.
“I don’t think they have ever seen an environmental impact report that they like,” he said. “They have sued every single dairy project in the eight-county air basin. Our position is that they are not so concerned with making sure there’s a good environmental report as they are with stopping dairies.
“They are engaged in an assault on the dairy industry, but (in the future) it could be another ag segment they go after—chicken farmers, rice farmers; there’s really nothing to stop them.”
Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item.
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