By Kiley Russell / Associated Press
FRESNO, Calif. -- Farming giant J.G. Boswell has won approval to turn a remote stretch of farmland in central California into the country's largest dairy complex after more than a year of legal and political maneuvering.
The four-dairy, 47,700-cattle operation is lauded by local politicians and Kings County planning officials as an economic boon to a region wallowing in steady double-digit unemployment.
But environmentalists, fearing that dairies of this size can seriously damage local air and water quality, sued last year to block the project.
The dust stirred up by cattle and trucks on the farms and the gasses and excrement released by thousands of large animals will escape into the air and foul local ground water supplies unless properly managed, the dairies' opponents said.
To settle the lawsuit Boswell agreed to what many in the dairy industry think is an overly strict environmental review process.
Farmers say the settlement sets a worrisome precedent that could end up driving small-scale operations out of the market.
To settle the lawsuit brought by the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, Boswell was required to complete an environmental impact report, a first for a California dairy. The company paid a consultant $160,000 to study the impact the dairies will have on air, water and soil quality in the area, said Denis Tristao, chief of environmental affairs at Boswell.
"It was a business decision to go ahead with an EIR. We were seriously worried about it. ... We know that air quality is the Achilles heel for this type of project," Tristao said.
Industry leaders fear the practice of requiring environmental impact reports will spread across the state and nation and could have devastating effects on small dairies.
California's $4.3 billion dairy industry ranks No. 1 in the nation, followed by the $3.5 billion dairy industry in Wisconsin.
In environmental issues, as California goes, so goes the rest of the nation, Tristao said.
"It adds to the cost of doing business. ... A 200-cow dairy can't even spend $50,000 on an environmental impact report. When you start dealing with that kind of money, you have to get up to a several-thousand-cow dairy to spread out the cost," said Gary Conover, director of government relations for Western United Dairymen, a trade association representing about 1,100 California farmers.
Also, the permits for the Boswell project were approved based on the stipulation that "any new technology that comes along to improve the quality of the air, water or land must be incorporated as long as it's economically and scientifically feasible," said Kings County Supervisor Tony Oliveira.
The supervisors' decision allows Boswell to sell about 6,000 acres between Hanford and Corcoran to farmers who must build the dairies to the standards spelled out by the report.
"I've got calls from both government agencies and dairymen saying we've gone too far," said Oliveira, the owner of a 3,200-head dairy farm.
For example, the permits require the future owners of the Boswell sites to use cutting-edge emission control technology in the waste water "lagoons" that is not mandated anywhere else in the country, Tristao said.
"The technology is expensive. We use bacteria to react with compounds in the effluent, or waste water or manure, to neutralize odor and emissions," he said.
Other environmental protection efforts include techniques to keep dust down, using liners under the waste water lagoons and developing pest control plans to combat flies and mosquitoes. "No other dairy facility in the U.S. has had to address air quality concerns," Tristao said.
But environmentalists are encouraged by the lengths to which Boswell has had to go to protect the environment from the dairies and hope this is the beginning of increased regulation of the industry.
"Our opposition was mainly not an opposition to dairies in general; it was just that dairies of this size and scale have the potential to cause a lot of environmental damage if not safeguarded properly," said Carolyn Farrell, the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment's lead attorney on the Boswell project.
But despite the settlement the center remains wary of the project. The group would like to see mitigation efforts tied to specific technologies that have been proved effective, rather than allow the dairies to choose between a variety of technological options.
"We still haven't ruled out a lawsuit because we think if we sue again, perhaps the court will say there are still things you can do to mitigate the environmental impacts, other things that need to be looked into," Farrell said.:
