Mega-Dairies and Agricultural Air Pollution
An Excerpt from Everyday Heroes

By: Caroline Farrell

In recent years, the Central Valley has seen an influx of dairies moving in from Southern California’s Chino Basin. As stronger water and air regulations come into effect in the rapidly developing Chino area, dairymen are selling their farms to housing developers and buying large tracts of land farther north to relocate and expand their operations. Between 1998 and 2002, one such proposal stirred up a great deal of controversy in Bakersfield and helped lay the foundation for statewide change.

George and James Borba, two cousins with dairies in the Chino Valley, applied to build two 14,400 cow dairies on adjacent pieces of property in Kern County, in effect creating a 28,000 cow dairy. The County quickly approved these proposals without CEQA review, stating that there would be no potential adverse environmental impact from these dairies. Fearing that unregulated dairies of this size could have far reaching environmental consequences, the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE) challenged the County’s avoidance of an environmental analysis. When the initial analysis failed to adequately analyze the dairies, the Sierra Club joined with CRPE in another suit against the County.

After a protracted legal battle in which the courts ruled three times in favor of the environmental organizations, a new Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and supplemental analyses for the Borba dairies were finally prepared. These documents painted a radically different picture of dairy farming, demonstrating that dairies do have significant and unavoidable impacts on the environment, particularly on the air. The findings surprised everyone. “We thought that the greatest impacts would be on water quality from the animal waste-laden runoff. Although there was clear evidence that manure wastewater could seep into the ground, eventually contaminating groundwater supplies, it turns out that the greatest impact was on air quality from reactive organic gases, particulate matter, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and methane” explains Brent Newell, staff attorney for CRPE.

Based on the information disclosed during the Borba permit process, the effects of dairies began to gain local and statewide attention. Local papers, including the Bakersfield-Californian and the Fresno Bee, began publishing editorials critical of dairies practices.

Kern County agreed to re-examine its “by right” policy for dairies, which allowed the county to grant permits without any public hearing or additional operating conditions if the proposed dairy met certain basic siting requirements. In addition, Kern County and neighboring counties in the air basin realized that they needed to prepare an EIR for each new dairy or adopt a program EIR for all dairies. While these new EIR requirements helped stem the tide of unregulated “mega-dairies,” even larger improvements lay ahead. The accumulating data on emissions from San Joaquin Valley dairies called into question California’s exemption of agriculture from the Clean Air Act. Up until 2003, nearly all air pollution caused by agricultural practices in California, including diesel irrigation pumps and livestock facilities, escaped the oversight common to other industries. Because of the growing concerns of valley residents and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, Senator Dean Florez sponsored SB 700 in September of 2003. The passage of SB 700 removed the agricultural exemption from air quality laws and instituted substantive permitting requirements for agricultural pollution sources. Were it not for the information generated in the Borba Dairies cases and the public outcry that followed, this historic improvement to air quality and public health in the Central Valley may never have occurred.

Caroline Farrell is the directing attorney of the Delano Office for the Center on Race, Poverty, & the Environment (CPRE). CRPE continues to work with Central Valley communities for regulation of the dairy industry.