By Alex Baumhardt
Dairies with hundreds of cows won’t face regulations for air pollution for now, the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission decided.
The five governor-appointed commissioners made the ruling Wednesday in response to an August petition filed by two-dozen environmental, animal welfare and social justice groups that asked the state to regulate harmful emissions from dairies with 700 or more cows. Each year, cows at these dairies produce tons of manure and urine containing ammonia gas, which is harmful to breathe and can cause burning in the eyes, nose and throat and lead to long-term respiratory issues.
The decision followed a recommendation from the Department of Environmental Quality that the group wait to see if the federal Environmental Protection Agency releases guidelines for monitoring and regulating air pollution from industrial dairies. The agency has been working toward such a regulatory program for at least the last 15 years.
At the commission’s meeting, DEQ interim director Leah Feldon said her agency lacked funding to create such a program. She said it would need to work with the Oregon Department of Agriculture to create one and that they would need to gather more information about the impact of emissions on communities closest to the state’s largest dairies.
Commission Chair Kathleen George requested DEQ staff return within a year with more data about the impacts of these emissions.
There was some disagreement during the meeting. Commissioner Amy Schlusser said she was concerned the state wasn’t doing enough.
“I don’t think that a lack of information itself justifies a lack of action when the risks and potential risks are this well understood,” she said.
One of the petitioners asking the state to regulate dairy CAFO emissions, attorney Emily Miller of the nonprofit environmental group Food and Water Watch, told the commissioners it would be difficult to explain to people in Morrow County, home to the state’s largest dairies, that state agencies and leaders wouldn’t protect them.
“They report high rates of asthma and other respiratory problems not only amongst the dairy workers themselves, but also their children and their families. In short, this air pollution poses a serious threat to public health and it is past time for this commission to address it,” she said.
Miller said any attempt to regulate emissions from large dairies is now up to the Oregon Legislature.
Environmentalists have pushed state lawmakers to put a moratorium on new confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, of all types, which they consider to be harmful to the environment and cruel to animals.
The number of cows in Oregon has more than tripled during the last 30 years, and the number of farms with 1,000 or more cows has, too, according to a Food and Water Watch analysis. In 1997, Oregon had eight dairies with more than 1,000 cows. Today, there are nearly nine times that. One of the largest, Threemile Canyon in Morrow County, has 70,000 cows.
This story was first published by the Oregon Capital Chronicle.
Waiting for wisdom from above. That’s unique.
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