Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Toxic fumes, blisters & brain damage : The cost of
doing business?

By: Rebecca Lerner - An investigative report

04/02/2008
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19446417&BRD=1395&PAG=461&dept_id=2166\
20&rfi=6


Karen Strecker is bracing. She's about to turn on the
faucet, and
there's a chance liquid manure is going to stream from
the spout.

"I've been taking a bath and actually had cow shit
pour into the tub,''
Strecker says, matter-of-factly. She uses well water.
"It's nasty."

Yet the threat of a sewage bath pales in comparison to
a more dangerous
problem: Breathing poisonous fumes. After years living
next to Willet
Dairy, the largest industrial farm in the state,
Strecker and her
neighbors in Genoa are reporting the kinds of health
problems
eco-watchdogs lose sleep over, from blistering eyelids
to brain damage.
Manure is known to release gases that, in high
concentrations, are
linked to those scary symptoms.

Strecker's plight takes on national relevance as the
EPA prepares to
roll back air-pollution-reporting requirements for
industrial animal
farms like Willet in October - even as
environmentalists warn that
regulation is already too lax in New York.

The Road to Industrial Farming

Located next to Lansing in Cayuga County, Genoa is a
rural town with
sprawling hills and a population of 1,914. Its main
street is spare but
quaint, with an antiques shop, a fire hall advertising
a NASCAR event,
and a church with the motto, "Exercise Daily: Walk
With God."

The roadsides here are dotted with farms. Willet
Dairy's giant white
barns sit close to Route 34, the main thoroughfare.
Pickup trucks and
heavy machinery sit in dusty lots.
With 7,800 cattle, Willet is a relative behemoth. The
other two major
livestock operations in town are Osterhoudt Farm, with
470 cattle, and
Ridgecrest Dairy L.L.C., with 1,090, according to the
state Department
of Environmental Conservation, the agency charged with
regulating
agricultural pollution.

Willet began in 1974 as a small, family-owned
operation that grew
steadily over the years, acquiring its neighbors'
property and expanding
as American agricultural practices became increasingly
mechanized and
efficient. Today, Willet spans approximately 6,300
acres over four
sites, including a facility on Route 34 near Lansing,
one on Lane Road
in Locke, Belltown Dairy in King Ferry and W.D. Corey
Dairy. "Why larger
dairies?" said David M. Galton, a dairy management
professor at Cornell
University. "Well, why Wegmans? Target and Circuit
City and Home Depot
and Lowe's - they're doing it to dilute out cost and
to maintain or
improve standard of living. It's like every other
segment of our
economy. Larger dairies are trying to address the
ever-rising cost of
producing milk and standard of living."

In 1993, farms with 200 or more cattle made up 3.6
percent of the
state's dairies, according to USDA statistics. By
2002, they made up 9
percent.

"The larger the dairy farm, the lower the costs are.
And so, as the
costs keep rising - fuel costs, feed costs, taxes - it
puts more
economic pressure on the individual farms to produce
more milk,'' Galton
said. "If you take the milk price of 1980 and adjust
it for inflation,
the milk price would be $38.92 per 100 pounds. The
milk price today is
approximately $20 per 100 pounds."

Galton is director of PRO-DAIRY, a government-funded
outreach arm of
Cornell University that works to increase
profitability in the dairy
industry and educate farmers on the latest
manure-management techniques.

Willet Dairy is a privately held business headed by
Dennis Eldred, a
Genoa resident. The company is listed as Willet Dairy
L.P.; Willet Dairy
L.L.C.; and Willet Dairy Inc., in legal documents.
Eldred did not return
phone calls to his home and office and declined to be
interviewed
through his attorney, David Cook of Nixon Peabody
L.L.P.

Scott, Todd, Susan and Peter Eldred are also listed as
co-owners of
Willet, according to 2005 USDA records as compiled by
the nonprofit
Environmental Working Group. Todd, Susan and Peter
Eldred are "all
family members, members of the LLC," according to
Cook. Neighbors
identified them as Dennis Eldred's adult children.
Scott Eldred is
Dennis Eldred's brother, and his status with the
company is not clear at
this time because Scott Eldred is in the Carribbean
working as a
missionary, Cook said. Town Supervisor Stuart
Underwood has known Dennis
Eldred and his family for decades and described them
as "good people.''

Willet Operations Officer Lyn Odell, who spoke to the
Ithaca Times,
declined to discuss the company's annual profits.
Public records show
Willet received $1,114,807.88 in USDA subsidies from
1995 to 2005,
according to a database maintained by the nonprofit
Environmental
Working Group.

Property tax records show Willet paid more than a
third of the locally
funded portion of Genoa's 2007 town budget.

Large-scale dairies like Willet are known colloquially
as factory farms,
a term that refers to the industrialized nature of
their daily
operations. The state Department of Environmental
Conservation refers to
large dairies as "concentrated animal feeding
operations," or CAFOs,
because they confine their animals in warehouse-like
facilities for more
than 45 days each year. If you peer into Willet's
barns, some of which
are open-air and visible from the roads, you will
observe bovine faces
neatly aligned, as far back as the eye can see.

At dairy farms in general, cows are impregnated once
every 13 to 14
months in order to keep milk production at a
profitable level, Galton
said. But whereas small farms may house cows and
calves together, it is
standard practice for CAFOs to isolate calves in
individual crates for
the six weeks immediately following birth, Galton
said, in order to
avoid compromising their fragile immune systems.

This is a practice assailed by animal welfare groups,
including Farm
Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, as cruel. It irks Strecker
as well. Down the
street from her house, small evergreens do little to
block the view of
the crates, arranged in orderly rows along a grassy
plain that stretches
several football fields in length. At night,
floodlights illuminate the
scene.

"We do what we have to do to improve standard of
living and dilute out
cost," Galton said of the industry.

To address the ecological impact of thousands of cows
relieving
themselves in one area, large dairies like Willet are
required by law to
manage the excrement using techniques developed in
large part by Cornell
University.

Willet cows produced 157,126 tons of manure in 2006,
according to the DEC.

Willet liquifies the untreated waste and pumps it into
manure lagoons,
as is standard practice among large-scale dairies.
There it sits - some
hundreds of feet from Strecker's home - uncovered and
decomposing,
releasing hydrogen sulfide, a poisonous, acidic gas
known to burn the
eyes and respiratory tract, until some of Willet's
laborers spray it
onto farm fields with tanker trucks.

Toxic Gases

The stench in Strecker's yard makes you cough at
first, then your eyes
water and nausea sets in. Dizziness knocks you over if
you stick around
for more than five minutes, and if the wind is blowing
the right way,
you might find yourself nursing a headache. Of course,
that's just if
you're visiting on a mild day. The effect is more
severe if you actually
live there.

"No matter which way the wind blows, we're screwed,''
Strecker says.

Strecker has been on a constant dose of antibiotics
for years to treat
chronic respiratory problems caused by exposure to her
surroundings,
according to a series of letters written by her
doctor, Ahmad Mehdi of
Groton Family Practice. The letters span from Aug. 15,
2000 to Jan. 22,
2007.

"Do people get sick when manure gets spread? Yes, it's
a fact," Mehdi
told the Ithaca Times. "It's the huge, mass
production. When you have
10,000 cows in one place, that's a lot of manure.
Everybody knows that.
But it's the way of life around here."

Cayuga County is home to 28 industrial farms, and
Tompkins has 10,
according to the DEC. There are more than 600 such
facilities in the
state. Detailed information about each is available
online at
http://www.factoryfarmmap.org, a website compiled by
the research and
advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

You can't see manure lagoons from the roadsides, but
you can smell them,
and the dangers of their fumes have been documented. A
2002 study by the
University of Iowa and Iowa State University examined
the impact of
aerial ammonia and hydrogen sulfide on residents
living near industrial
hog farms after former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack requested
information on
their public health impact. The researchers noted that
aerial ammonia
and hydrogen sulfide gas - both routine CAFO emissions
- are poisonous
in high concentrations, causing sinusitis, asthma,
chronic bronchitis,
inflamed mucous membranes of the nose and throat,
headaches, muscle
aches and pains in those who live or work nearby.

The National Association of Clean Air Agencies - which
represents local,
state, federal and agencies - cites manure-pit
emissions containing
hydrogen sulfide and ammonia for the deaths of at
least two dozen people
working or living near the operations in the Midwest
over the past 30 years.

"The release of toxic substances from manure in
amounts dangerous to
human health is not a theoretical exercise - people
have been killed,''
said the NACAA's Catharine Fitzsimmons, in testimony
before the U.S.
Senate on Sept. 6, 2007.

A June 2006 fact sheet put out by PRO-DAIRY on health
and safety issues
describes hydrogen sulfide as "a poisonous, acidic gas
that can kill in
a matter of seconds," "accumulates in low, confined
spaces" and
dissolves "rapidly in eye moisture and in the
respiratory tract."

Yet the DEC does not closely monitor toxic emissions
from livestock
farms. DEC spokesperson Lori O'Connell said the fumes
are regarded "as
either 'trivial activities' ... or as 'fugitive
emissions' in the case
of outdoor manure piles and waste lagoons. Both of
these designations
have the effect of relieving farms in New York from
needing an air
permit or minor source registration."

Brain Damage and Poisoned Eyes

If you ask Fred Coon, Strecker's 82-year-old father,
why he's missing
his lower eyelids, he will tell you about the time he
"got my eyes
poisoned."

"It was a terrible process,'' Coon said. "I was raking
leaves by the
barn, and my eyes started stinging. I came inside and
looked in the
mirror, and there were a million little tiny blisters
over here, and
here,'' he says, pointing to the magenta tissue his
lower eyelids used
to cover. The blisters burst and became infected,
prompting doctors to
amputate the thin flaps of skin containing them.

Neighbor Connie Mather, a perky former schoolteacher
from Philadelphia
who owns a property around the corner, also had a
run-in with the
blisters. In her case, they converged on the inside of
her throat and
nasal passages.

But Mather had another cause for alarm. In 2004, a
medical expert
diagnosed her teenage son, Samuel, with irreversible
brain damage caused
by exposure to hydrogen sulfide gas.

The physician was Dr. Kaye Kilburn, a professor at the
University of
Southern California who has published 61 peer-reviewed
papers on
neurobehavioral toxicology. Kilburn is president and
director of
Neuro-Test Inc., a company that evaluates chemical
exposure for lawsuits
and disability claims. Kilburn also diagnosed Connie
Mather and Coon
with neurological damage from the fumes.
During the evaluations, Kilburn reviewed a 15-page
questionnaire on each
patient's medical history and administered 43
different tests, according
to legal documents.

"Each patient's brain impairment has been caused by
exposure to hydrogen
sulfide," Kilburn wrote. "None of the patients have
been exposed [to]
other significant chemical exposures, and none of the
patients have
[sic] suffered spontaneous or associated neurological
or psychiatric
disease. After analyzing of other possible causes for
brain impairment
[sic], I found that for each patient the clinical
signs of all possible
alternative causes are absent."

Kilburn told the Mathers to vacate their property
immediately. The
family is renting elsewhere.

Angered into action, Mather became a founding member
of Neighbors United
for the Finger Lakes, an anti-CAFO organization with
membership in a
national coalition called the Dairy Education
Alliance.

She worries about plans for an 84,000-head cattle CAFO
in St. Lawrence
County - an operation that would be more than 10 times
the size of Willet.

A Losing Lawsuit, A Bitter Fight

Strecker spends her days taking care of her father,
Fred Coon. Both
retired carpenters, they live on a 7-acre property
with a main house, a
trailer, a garage decorated with Coon's artwork and a
muddy stream in
the backyard. The land has been in the family since
the 1800s. Coon
still sleeps in the house he built in the 1940s. His
late wife, and
Strecker's mother, Pearl Coon, spent her last days
here.
In the good old days, the air here smelled like lilac
trees, flowers
grew in the garden and marathon barbecues brought the
town together,
Coon said. They even had neighbors. But that was
before Willet expanded.
Now they're surrounded by Willet on three sides.

"I'm just angry they took our lives away,'' Strecker
says. "I can't even
get a friggin' clean glass of water."

To no avail, Strecker and Mather tried complaining
about Willet to the
state DEC; Office of the New York State Attorney
General; New York State
Soil and Water Committee; Cayuga County Health & Human
Services
Department; former New York Governors Eliot Spitzer
and George Pataki;
the U.S. EPA; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers;
federal and local
legislators; the New York State Police; the Cayuga
County Sheriff's
Department; and the Genoa town supervisor.

"They all say they'll 'look into it,'" Strecker says.
"Nobody cares."

Frustrated, the neighbors tried the legal arena,
banding together to
file a citizen's lawsuit alleging violations of the
Clean Water Act, the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Rivers and
Harbors Act, and the
New York State Environmental Conservation Law. Suing
Willet were Karen
Strecker; Fred Coon and his late wife Pearl Coon;
Connie Mather and her
husband Scott Mather; and three other neighbors, Karen
and Kenneth
Keppel and Dale Mangan, according to legal documents.

After five years of litigation, the case was dismissed
in July. Their
attorney is Gary Abraham, a T-shirt-wearing
environmentalist who works
out of a room in his house in Allegany, N.Y., and who
took the case at
his own expense. Willet Dairy was represented by
attorney David Cook of
the firm Nixon Peabody L.L.P., a 700-attorney
powerhouse with offices in
17 cities, including Rochester and Shanghai, China.

Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. of the Northern
District of New York
dismissed the suit, ruling in Willet's favor that the
farm's neighbors
did not have the legal authority to bring an
enforcement action. This
leaves the door open for the neighbors to try again in
another jurisdiction.

Abraham is challenging the court decision in the U.S.
Court of Appeals
for the Second Judicial Circuit. Both Abraham and Cook
have filed
briefs; oral arguments are expected to begin in May.

Abraham said he is optimistic, bolstered by a Jan. 15
decision by a
Michigan appellate court reaffirming the power of
citizen suits to
enforce Clean Water Act violations.

On behalf of Willet, Cook described the dairy as "a
leader in
environmental stewardship." Inaction by the broad
array of local, state
and federal government agencies bolsters the argument
that Willet did
not violate any laws, Cook said. He called the
neighbors' allegations of
pollution and detrimental health effects "utter
nonsense."

"Now, do I believe these people believe it?
Absolutely. But the science
doesn't back it up," said Cook. "When we went out to
hire experts to
tell us what the levels of exposure were, do you know
what the levels
were? Non-detect."

Researchers took samples of soil, air and water at
Willet and then
extrapolated the results to estimate what Willet's
neighbors
encountered, Cook said. When the Ithaca Times asked to
see the data,
Cook declined to release it. "We are still in the
midst of litigation,"
Cook said.

Odell, the Willet employee, said he believes the
company is being
subjected to unreasonable scrutiny.

During a recent four-day-long surprise inspection of
Willet in November,
the DEC found that Willet "continues to be a
well-managed and operated
dairy" in "satisfactory" compliance with permit
requirements, according
to a Dec. 11, 2007, letter sent to Dennis Eldred from
the DEC's
Environmental Program Specialist Scott D. Cook.

"We don't farm any different than anybody else does up
and down this
road," Odell said, referring to Route 34. "This is
about the nature of
our business, about how we farm. It's not about
Willet. It's about the
dairy industry."

While Genoa's other two CAFOs, Osterhoudt and
Ridgecrest, have never
been cited for environmental violations by the DEC,
Willet has paid for
two. On March 8, 2001, the DEC fined Willet $25,000
for leaking "a
significant amount of manure" into the Cayuga Lake
watershed when a pipe
burst, resulting in a fish kill and a water quality
violation, the DEC
said. The company paid $15,000; the remainder of the
penalty was
suspended due to satisfactory compliance with clean-up
efforts, the
DEC's O'Connell said.

On Dec. 11, 2006, the DEC fined Willet $2,500 after
manure spilled from
an overturned tanker, leaking into a tributary of
Salmon Creek in the
Cayuga Lake watershed. The company paid just $500 of
that amount; $2,000
was suspended because Willet complied with the
clean-up to DEC's
satisfaction, O'Connell said.

>From January 2005 through June 2007, the DEC filed 30
enforcement
actions against CAFOs.

The Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, the National
Resources Defense
Council and other national environmental organizations
have long
criticized industrial farms as major polluters,
particularly because of
the run-off problems associated with liquid manure. A
1998 study by the
federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of
nine large Iowa
CAFO sites turned up chemical pollutants, pathogens,
bacteria, nitrates
and parasites in lagoons and other areas in and around
the sites.

In an effort to mitigate pollution, CAFOs are required
to file annual
reports with the DEC, and the agency sends regulators
to inspect the
facilities once a year. However, the agency does not
keep farms' waste
management plans on file, and the documents are not
available for public
view. The Sierra Club, in its 2005 report "Wasting New
York State," says
this makes enforcement difficult.

It's a familiar refrain from environmentalists: There
are too many
loopholes; too little oversight. Or as Abraham put it:
"The system is
broken."

©Ithaca Times 2008

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