Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
QCS Managing Editor
New Mexico’s Sierra Club chapter has asked a Santa Fe district court to require the state’s water quality control board to hold hearings on dairy farm water pollution prevention rules in Santa Fe, rather than in Roswell, where previous hearings on the issue have been held.
The suit filed during October in First Judicial District Court, Santa Fe, is another tactic in a battle between dairy farmers, who seek an easing of groundwater pollution prevention rules, and environmentalists, who want dairy farms to continue to comply with the more stringent guidelines they must meet now.
The issue of where the hearings should be held is a matter of practicality to dairy farmers, who say Roswell is a central location for up to 80 percent of the dairy industry, but to the Sierra Club, it’s a matter of following the law, according to Dan Lorimier, Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club’s conservation coordinator.
If the hearing were held in Santa Fe, Lormier said, it “may be likely” that more Sierra Club members and sympathizers could participate, but complying with the law is the issue, he said.
“The board will not make a decision based on the number of people who speak during public hearings,” Lorimier said.
There are dairy farms in the state that are not in the southeast, Lorimier said, like the ones on the “dairy row” in southwest New Mexico between Las Cruces and El Paso, Texas, he said. That makes the dairy rules a state-wide issue that should be handled in Santa Fe, he said.
To the dairy farmers, though, a hearing in Santa Fe would mean abandoning their operations for several days, which is impractical, according to Beverly Idsinga, executive director of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico.
“Running a dairy farm is a 100 percent, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year job,” she said. “Dairy farmers cannot afford to take a few days out for hearings in Santa Fe.”
Walter Bradley, a Clovis area dairy farmer agreed. “These are 24-7 operations,” he said. “That makes it hard to get away to attend hearings.”
The New Mexico Environment Department said in a statement that it opposes the Sierra Club's attempt to move the dairy hearing to Santa Fe.
“It is important for the members of the public that either work in dairy industry or live near a dairy to be able to participate in the hearing,” Jim Winchester, the department’s communications director of the state’s Environment Department, said. “By attempting to move the hearing from Roswell to Santa Fe, the Sierra Club is essentially making it more difficult for the people who live near dairies to participate.”
No matter where the hearing is held, the hearing’s subject will be rules passed in 2009 that dairy farmers say are very costly to them and unnecessary.
For example, Bradley said, dairy farmers are expected to drill water-quality monitoring wells closer to waste settlement ponds. Statewide, he said, this would mean 702 new wells that would cost the dairy farmers $10 million. That’s an average cost of more than $14,000 per well.
Bradley said the cost could drive many dairy farmers out of business.
Lorimier said the dairy farmers agreed to the rules in 2009.
Bradley denies that.
“These rules were imposed on us. We didn’t agree to anything. We opposed the rules then and we oppose them now.”
Lorimier said more than half of the dairy farmers are polluting in excess of their limits.
Bradley said the Sierra Club’s findings are not based on good science, but on a biased reading of limited monitoring well data. Scientists in Texas and New Mexico, Bradley said, have good evidence that refutes the Sierra Club’s findings.
Dairy farmers, Idsinga said, are seeking only “minor changes” in the 2009 standards, and that dairy farmers want a set of rules that will be permanent.
“We can’t have rules changing all the time,” she said. “Dairy farmers should not constantly have to recertify for constant changes in regulations.”
Dairy farmers, she said, are good stewards of the land they occupy.
“We live on the land, we breathe the air and we drink the water,” she said, “so we take care of these resources.”
