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Cow Pie Protocol
Dairy producers and environmental agencies traditionally have an uneasy, if not downright adversarial relationship. The regulators worry about impacts that dairy cows have on the state's water - each one produces about 22 tons of waste, i.e., manure, per year, which adds up to an annual total of almost 30 million tons statewide. Contamination of surface or groundwater can lead to fish kills, nitrate contamination, and the growth of bacteria and viruses, including E. Coli and giardia.
The dairymen have had their own beef with the regulators. They must deal with over a dozen state, federal and county agencies, each with its own procedures and regulations that often overlap and sometimes conflict. Simply sorting through all the different rules is a monumental task - failing to comply with them can result in fines and even jail time.
Help may finally be at hand. A couple of years ago, producers, regulators and the University of California began working together instead of fighting. After lots hard work, the California Dairy Quality Assurance Program is putting the final touches on an Environmental Stewardship program aimed at educating the ranchers and helping them make sure they are following all the rules.
The program sponsors a six-hour class taught by the staff of the U.C. Davis Cooperative Extension. During the sessions, instructors go over regulations governing such things as the size and construction of holding ponds for waste water, distances cattle need to be kept from ponds, ditches and riverbanks, and how waste products can be used as fertilizer without contaminating surface or groundwater.
Attendance is limited to actual dairy producers, which allows them to talk about their concerns without inhibition. The question and answer sessions can be quite freewheeling, says U.C. Davis' Deanne Meyer, who teaches the classes. Participants ask about the latest technology and how to interpret the more arcane regulations. Some dairymen, she says, bring in letters from agencies, and ask instructors "for interpretations into English."
The program is also developing a comprehensive checklist, outlining what must be done to bring a ranch into full compliance with the different agencies. A third party evaluator will visit the operation and go over the list with the dairyman, checking for possible violations. The program's Michael Payne emphasizes that "evaluations" are not inspections in the regulatory sense. The evaluators are from the Department of Food and Agriculture, which has no enforcement powers in the environmental area, and the walk-through is aimed at pointing things out before they become an issue with regulators.
"This is all voluntary," he says. Those who successfully complete the course and the evaluation will be awarded environmental stewardship certificates. Payne says that several producers are interested in using certification in advertising or possibly as stickers on milk cartons. Those who fail the evaluations don't get penalized in any way. "They simply aren't certified."
Creating the checklist wasn't easy, he adds. Every item had to be reviewed and re-reviewed by all the agencies involved, and then put into a format that would be usable by the producers. The program has completed a series of test evaluations at dairies around the state, and Payne expects the agencies to sign off on a final draft of the checklist this month. In September, the EPA awarded a $443,740 grant, which will fund ten more sets of classes and over 1000 evaluations. "We're working to try to get us all on the same page," says EPA's Jovita Pajarillo.
Contact: Michael Payne (530)752-7507
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