Cows Versus People: Plan for Big Dairy Farm Raises Fears of Fouled Wells

At 65, Ramona dairy farmer John Van Tol is a bit sentimental. So, when two of his sons expressed interest a while back in owning a business, Van Tol decided to give them a dairy farm of their own with room enough for 1,200 cows.

“The boys want to get married and they want to stay in Ramona, and I thought I would build another dairy here,” said Van Tol, a dairyman since 1953 who has a herd of 675 cows. “I’ve got 400 acres of land here, and it is zoned for heavy agriculture.”

But Van Tol’s plans have caused quite a stink. And the people living around the Van Tol spread are fighting the prospect of the dairy--which, if built, would be San Diego County’s largest--because of fears that the proliferation of cow dung will contaminate their underground water wells.

The fight continues today in a hearing before the State Water Resources Board in Sacramento, where residents hope to convince state regulators that the dairy poses an undeniable environmental hazard.

Their assertions received a major boost Sept. 23 when the state control board’s staff issued a draft report concluding that a 1,200-cow dairy would have a “significant adverse effect” on the Ramona wells, which already show levels of nitrates and salts equal to or in excess of state standards. The report recommends denial of the project, in part because Van Tol has been found to violate water standards in the past.

Local dairy farmers, however, say they will testify just as vigorously for approval for Van Tol’s second farm. San Diego County dairy farmers are much more environmentally conscientious than their counterparts throughout the state, they contend, and any threat of contamination in Ramona from Van Tol’s new farm can be minimized by selling the manure as fertilizer and containing the waste water.

Losing the fight over Van Tol would be a fatal blow to the county’s dairy industry, especially since the Ramona case involves the first permit for a new milking farm in San Diego county for more than a decade, they say.

“It will be the beginning of the end of the industry in the county,” predicted Pete Verboom, a San Marcos dairy farmer and president of the San Diego County Milk Producers Council.

Wrangling over the environmental ramifications of dairies in the county is nothing new, with regulators recently stepping up pressure on the dairymen to take care over how they dispose of cow dung and the water used to hose down the animals and clean out their stalls. The wash water contains fecal matter and body materials that put organisms, nitrates and salts into the ground-water supply.

The Regional Water Quality Control Board has ordered dairies to construct ponds to store the waste water, and has threatened to fine the farms for increasing their number of cows without the required permits. In the most drastic action, two former owners of a San Marcos dairy were fined $45,000 in federal court in February for discharging their wash water through a concealed pipe into San Marcos Creek last year.

The get-tough attitude, said Verboom, has scared away at least 18 other dairies thinking about relocating to the county. And it has led the regional water board to impose a number of safeguards--such as mandatory monitoring of test wells--that are stricter than what dairy farmers have to put up with elsewhere in the state, he said.

According to the state’s draft report, Van Tol himself has had trouble meeting those local requirements at his 200-acre dairy, situated less than 2 miles southeast of downtown Ramona.

Van Tol has never filed his mandatory annual report with local water officials showing the waste discharges. And his farm was cited last April by the regional board for discharging milk-wash water into Daney Creek, which leads to the San Vincente reservoir, a drinking-water supply for the city of San Diego.

Plans Were Approved in November

Despite those difficulties, the regional board in November approved plans for Van Tol to build a second dairy adjacent to his existing farm. His plan was to add 1,200 cows--1,000 of them for milking--and build a milk barn, a 14-acre corral, a 1.23-acre waste-water holding pond and 45 acres of pasture. He wanted to turn the operation over to his two sons, Jake and Case.

In approving the second dairy, the regional board waived requirements that the waste water generated from the farm conform with local objectives for nitrates and salts, standards that regulators have conceded in the past would be impossible for dairy farmers to meet. They also determined that plans for the new dairy didn’t require an environmental impact statement under state law.

Instead, the regulators gave Van Tol a list of 13 conditions for their approval, including the prohibition against hosing out the lanes where cows are fed. He was supposed to use a skip-loader to remove manure from the feeding lanes, and he is supposed to spread the dung over crops on the land so the excess nitrogen in the dung can be absorbed by the plants.

But those measures didn’t satisfy some of the people living around Van Tol’s dairy in single-family homes on 3- to 8-acre plots. They say that, even with the mitigation measures, the cow dung is sure to cause a problem with the ground water.

State records show that wells in and around the dairy already exceed the maximum allowable level of 45 parts per million of nitrates for drinking water. Samples show levels ranging from 76.5 p.p.m. 1 mile downhill from the dairy to 369 p.p.m. one-half mile from the dairy.

Nitrates are derived from nitrogen, which is found in human and animal excrement, and they are particularly troublesome because a high concentration can cause “blue baby” syndrome in infants of 6 months or younger, health experts say.

The same samples also show that the wells are close to or at the allowable level of 1,000 parts per million of salt.

Adding 1,200 cows will only guarantee further degradation of the well water and pose a health hazard, the residents have argued. About half the Ramona area depends on well water for drinking and other household uses, although only about 200 people live in the immediate vicinity of the proposed dairy farm.

“This has important ramifications because the water quality control board, by allowing the dairy to expand, is writing off the Ramona basin as worth protecting,” said homemaker Carol Close, who lives 2 miles uphill from the dairy and is spearheading the drive against the second farm. “They’re allowing the Ramona ground water basin to be polluted.”

Added Robert Sorrels, a United States International University statistics professor whose house is 100 feet from the farm: “The issue is water, not the cows. I don’t mind cows . . . . But it appears clearly that dairy cattle have a severe impact on the ground water of the area.”

Well Testing Prompted Fight

Since one cow generates as much daily waste as 17 people, the new Van Tol dairy would be like doubling the population of Ramona, said Sorrels.

Close said she decided to fight the new dairy after her well tested high for nitrates May 13, the day her third child was born. She said she has read studies that say there is a correlation between high concentrations of nitrates in drinking water and cancer of the throat and the digestive system.

Van Tol, however, disputes the claims that his proposed farm poses a new danger to Ramona well water. Local residents have known since the 1940s that the wells had high concentrations of nitrates, he said, and his seven sons have been raised on the well water at their farm.

He also contends that any runoff from his farm would go downhill into large, undeveloped swatches of land. Those complaining, like Close, live uphill and their wells would never be contaminated by the new dairy farm, he says.

Van Tol said that, if Close is concerned about the dairy farm, she should also be worried about the septic tanks and chicken ranches operating in the area.

“Another thing I want to point out is that this land is zoned for heavy agriculture,” said Van Tol. “If it is zoned for heavy agriculture, you should use it for heavy agriculture. If land is zoned for apartments, you should put apartments on there. If you have land zoned for industrial, you should put industrial.

“If I can’t put heavy agriculture on there, then something is wrong,” he said.

Although state water officials will hear testimony on the case in a workshop today, they will not render their official decision until Oct. 20, the date of the next board meeting.