County Dairies Under Fire Over Refuse Disposal

Times are tough in the dairy business, as Frank Gonsalves can attest.

Gonsalves has a small dairy in Escondido, 65 acres and 400 milking cows. He’s also got 40,000 gallons a day of waste water from washing down his milk barn--and a lowing herd of neighbors who say the dairy polluted their wells.

Now regional water quality officials are after Gonsalves, too, unhappy with his handling of his “dairy waste.” They want to see new storage ponds and equipment to keep runoff out of public waterways--measures Gonsalves insists could put him under.

“As you know, farmers are having a hard time,” Gonsalves said last week, adding that the water quality officials are making his hard times harder. “I’ve been in this for 30 years. This is the hardest time I’ve had all my life.”

Gonsalves’ dairy is one of four San Diego County dairies to be summoned today before the Regional Water Quality Control Board. The board staff has accused them of polluting creeks, creating stench, and having more cows than capacity to handle cow waste.

But some dairymen say the changes the staff wants are unnecessary, unrealistic and out of their price range. They blame their troubles on unsympathetic neighbors whose pressure is making San Diego County dairymen a dying breed.

“Unfortunately, people and cows don’t always make good neighbors,” said Herb Weisheit, a county livestock expert with the University of California. “ . . . Public policy--and I’m talking about what local government can do as well as the state and county regulatory agencies--can make it easier for dairies to remain, or can make it difficult.”

The skirmish reflects the suburbanization of the county and changing economics in the dairy industry, regulators and dairymen agree. While dairies nationwide have had to expand to remain profitable, they have found themselves hemmed in by new neighbors with conflicting aesthetics.

Regulators studying corral runoff, feed ramp wash water and “illicit dairy waste discharges” say dairy waste is a serious problem, harmful to water quality and quality of life.

Mostly, dairy waste consists of water and manure, which can contain organisms infectious to humans, said Arthur Coe, supervising engineer for the water board. It also can include detergent and disinfectant, as well as salts and nitrogen that can damage water quality.

Regulators consider it “very high-strength,” Coe said.

“Basically, in terms of solids loading and other conventional parameters we use to evaluate the stream of waste, you could say that a 1,000-cow dairy puts out the same waste load as a community of 17,000 people,” he said.

“There can be some health problems,” Coe added, when asked about its environmental impact. “ . . . Most of it is aesthetic: It’s odors, it’s flies, it’s manure in the creek that runs by (the neighbors’) house.”

Twenty-five years ago, there were 126 commercially operated dairies in San Diego County, many of them clustered in Chula Vista and National City, Weisheit said. Now there are 32. One, in Imperial Beach, is the last in South Bay.

However, the number of cows has not shrunk proportionately, dropping from 22,000 to 16,000. Individual dairies have expanded in order to survive, selling more milk to cover the spiraling costs of overhead such as labor, electricity and feed.

Now the water board staff says some dairies have expanded their herds without expanding their capacity of handle their waste. They say waste is seeping over boundary lines, and neighbors are grousing on the other side.

Peter Verboom and his sons bought a 25-year-old dairy in Valley Center last year and expanded the milking herd from 200 to 450. Ever since, neighbors have complained of what the board staff calls “off-site obnoxious odors” and “illicit discharges” into a creek.

The operation generates daily 36,000 gallons of milk barn wash water from washing animals and milking equipment. That water and corral runoff collects in storage ponds and is used for spray irrigation. Manure is dried and later used on other farms as “soil amendment.”

The board’s staff has inspected the farm repeatedly, and found no odors associated with disposal of waste, a staff report states. But they did find a discharge pipe near a creek that flows into Turner Lake, and evidence of recent discharges.

Verboom, however, denies that waste is being discharged into the creek. He says his storage ponds have more than enough capacity to handle his waste, and he is doing his best to appease his neighbors and comply with the water board’s rules.

Meanwhile, Whelan Dairy in Oceanside is believed to have a herd of 1,200 cows, 620 of which are used for milking. The board staff estimates Whelan generates 62,000 gallons of milk barn wash water, in addition to feed ramp wash water and corral runoff.

The staff says the dairy has violated its waste discharge permit by increasing its herd beyond 385 cows without proving it could handle the waste. Other alleged violations include odors, runoff and overloading a local lake with waste, the staff said.

Nearly nine acres of the Whelan Dairy’s corrals drain directly into Pilgrim Creek, the board says. Much of the rest of the water goes into Whelan Lake. The lake, which is on the property of the farm, also receives treated waste water from a nearby municipal sewage plant.

The board’s staff says the lake cannot assimilate the dairy’s increased waste, and that sewage and dairy waste sediments are up to three feet thick in some spots. Stinking hydrogen sulfide rises from the lake, wafting over a nearby residential development.

The dairy manager, Ivan Wood, did not return messages left on his answering machine.

The other two dairies under fire are the Frank Gonsalves Dairy in Escondido and the nearby Weary River Ranch Dairy. They, too, are accused of violating their waste-discharge permits by allowing waste to run off their property.

In both cases, the board staff believes that in major storms much of the manure and waste from the corrals would run into a creek feeding the San Dieguito River. The river runs into Lake Hodges, a municipal drinking water reservoir.

But Frank Gonsalves insists his storage ponds are adequate, and his neighbors’ well pollution is not related to his farm. As for runoff, he says he can’t guard against runoff in a major storm, with what he says are 23,000 acres of watershed rising behind him.

He and others argue that the state’s storm runoff standards are too strict, requiring that he be able to protect against runoff from a “100-year storm.” That is a storm of such magnitude that it is expected to occur on average once every 100 years.

“They want me to build a big area to contain this water,” Gonsalves complained last week. “Oh, I would have to sell my dairy before I could do that.”

That conclusion received some support from Weisheit at the University of California.

“The profit in the dairy industry is not very great,” Weisheit said. “At this point, all of agriculture is suffering pangs of low prices for the product and relatively high operating costs. There’s not that much money to be made in the industry to accommodate the construction of a lot of costly water-pollution control measures.”

The water board’s interest in the dairies coincides with a discussion within the county administration over whether to allow dairymen to expand their herds beyond the limits set by the county’s zoning ordinance.

At the request of the Board of Supervisors, and at the urging of dairymen, the planning department recently prepared an amendment that would have allowed dairies to increase their herds by a virtually unlimited degree, said assistant planner John McCormick.

But when the Whelan Dairy in the meantime applied to the supervisors for a rezone to allow them to expand the herd, neighbors testified against the plan and the board on Jan. 8 turned the dairy down.

Now the planning department is going back to the board for guidance.

“We have a conflict between the previous direction from the board to write the ordinance and the board’s most recent action on the Whelan rezone,” McCormick said. “We’re trying to accommodate the needs of the dairies without infringing on the rights of the neighbors.”

One man for whom the dairymen’s plight strikes a sour note is Charles Woods, an East County apple and pear farmer who serves as executive officer of the San Diego County Farm Bureau, a 73-year-old organization that represents farmers’ interests.

According to Woods, San Diego was once one of the richest dairying counties in the country. Now, he said, dairying has dropped to the fifth largest agricultural industry, after tomatoes, avocados, eggs and decorative plants. He said milk revenues are down to $30.3 million.

Woods simply blames “urban encroachment.” But now, he says newcomers have found allies in regulatory agencies: “They can complain to all sorts of government entities who can get out and harass the men for the different laws that have been developed over the years.”

“You know, there are certain trade-offs,” Woods said. “And we feel that producing milk has more value than trying to keep a little muddy water from going someplace off the farm. Besides, this is a third and fourth generation livelihood. This is their life. You’re not talking about some weekend fun thing.”