Countywide

Local dairy farmers on Monday raised objections to new regulations local water quality officials want to impose to prevent liquid and solid dairy waste in pastures and barnyards from tainting the underground water supply.

The regulations proposed by the Regional Water Quality Board--and modeled after those in effect in the Santa Ana region--would restrict the dairies from storing more than 3 tons of dried cow manure per acre every year in so-called “disposal” areas. One cow generates 1.9 tons of manure a year, a staff report said.

The goal, water officials said Monday, is to limit the amounts of nitrates and salts that can seep from the manure into the underground water supply.

But the dairymen argued that the proposed rules don’t account for other uses of the farm land, such as raising crops. The dairymen said crops absorb the manure’s nitrates and salts, and farmers should be able to store more tons per acre.

The farmers, many of whom said they sold the dried manure as fertilizer to area avocado and citrus growers, also complained that they were being unfairly singled out in the amount of cow wastes they could put on their lands.