Sheriff to Close Dairy at Castaic Jail : Budget: Officials say it will be cheaper to buy milk wholesale than to upgrade the facility. The operation will be shut down by mid-August.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced Friday that it will close its dairy at a Castaic jail farm, which supplies most of the milk drunk by the county’s 22,000 inmates, because the department cannot afford to comply with new federal pollution regulations.

Department officials said they decided to close the dairy at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho by mid-August because it will be cheaper to buy milk wholesale than to spend more than $1.5 million to replace aging equipment and make improvements necessary to comply with regulations requiring dairies to treat storm runoff water.

“The dairy has been a showpiece for us, and we’re really going to miss it,” said Cmdr. Mike Nelson, the officer in charge of the Castaic jail. “But it’s a necessary fiscal decision.”

Nelson said the dairy produced about 70,000 gallons monthly, or 77% of the milk consumed by the inmates. Because state law requires the jail to offer each inmate 16 ounces of milk a day, the county will have to buy milk wholesale to replace that supply.

The jail dairy is the third-largest of only five remaining in the county. Thirty years ago Los Angeles’ 50 dairies earned it the title of “Dairy County.” In neighboring Kern County, dairy and other farm operations at the Lerdo jail also were shut down last year because the operations were losing $1 million annually.

The 100 inmates who worked at the dairy will be reassigned to other jobs at the 2,850-acre jail, which also operates a laundry and grows trees and plants, Nelson said.

Twelve civilian employees who worked there or helped raise crops to feed the herd of about 1,000 cows will lose their jobs, Nelson said. The department will try to find new positions for the workers, possibly in maintenance work, but there may be some layoffs, he said.

One worker, who preferred to remain anonymous, said in a telephone interview Friday that he believes the closure was politically motivated. “The real reason is the rancho property is very valuable to developers and the county wants to use it for that,” he said.

The county is planning to develop a business park on a two-mile strip of the jail property along the Golden State Freeway.

But Nelson said the dairy will close simply because the financially strapped county cannot afford it. The county is facing a shortfall of at least $50 million in funds from the state because of lower sales tax revenues and vehicle license fees, said Virginia Collins, an assistant administrative officer in the county chief administrative office.

Last fall, the Sheriff’s Department proposed expanding the jail dairy, but has found that it would be too expensive, Nelson said.

Keeping it in operation would require spending at least $1 million to build clay- or concrete-lined retention ponds and a treatment plant to purify rainwater that runs off the manure-strewn feedlot during storms, Nelson said. The water now flows off the lot and into the ground untreated, he said.

Under federal regulations enacted in 1987, dairies and other industries, such as oil refineries and airports, must treat storm runoff contaminated by wastes, such as manure or jet fuel, said Archie Matthews, chief of the regulatory section for the state Water Resources Control Board, which administers the federal rules. An estimated 50,000 industries in California have until Oct. 1 to comply with the law, he said.

The runoff does not pose a health threat, said Bob Ghirelli, executive officer of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. The board could force the jail to treat water used to wash down cows, but has not because the runoff poses no significant danger, he said.

Also included among the costs to upgrade the dairy would be about $400,000 to replace worn-out bottling equipment, Nelson said. The cows will be auctioned, he said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department