Remains of Cows Found in Backyard

Four months after she moved into her dream house in a newly minted subdivision, Cathie Kunkel got a grisly reminder of the dairy farm that had been there before.

A contractor digging a hole in her backyard for a small pond and planter unearthed several cow carcasses Friday.

Sickened by the smell and concerned about the health effects for her and her three children, Kunkel temporarily moved out of the home on St. Andrews Street and into a hotel.

“It started when we were only one foot deep,” Kunkel said. “At first we thought it was a dead chicken, but when he dug deeper, he found more down there. The smell was horrendous.”

The legacy of farming more than 18,000 acres of dairy land has complicated plans in Ontario and Chino to build thousands of homes for a projected 130,000 new residents.

The presence of methane, a byproduct of decaying manure and organic material, delayed construction of two schools and forced the retrofitting of homes. High concentrations of nitrates and salts in some of the ground water make it undrinkable unless it is specially treated. The manure has contributed to air pollution in the Inland Empire.

But until now, those were the only skeletons in the dairy industry’s closet. Cow carcasses buried in the backyards of new homes have not been a problem, said Bob Feenstra, general manager of the Milk Producers Council.

“I’m sure it’s not the practice of our dairymen,” Feenstra said. “It sounds like an illegal burying.”

For 40 years, Chino and Ontario dairy farmers have had dead cows and other animals removed and sent to rendering plants. Guidelines required that animals interred on farm property had to be buried below a certain depth and sprinkled with lime to hasten the decaying process.

In emergencies, such as the mass bovine deaths that occurred in the dairy farms during early 1998 because of El Nino rains, farmers are permitted to dispose of dead cows in landfills.

Feenstra said that because illegal burials could hurt land values, most farmers had carcasses hauled away. “It’s not the image that dairymen want,” he said.

Kunkel’s dead cows were wrapped in plastic and did not appear to have been buried long, she said. Upon discovering the carcasses, her contractor immediately covered them with dirt, but the backyard still reeked on Monday.

The builder of the subdivision, John Laing Homes of Corona, has put up Kunkel and her three children in a hotel until the problem is resolved, said Terry Neale, the company’s division president.

The cow remains will be removed today and soil tests will be done to determine whether there is any contamination, he said.

“We have never come across something like this,” Neale said. “It was missed in the grading. . . . If the neighbors have concerns, we will do testing on their properties, too.”

Ontario’s chief building official, Kevin Shear, said he is monitoring the situation. He said a soil-engineering study required before the subdivision construction started eight months ago found no cow carcasses,

Shear said the carcasses probably were missed when Kunkel’s property was graded because the lot is on a slope.