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Dairy rules a 'first step'

Batch Data Processor | Monday, Mar 13 2006 9:05 PM

Last Updated: Monday, Mar 13 2006 9:09 PM

Air pollution regulators must be doing something right. Both environmentalists and farmers say proposed dairy rules stink.

A workshop will be held today at 1:30 p.m. in the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District's offices at 2700 M St., Suite 275, to review the proposed rules.

The district faces a July 1 deadline to enact air cleanup rules that include controls over dairies. Legislation authored by state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, requires agricultural operations, including dairies, to reduce the pollutants they spew into the air. For decades, agriculture has been exempt from air cleanup rules.

Dairy industry representatives complain more scientific studies must be done before cleanup rules are adopted. Environmentalists argue the rules being proposed do not go far enough.

The rules are a good compromise, giving farmers a list of low-tech options to reduce pollution. A bone of contention is the contribution ammonia has on the valley's dirty air. When manure and urine from cattle mix, ammonia results. Ammonia reacts with nitrogen oxides to form fine particles linked to respiratory problems.

Some dairy industry representatives want the ammonia rules and others settled now, rather than later. "It's disingenuous to develop a control scheme today and three, four, five years later to come back with something different that's going to be costly," said industry representative John Dunlap, who also represents a company trying to market ammonia-cutting technology to dairies.

But because the dairy industry has been exempt from air pollution rules, science-backed pollution information dates back to the 1930s, when dairies were small. Today's factory-size dairies pose significant pollution problems.

As study of the dairy industry unfolds, likely the rules will change and the costs will climb. Cleanup of Kern's oil industry in the 1980s followed this same pattern.