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Thursday, April 12, 2007
Environment - More on: Environment - Two CAFO stories today
Updating yesterday's ILB entry on Huntington County manure spills, Seth Slabaugh of the Muncie StarPress reports today:
MUNCIE -- An attorney representing DeGroot Dairy in Huntington County says it is premature to blame the dairy for a manure discharge this week into a creek emptying into Salamonie Reservoir.Thomas Easterly, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, issued a statement Tuesday saying his agency had responded recently to manure spills at two large dairy operations -- DeGroot and Union-Go Dairy in Randolph County.
"We have no basis to believe that," said Peter Facher [ILB - sic.], an Indianapolis attorney who represents DeGroot. "IDEM has not determined the source. We don't see DeGroot being the source." * * *
Facher called the Johannes DeGroot family, immigrants from The Netherlands, "honorable people" who are "eager to have the most environmentally compliant dairy in the state." The dairy is a family farm, he added. The attorney said his clients "care so much about obeying the law."
Last year, IDEM issued a notice of violation accusing DeGroot of adding a barn and silage storage pad without the agency's approval. In addition, the county prosecutor filed criminal charges, but Facher noted those charges were dropped.
In 2004, DeGroot paid the state $45,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that the dairy had contaminated a waterway twice within 11 days. However, it was never proven that DeGroot polluted the waterway, Facher said. The case was settled with no admission of liability by DeGroot.
"We had an excellent defense," Facher said. The defendant settled because he couldn't justify the expense of continuing the litigation, Facher said. One of DeGroot's defenses was that sampling by IDEM showed that E. coli bacteria found in the waterway were from deer, not cattle, Facher said.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 12, 2007 01:43 PM
Posted to Environment