Transcripts

VICTOR COTTON: Victor Cotton is my name. We live in Farming Township in Stearns County. We've been farming here. We have our 21st crop in the ground this year.

LAURA MCCALLUM: Victor Cotton's farm lies in a scenic area of Stearns County, amid green acres of rolling hills. His home overlooks a circular area about half the size of a football field. Covered with vegetation, the area blends into Cotton's yard, yet it's actually a manure pit that took cotton two years to plan, with the help of staff from the Stearns County soil and water conservation district and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Standing next to the pit, NRCS District Conservationist, Steve Sellnow, says his staff worked with cotton to prevent a potential environmental hazard.

STEVE SELLNOW: There was a big wetland here on part of the yard before. Or not wetland, but a wet area. And the runoff went north through the road into a DNR protected wetland.

LAURA MCCALLUM: Sellnow says waste from Cotton's 60 or so dairy cows is now collected in the concrete pit, then pumped out to his fields for fertilizer. The pit is lined with 2 feet of compacted clay to minimize manure seepage into the groundwater. Cotton says the pit is doing just what it was designed to do-- manage manure, protect the environment, and minimize the smell for his family and neighbors.

VICTOR COTTON: Our manure pit is very close to our home, and it's working out well. They assured us that the odor would not be a problem, and there is no odor.

LAURA MCCALLUM: Cotton says there are quite a few feedlots in his area and he thinks neighboring farmers are doing a good job of managing manure and avoiding pollution. Yet the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's Feedlot Compliance Coordinator, Pete Sandberg, says he's gotten at least 25 calls complaining about Stearns County Feedlots in the past year.

PETE SANDBERG: Mostly family farms that have been there for 50 or 100 years. A lot of the farms were established before really any environmental concerns were being taken into account. So the sorts of places I get complaints on are facilities where there are maybe 50 to 100 cows that are confined in an area where manure accumulates, and it then can run off either into a lake, or a county drainage ditch, or a stream, something like that. People are concerned that this is a pollution hazard to the lake or the stream and they're right.

LAURA MCCALLUM: Sandberg says the most common solution is building earthen berms to control runoff or a storage basin like Cotton's. He says he's sympathetic if the remedy is costly, but says that doesn't diminish his agency's concern over feedlot pollution, one of the biggest sources of water contamination in Minnesota.

About 40 counties administer the MPCA's Feedlot Permit Program, and pollution control officials are eager to see Stearns County be the next. A recent inventory determined only about 16% of Stearns County's 2,500 feedlots have MPCA permits. The many unpermitted farmers aren't necessarily polluters, but a permit does indicate the feedlot complies with state regulations. Stearns County Water Plan Coordinator, Ed Weir, says the County could administer the feedlot permit program more effectively.

ED WEIR: We can work with farmers and come up with reasonable and creative ways of achieving compliance without a heavy economic burden.

LAURA MCCALLUM: Weir says if Stearns County commissioners approve the change, a County Feedlot Officer would educate farmers about state rules.

Dairy farmer, Jerry Bechtold, is a member of the Stearns County feedlot subcommittee that recommended the County explore administering the permit program. It took him two years to get an MPCA permit for his second manure pit, which is lined with 4 feet of clay because it's located in a wetland. Bechtold doesn't think Stearns County has a single bad feedlot operator, but says farmers have had problems with the MPCA and its enforcement of feedlot rules. Bechtold says having the County run the program would raise its credibility in farmers eyes.

JERRY BECHTOLD: We feel that if we have it locally, we would have local input. If we make mistakes, we can back up and make changes. And we can make them this week, we can make them promptly.

LAURA MCCALLUM: But there's no guarantee Stearns County could permit feedlots any faster than the state, and farmers could easily transfer their mistrust of state regulators to those at the County seat. District conservationist, Steve Sellnow, says Minnesota is pressuring Stearns County to take on a big job.

STEVE SELLNOW: The locals will take the heat, so it's really a political decision if they're willing to accept that authority, that additional regulatory authority, at the local level. They'll be accepting consequences that go with it. We're a big feedlot County, and we'll have a lot of business. And we have our share of more of complaints.

LAURA MCCALLUM: Stearns County staff who work with feedlot operators are quick to point out farmers don't want to pollute the environment they live in. And some complaints stem from people who move to the country, then become distressed by the inevitable odors that accompany a farm with animals.

Ed Weir of the County's environmental services department says the size of a feedlot has little to do with how well it's managed, and he says the recent inventory indicated the bulk of Stearns County's small feedlots are not an obvious pollution hazard. Still, officials with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency are just as concerned about small feedlots as they are with the controversial large scale operations, and they're particularly concerned that the Minnesota County with the most feedlots get more involved in monitoring them.

In Collegeville, I'm Laura McCallum, Minnesota Public Radio News.