Factory feedlot owner Rick Millner continues to break the rules, threaten the environment, and blame everyone but himself. After flagrant and repeated environmental violations at his CAFOs in Minnesota, Millner's two cattle concentration camps in the Big Stone Lake watershed around Veblen are finally drawing attention from South Dakota's environmental authorities.
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Tom Meersman, Millner's Veblen operations, including the biggest single dairy in the state, have been breaking the law, filling their manure lagoons to the brim, and risking pollution of the Little Minnesota River and Big Stone Lake. Dairy operators are supposed to keep the manure two feet below the edge of their lagoons to prevent heavy rain from flooding the lagoons and spilling manure. Millner's Veblen dairies have apparently let the manure levels rise so high that the dairy has piled hay bales around the lagoon edges in an attempt to stop crap from lapping over the edges.
On September 18, the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources formally cited Millner for his illegal manure levels at both Veblen dairies. However, it took citizen action to prod Pierre to do its job:
Big Stone Lake Association, a citizens' group with Minnesota and South Dakota members, complained to South Dakota regulators last July about ponds brimming with waste at the Veblen dairies, and submitted aerial photos showing hay bales stacked along the rims to keep liquid waste from lapping over.
...The company has been pumping manure out of the ponds and spreading it on nearby farm fields in recent weeks, but the citizens' group said the ground is too wet to absorb the wastes and manure is running into streams.
Steve Berkner, president of the Big Stone Lake Association, said he and Big Stone County Commissioner Roger Sandberg flew over the area on Nov. 9. They observed a chocolate-brown plume of pollution swirling into Big Stone Lake from the Little Minnesota River, and traced the pollution north for about 45 miles, up the meandering river and one of its tributaries to the dairies.
"The water the whole way up there was brown, and we saw lots of foam on the creek when it was going around rocks," said Berkner [Tom Meersman, "SD Dairy Producer Cited for Pollution Violations," Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2009.11.18].
Meersman follows up on a Joe O'Sullivan
Watertown Public Opinion article from Oct 31-Nov 1 (updated online Nov. 3,
available to online subscribers). O'Sullivan and Meersman both note that the state has not confirmed any manure runoff, and both run Millner's usual assertions that he's not to blame for any problems. Millner blames wet weather last year and this year that hasn't allowed him to empty his lagoons as quickly as he'd like. Of course, he never mentions the possibility that, to obey the law, he might have reduce his manure output and stop bringing new cattle into the Veblen facilities. (Meersman mentions that Millner "removed all 1,500 cows from Excel Dairy last winter, and moved them to the company's four other dairies"—I wonder how many he moved into his evidently maxed-out Veblen dairies?)
In 2007, the state of Minnesota
fined Millner's company $17,400 for dumping too much manure on neighboring fields and other waste-handling violations at its New Horizon Dairy near Hoffman, MN. In 2008, Millner's Excel Dairy near Thief River Falls, MN,
stunk neighbors out of their homes. This year the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
shut down Excel Dairy, then
issued a one-year permit with strict conditions for Millner to clean the place up. Millner has
flouted those conditions and continued to
violate state and federal clean air standards.
In other words, Millner has repeatedly conducted business in such a way as to poison the environment around his industrial operations. He won't obey legal orders or even
contracts with suppliers.
Now I suspect that defenders of the ag-industrial complex will say I'm just an enemy of agriculture and that I'm "
scared of family farmers telling their story." Nothing could be farther from the truth. I share a desire to protect family farms and see independent agriculture remain a strong part of South Dakota's economy. But as Jay Gilbertson, East Dakota Water Development District director, tells Meersman, Millner's factory feedlot "is not a mom-and-pop operation.... This is an industrial milk production facility and needs to be treated as such. This is no one's definition of a family farm."
Veblen East and Veblen West are environmental hazards, operated by a man with a history of breaking the law, breaking contracts, and showing no regard for the well-being of the land or his neighbors. South Dakota has waited far too long to take action against Millner and his bad business practices.
Read more >>
This blog printed on 100% recycled electrons.
