Millner and Excel Dairy Defy EPA, Violate Clean Air Act

I've previously reported that Millner's Thief River Falls operation has continued to violate state air quality standards and the conditions the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency laid out when it put Excel Dairy on a short leash this year for frequent air quality violations in 2008.

Now this document turns up: a letter from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, dated June 26, 2009, finding Millner and Excel Dairy in violation of the federal Clean Air Act. The EPA violation has been reported previously. But it is important to understand that the violation is not just mismanagement of tons of manure and emission of excessive hydrogen sulfide. In the letter and notice of violation to attorney Matthew A. Slaven, Region 5 EPA Air and Radiation Division Director Cheryl L. Newton offers evidence that fits Millner's pattern of apparent disregard for the law:

• In 2008, the EPA found Excel Dairy and specifically Prairie Ridge Management and Richard Millner in violation of the Minnesota State Implementation Plan at the dairy.
• Air quality monitoring demonstrates that Excel Dairy, Prairie Ridge, and Millner continued to violate Minnesota SIP Rule 7009.0080 "on numerous days beginning in April 2009."
• In December, EPA ordered Millner and Excel Dairy to reply to a 53-item information request, including a requirement to "begin conducting hydrogen sulfide ambient air monitoring at the Thief River facility." The EPA gave Millner and Excel Dairy 30 days to comply.
  
• After six months and two more EPA letters, Millner and Excel Dairy had failed to fully comply with the December order.

As of the June 26 letter, Millner thus stood in violation of Section 114(a) of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7414(a).

Maybe my libertarian friends will praise Millner for poking a stick in the EPA's eye with his apparent delays and non-compliance. But like Roman Polanski, Millner and Excel Dairy double their crime by defying the efforts of legal authorities to hold them accountable for polluting Thief River Falls and infringing on the liberty of their neighbors.

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Meanwhile, up in Veblen, Millner has been having manure drainage problems. In August, he received permission from the Marshall County Commission to bore under County Road 1 to increase drainage from his property. Why doesn't that sound good to me?

If You Give Rick Millner a Cookie...

...he'll keep crapping all over you.

Last January the State of Minnesota shut down the Thief River Falls Excel Dairy, owned by Veblen, SD, dairy entrepreneur Rick Millner and the Dairy Dozen. The reason: stink-bombing the county so badly that neighbors had to evacuate their homes. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency graced the recalcitrant and litigious Dairy Dozen with a restricted one-year permit to get the Excel Dairy's act together.

So, a business violates the law, intrudes on other citizens' property rights without compensation, and the state gives them another year to clean up their act. What does the state get?

Between Aug. 29 and Sept. 21, the facility surpassed the state limit for hydrogen sulfide emissions of 30 parts per billion on 10 occasions, according to Gaylen Reetz, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency regional director. The highest reading during that period was 46, or more than 50 percent higher than the legal limit [Kevin Bonham, "State Finds TRF Dairy in Violation—Again," Grand Forks Herald, 2009.09.29].

Rick Millner and Excel Dairy have a legal permit. They have legal conditions. They have obligations to fellow citizens to run a clean operation. Instead, they take advantage of the state's generosity and repeatedly break the law. They continue to demonstrate they cannot effectively manage their own manure and conduct business within the law.

South Dakota should be embarrassed to have any connection with businessmen like these. The State of Minnesota should shut down Excel Dairy for good, and the law-breaking owners should get fines and jail.

Minnesota Shuts Down Putrid SD-Owned Cattle Concentration Camp

Remember the Excel Dairy, the South-Dakota-owned CAFO that was stinking folks out their homes in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, last year? Well, Minnesota shut the dairy down in January. But even with the cattle gone, air monitors started at the beginning of April indicate the feedlot is still violating air quality standards.

Now the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has given Excel Dairy 30 days (after the roads firm up) to drain their manure lagoons. They've also levied a one-million-dollar fine on the stinkers. Once they clean up, Excel can resume cattle operations, but the new permit is a restricted one-year permit, not the usual five-year permit.

Of course, good corporate neighbor and Excel Dairy owner Rick Millner of Veblen is more interested in litigating ad infinitum than cleaning up his own mess. He told the MPCA "I do not think we can" comply with the new permit, and his lawyer Kevin Stroup says Excel will appeal, appeal, appeal. That fits with Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson's characterization of these corporate malefactors:

In a letter to the agency, Attorney General Lori Swanson said that Excel no longer deserves the privilege of operating a dairy because it has made false statements, ignored state orders, dismissed health concerns, and tried to litigate its way out of trouble by blaming others or claiming exemptions from rules. Swanson called the company's strategy "an affront to the MPCA regulatory authority and the right of the surrounding residents to breathe non-putrefied air" [Tom Meersman, "Ew, That Smell: Thief River Falls Dairy Upsets Neighbors," Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 2009.04.28].

Non-putrified air—is that really asking so much from a corporate farm?

Real neighbor Jeff Brouse, who has to live with the stink of Millner's corporate excrement, expresses the reasonable frustration of a man who just wants his kids to be able to step outside for a breath of fresh air:

“I do not get it. This is a health hazard but yet we do not have any remedies," he said. "The State and the judges keep giving Excel more time even when they blatantly say there will be no fixes, there is no money. No one understands we need to move out of our homes in the middle of the night to protect our children, there is no warning; the wind switches and, bam, we need to get out.

"We should not be forced to lose the right to live in our homes, or be forced to live in a health hazard," Brouse continued. "This decision will cost our neighborhood another year of living in hell for the benefit of a bad actor dairy operation, complete with out of state owners" [staff reports, "TRF's Excel Dairy Gets One-Year Permit," Crookston Daily Times, 2009.05.01].

Gee, we wouldn't have this problem if we just raised cattle (and sheep!) on the good earth and let them eat grass instead of turning farming into an extractive factory process with no respect for land or community.

Let's just hope Millner and his cronies don't bring all the extra cows and manure back to their Veblen cattle concentration camps.

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Veblen Dairies Raided for Illegal Immigrants

A juxtaposition:

(1) One of the latest near-full-page spreads from the Russell Olson campaign touts the increased production of milk in our state and says Olson will keep that milk flowing. I'm still trying to figure out from the ad exactly what Russ did to expand the dairy industry (was he out milking cows himself while our other elected officials were legislating?), but far be it from me to criticize a Republican for running an ad that will alienate the lactose-intolerant.

(2) Our industrial dairy operations won't continue to expand if the Department of Homeland Security keeps paying visits. Yesterday Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raided dairies up in Veblen (originally on KSFY; see this Aberdeen American News article) and arrested 27 people: 14 for immigration violations, 13 for identity theft.

Details aren't in yet, but Madville Times readers will recall that Rick Millner of Veblen is CEO of Prairie Ridge Management, the outfit that runs the Excel Dairy in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, a big confined animal feeding operation that stunk neighbors out of their homes last June. The Minnesota Department of Health declared Millner's Thief River Falls CAFO a public health hazard this month. We'll find out soon enough if Millner's Veblen operations are responsible for polluting our state with criminal labor.

That our growing industrial dairies turn their profits on illegal immigrant labor is no secret. Faced with a proposed CAFO, folks in Grant County were more worried about the potential damage to air, water, and roads. But they also complained that these big dairies provide more jobs to illegal immigrants than to locals, and all those reasons together elicited enough citizen opposition to kill the project.

Farming turned into a factory operation is bad enough environmentally and spiritually. Industrial agriculture based on criminal activity is all the worse. If dairies can't make it without illegal immigrant labor, is that really the kind of industry we want to promote?

Grant County: Watch This Before Voting on Mega-Feedlot

Sometimes Anonymous is a complete meathead... and sometimes Anonymous sends me gems. This morning, a gem: StinkFreeCarrington.com, an activist website created by citizens of Carrington, North Dakota, who are trying to keep Canadians from bringing more pollution in the form of a big concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) to their fair city. (Hey! I've driven through Carrington! It's on the amazing slanty hypotenuse route that shaves 200 miles off the trip from Madison to Edmonton, Alberta!)

StinkFreeCarrington.com represents the best of the Internet's potential as a tool for citizen activism. Video of public testimony and interviews, archived letters to the ND Department of Health, links to relevant news articles... this kind of website is exactly how citizens can help inform each other and take action to protect their communities.

Two highlights: First, this passionate testimony at a public hearing from Carrington's Marlene Boyer, a woman who cares about her neighbors, and who believes there's more to doing right than following the letter of the law:



You'll never get coverage like this in the mainstream media. The local paper, the hourly radio news updates, and the 6 p.m. TV news can't give this sort of complete transcript, straight from the source.

See also this interview, Part 6 of a series of interviews with residents of Thief River Falls, Minnesota, who have had to evacuate their homes due to the stink of an Excel Dairy run by South Dakota's Rick Millner. Paul Kezar talks about the lies his neighbors were fed, lies that Kezar sees as typical of the corporate culture that drove him back out of Minneapolis to come back to his small-town roots:



Listen to that: "These dairy farms are a corporation.... I came from small-town USA, dairy-boy, grew up on a farm, go live in Minneapolis for a while, you understand what corporate USA is all about. I didn't really care for it, because there's dishonesty, and there's things that coming from a small-town you just thought you would never see."

Paul Kezar is just a neighbor, a small-town guy, a dad trying to throw a nice birthday party for his little girl, a decent man who'd prefer that his house not smell like filth.

You can see more videos and other content like this at StinkFreeCarrington.com. Everyone around Grant County, SD, should review this testimony before the public hearings on the proposed Kilborn Township mega-feedlot next month (August 7, 8.a.m.: zoning board on setback requirements; August 13 4:30 p.m.: dairy permit).

And everyone interested in promoting citizen participation in local political affairs should see how folks in Carrington are putting the Web to work to make their case.