Bayside Dairy Settles CWA Violations
Bayside Dairy, LLC has agreed to pay an $8,000 penalty to settle alleged Clean Water Act violations. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the violations occurred at the Bayside Dairy's Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation facility, located in Mt. Vernon, Washington.
Based on an inspection of the operation in February 2007, EPA inspectors found animal wastes leaking from the barns into a neighboring drainage ditch. The ditch drains to the Skagit River, which provides spawning habitat for salmon and is the largest watershed of the Puget Sound. This discharge was not authorized by a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.
"It is crucial that manure from these operations is properly managed and kept out of our rivers and streams," said Mike Bussell, EPA director, Office of Compliance and Enforcement in Seattle. "This type of water pollution contributes to shell fish contamination and hurts ongoing efforts to clean up Puget Sound."
This was Bayside Dairy's first violation of the Clean Water Act. The company immediately corrected the discharge problem after it was discovered.
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations continue to be a leading source of water quality impairment in the United States. Consolidation trends in the livestock industry have resulted in larger-sized operations that generate about 500 million tons of manure annually.
For more information about enforcement priorities and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, visit: http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/anafoidx.html.