Truth about Wa Dairies: Protect Marginalized Communities & the Environment

End the Waste. End the Contamination. End the continued degradation of marginalized communities’ water supplies by ending the Department of Ecology’s weak CAFO discharge permit process!

For decades, community organizations have been rallying around marginalized voices in the Yakima Valley, who couldn’t drink their own water because of nitrate contamination from nearby dairy companies’ concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO’s). These large operations use a “lagoon and spray” system with manure holding ponds designed to seep into groundwater and chronically over-apply manure to fields, leading to widespread drinking water contamination. While some of these dairies have been held accountable in court, resulting in a legally-enforceable clean up, and funds to provide water filters for the community, so many others continue the business-as-usual of polluting drinking water. While the improvements required under that historic settlement can and should be applied statewide, unfortunately the weak Department of Ecology permits fail to do so, allowing these factory dairies to pollute the surface and groundwater in Yakima Valley and across the state, to the harm of countless communities and our state’s natural water resources.

We must demand now as a public that the Governor and Department of Ecology protect our most marginalized communities from harmful drinking water contamination, and ensure CAFO’s can no longer let their manure contaminate the drinking and surface water of communities around the state.The government should be for the people, not for the profits of one industry! For decades the state has failed the people of Yakima Valley and around the state by failing to protect their right to clean water. It is time we hold them accountable. Help protect our right to clean water, and sign this petition asking the Department of Ecology to:

1. Replace this unacceptably weak permit with a comprehensive combined state-NPDES permit issued under the Clean Water Act;
2. Require groundwater and surface water monitoring; and
3. Replace the current inadequate adaptive management scheme with clear and enforceable limits on pollution, including mandatory implementation of pollution control technologies.