Dairy pollution lawsuit withdrawn

YAKIMA – A citizens group has dropped its federal court lawsuit against a Washington state dairy over methanol pollution.

According to the lawsuit filed in April in U.S. District Court in Spokane, the methanol is emitted into the air by animal waste and silage.

The suit was filed by the group Community Association for Restoration of the Environment, based in Granger, Wash., against DeRuyter Brothers Dairy of Outlook, Wash. The suit contended the dairy should be required to obtain permits under the Clean Air Act.

The Yakima Herald-Republic said CARE had hopes of using the DeRuyter case to force dairies to apply for state and federal permits under the Clean Air Act for emitting 10 tons or more of methanol a year.

Methanol from decomposing manure and silage is identified as a hazardous air pollutant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Industry lawyers said CARE’s case collapsed because of faulty science.

“Their expert witness was unraveled in deposition,” said John Nelson, a Spokane-based lawyer who represented DeRuyter Brothers.

Nelson said CARE agreed to withdraw the case and not refile it if he agreed not to seek recovery of legal fees and costs, which DeRuyter estimates approach $500,000.

Charlie Tebbutt of the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene, Ore., represented CARE and conceded problems with the data collected by its expert witness.

“A few samples were compromised for reasons we aren’t clear about,” he said.

But Tebbutt added, “We are still convinced that DeRuyter and others are emitting more than the law allows. The stink in the smell in the Lower (Yakima) Valley is hazardous chemicals.”

The Lower Yakima Valley is dense with dairies, with at least 74,000 cows on 72 farms.

Complaints about odor are routinely collected by the Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency, officials at the agency said. That odor isn’t caused by a single substance but rather a number of compounds.

Environmentalists have been largely unsuccessful in bringing the federal Clean Air Act to bear on the emissions of gases, such as ammonia, from large animal-feeding operations.

“It’s very difficult to do,” said Frank Mitloehner, associate professor and air-quality specialist at the University of California, Davis.