Feedlot worker says manager put wastewater into aquifer

POCATELLO, Idaho – A Southern Idaho feedlot manager who was convicted in April of violating drinking water laws was injecting contaminated wastewater into an aquifer, prosecutors said.

Cory King, the manager of Double C Farms, was found guilty of four counts of violating the Safe Drinking Water Act and corresponding state laws in 2005 at the feedlot near Burley. King is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill presided over an evidentiary hearing intended to resolve factual and legal differences before sentencing.

During the trial, the judge prohibited prosecutors from presenting any evidence or testimony related to the exact contents of the fluids injected into the aquifer through a series of pipes and irrigation wells.

But those restrictions were not in place Monday, the first of a two-day hearing in U.S. District Court in Pocatello. In the original indictment, federal prosecutors accused King of knowingly injecting contaminated water into the aquifer without permits and trying to conceal what he was doing.

Shawn Carson, former Double C employee and prosecution witness who took the stand, told the judge he watched contaminated water being pumped into the ground at the feedlot.

Carson alerted state inspectors about the wells and said he had been aware of the practice occurring with at least one of the wells since he began working full time at the feedlot in 1993.

He also said one of the wells was used to suck up wastewater from other facilities during a wet spring in 2005.

Defense attorneys tried to discredit Carson’s testimony and similar statements made by the state investigator. King’s lawyers also attacked the competence and credibility of the scientists who gathered and tested water samples.