(David McNew / Getty Images / LA Times )
Posted on 10/11/2004 7:02:54 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Nearly $70 million in state bond money earmarked for reducing pollution was used by California dairies to expand their operations, which resulted in more air pollution, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
The result, the newspaper said, is that the air in California's dairy-rich San Joaquin Valley is now among the dirtiest in the nation, recording more eight-hour ozone level violations than Los Angeles.
State Treasurer Phil Angelides, who as head of the Pollution Control Financing Authority approved the loans, now says the money was misspent. The environmental impact of large dairies should have been studied more closely before the loans were OK'd, he said.
"We're going to stop financing dairies until we can do a comprehensive review," Angelides said. "In the future, I'm going to press hard to make sure that any dairy we finance will be taking steps to resolve environmental problems, not contribute to them."
He said none of the 18 dairies receiving loans since 2001 offered any plans to use new air pollution control technology.
The dairies qualified for the money through tax-exempt, low-interest loan programs by stating in their applications that expanding operations would provide an "environmentally sound method of disposing of animal waste" by spreading cow manure across a greater area and thus decreasing its impact on groundwater supplies.
But while some of the expanded dairy operations have been successful in increasing groundwater protection, the Times said, dairies that expanded their herds to as many as 14,000 cows also put much more methane gas into the air.
"It's hard to believe that low-interest loans set aside by California to fight pollution are instead being used to expand some of the biggest polluters in agriculture," said Brent Newell, an attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, which has joined with the Sierra Club in fighting the expansion of industrial dairies.
Angelides, meanwhile, has frozen $24 million in dairy loans that were approved earlier this year.
One of the farmers who received a low-interest loan last year said he got the money "fair and square" and that his expanded operation does indeed pose less risk to groundwater.
"We have about twice as many acres as we need to handle the manure that we produce. The chances of our new dairy polluting the groundwater are slim and none," said David Albers, whose 4,000-cow dairy in Fresno County received a $5.8 million loan with a 1 percent interest rate.
He acknowledged, however, that like other dairy farmers he continues to use an old recycling system that shunts waste into open-air lagoons, where it bakes in the sun. The result, say regulators with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution District, is millions of pounds of smog-forming gases being emitted into the air each year.
"The state has missed a major opportunity to push these big dairies in the direction of new pollution control methods," said Vicki Lee, a Sierra Club member who questioned the dairy loans in an Aug. 30 letter to Angelides. "The dairies haven't taken a single step to justify this financing."
The law of "unintended consequences." But anyone ought to know that government spending seldom ends up where it was supposed to go.
fyi
> The law of "unintended consequences."
Those are almost the only kind from gov programs.
But the present news is just more unpleasant reminders
of how unpleasant it can be to do business in Kahlifornya,
despite Ahnold's pleas for people to build/invest there.
Has some background over some of the folks mentioned earlier.Dairy Permit Advances -
- excerpted -
The first dairy permit in Tulare County considered in three years received tentative approval Tuesday.
By a 5-0 vote, supervisors nodded at Lindsay dairyman Rob Hilarides' plan: a dairy with 14,100 cows and calves three miles northwest of Lindsay that would be one of the largest in the county.
-snip-
Residents closest to the dairy adopted a not-in-my-backyard attitude. And the San Francisco-based Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment said Hilarides' proposal failed to meet legal requirements.
Supervisors echoed Hilarides' supporters.
"We are a dairy industry, and it is time that we do move forward," said Supervisor Bill Maze, who pointed to the county's support of the expansion of Land O'Lakes in Tulare.
Stink Happens.
Angelides freezes future loans after saying bonds were used to build bigger, smoggier farms.
By Mark Arax
LA Times Staff Writer
October 11, 2004
FRESNO — Over the last four years, nearly $70 million in state bond money designated for pollution control has financed a score of giant dairies that have helped turn the San Joaquin Valley into the nation's most polluted air basin.
In several cases, the tax-exempt, low-interest loans to fight pollution have been used by dairymen to close smaller operations in Chino and open dairies with as many as 14,000 cows each in the valley, which produces more milk than any other region in the country but has more violations of the eight-hour ozone standard than even Los Angeles.
"It's hard to believe that low-interest loans set aside by California to fight pollution are instead being used to expand some of the biggest polluters in agriculture," said Brent Newell, an attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, a San Francisco-based law firm that has joined the Sierra Club to fight the expansion of industrial dairies.
State Treasurer Phil Angelides, who heads the Pollution Control Financing Authority and approved the loans, now says the $70 million in bond money for dairies was misspent. He said the blame lies not with the dairy farmers but with the pollution control authority, which failed to scrutinize the environmental impacts of the big dairies.
Blame it on a bureaucracy. Good job, Phil. ;-)
"We've got to SAVE farms and farmland to combat urban sprawl!"
"Farms Pollute!"
Only one thing to do: buy them out to preserve the land after they go bankrupt, and apply 'smart growth'.
Given that we have Craps Doyle (D-Madistan) running things, money says we do. Seriesly, Sen. Russ (Slimeroad) Feingold (D-WI) voted to spend $30 million to study cow gas.
As for moo-ving to Kalifornica, I doubt it; taxes are about equal, and there's a much-higher risk of disappearing into the ground (and becoming permanent RAT voters). Texas is another matter, though :-)
BTTT!!!!!!
Editorial: Taxpayers snookered
State dairy loans finance dirty air
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/11096200p-12012610c.html
excerpted...
In statements to the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story, Angelides acknowledges the dairy loans were a mistake. The authority has frozen $24 million in loans approved this year but not yet distributed. It's too late to recover some $66 million in dairy loans already disbursed.
So, how did it happen? To qualify for loans, dairies merely had to assert they were not going to dump waste into landfills, something anyone with minimal understanding of the dairy business should have known they wouldn't do anyway. The dumping fees for tons of cow dung are expensive.
Angelides told the Times that the rational used to approve the loans was "a staff error." It was much more. It was an extraordinary example of government incompetence.
Over the last three years, the state Pollution Control Financing Authority issued low-interest, tax-exempt loans to 18 farmers who built mega-dairies in the Central Valley that have degraded the environment and endangered public health. The dairy loan program is a scandal. It subsidized the very pollution the state's low-interest loan program was created to reduce.
The three-member authority headed by state Treasurer Phil Angelides is supposed to help businesses pay for pollution control improvements, but the big new dairies made no investments in pollution control. In fact, the dairies' huge lagoons of liquefied manure worsened air quality in the valley and now pose a risk to underground water supplies. Lakes of foul-smelling cow waste cook in the valley sun, sending tons of smog-forming gases into one of the dirtiest air basins in the country.
Is this a legitimate outrage or are the enviros building a scandal to push California out of the dairy industry?
I know one thing for sure.... something stinks here! ;-)
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