By JONAH OWEN LAMB
A brown frothy mix of water tumbled from the mouth of a 42-inch pipeline to
a cinderblock basin covered with slime, its rim shining with the gloss of
accumulated muck.
The air smelled of boiled sour chicken.
Beyond the pit of churning water, 12 brown ponds spread across a patch of
earth edged by dirt roads.
Merced Sun-Star - PHOTO BY GEORGE MACDONALD
Larry Parlin, director of operations for Envirnonmental Management Services, looks over the Livingston Industrial Waste Water Treatment Plant, which takes in about 4.4 million gallons of wastewater per day from the Foster Farms chicken processing plant. Parlin's company oversees both of the city’s wastewater plants.
MARCI STENBERG
Merced Sun-Star - Hilmar Cheese Co. environmental director Burton N.
Fleischer in front of the company's water reclamation facility for recycling
and reusing water.
"Welcome to the chicken sewer," said Larry Parlin, as he looked at
Livingston's Industrial Waste Water facility, which his company,
Environmental Management Services, runs for the city.
Waste it might be, but it's no sewer. The 283 million gallons of water in
the ponds came from the nearby Foster Farms chicken processing plant. The
water that is used to clean chickens in the nearby plant ends up here.
Five days a week, roughly 4.4 million gallons of water empties into these
ponds along the Merced River. It is through these ponds that the plant's
dirty water is meant to be cleansed. About half the water is spread across
nearby reclamation fields, said Parlin. The rest seeps into the soil below
where toxins, in theory, filter out. Leftover solids are trucked away and
used as fertilizer.
But the ponds haven't been working as they should. They are leaching
nitrates into the soil and groundwater -- nitrates that in some cases are
high above the levels deemed safe by the California Regional Water Quality
Control Board, which regulates wastewater discharges.
"That's what needs to be addressed and treated," said Parlin.
Welcome to one of the most serious tradeoffs of the 21st century: as America
and the world gird to become green, they're finding that ecology and economy
sometimes don't stroll hand in hand into an unpolluted sunset.
The cost of cleaning and greening has to come from somewhere. Increasingly,
that cost is being paid by consumers in the form of higher prices passed
along by businesses trying to meet ever-stricter environmental regulations.
Another factor is that residents of communities where some companies may
pollute have to decide whether the jobs offered at those companies are
enough to offset any environmental harm that may occur. With an unemployment
rate pushing 20 percent, Mercedians have to ask themselves whether the fate
of a fairy shrimp or more chicken guano in their soil matters more to them
than a world-class research university or a decent-paying blue-collar job.
Hilmar Cheese Co., for instance, may well inject saltier water into
surrounding soil. But no company in the county is engaged in more
philanthropic outreach than the firm founded by local families a generation
ago.
It's not an either-or choice, but as such, its resolution will affect both
the environment and the economy in years ahead. It's all about value
judgments, and there are no simple answers when the green of the environment
conflicts with the green of a paycheck.
However Mercedians decide, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control
Board hasn't been sitting on its hands. In 2006, after a series of
violations and notices, the Foster Farms Livingston facility was issued a
cease-and-desist order demanding the site clean up its act.
The order listed a series of violations: the unlined ponds allowed water
with nitrate levels four to five times above the regulated levels to seep
into the ground below. At least 190,000 cubic yards of sludge had
accumulated in the ponds as well, which further contributed to high levels
of nitrates in the soil.
Eventually, the water board reached a settlement with Foster Farms and the
city of Livingston to build a modern wastewater plant with a larger
capacity. The project is slated for completion some time in 2011.
Afterwards, Foster Farms will clean up the abandoned facility along the
river. In the meantime, the river of waste from Foster Farms and the ponds'
nitrates continue to pollute the groundwater below the site. In October
2008, two wells on the site registered nitrate levels two to four times
above the levels the water board allows.
A Foster Farms representative could not be reached but the company's Web
site noted their stance on waste and the environment: "At each stage of our
operations, from poultry ranches to processing, packaging, shipping,
distribution and corporate offices, we have implemented environmental
initiatives that promote recycling and reuse, increase energy efficiency,
reduce and eliminate waste, and improve air quality, while protecting our
precious natural resources."
Bigger operations
Livingston's industrial wastewater facility is just part of the county's
problem with animal-related wastewater created by an increasingly
industrialized farming sector.
After Tulare County, Merced has the most dairy cows and dairies in the
state, with 335 dairies here, according to the Merced County Public Health
Department. The county's cow population in 2007 was 243,762. That year those
cows produced more than 29 million pounds of manure.
Merced County also has the second-largest poultry industry in the state,
second only to Fresno County, according to 2002 data, the most recent
available from the regional water board.
Today, there are 45 poultry facilities in the county, according to the
county agricultural department. In 2007, there were 91.6 million chickens
processed for meat in the county and roughly seven million egg laying hens.
In total they produced 471,326 tons of poultry manure.
Regulators refer to industrial farms with large numbers of animals living in
close proximity as confined animal feeding operations (CAFO).
Their waste is only the first part of a chain that ends in finished
products. In Merced, that mainly means chickens and cheese.
Besides the second-highest population of bovines in the state, Merced also
has the single largest cheese plant in the country and the biggest chicken
plant on the West Coast. The milk from many of the county's dairies, as well
as many chickens from chicken farms, ends up at one of these two plants.
The cumulative effects of these industries' pollutants haven't been good.
For cows, that has meant the effects from their massive manure output.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the proper management of
dairy waste is "one of the state's most pressing environmental issues."
Chickens produce waste too, but much of it comes at the end of their lives.
One of the byproducts from chicken processing, like that of Foster Farm's
waste ponds, and cow manure is nitrate.
Nitrates, perhaps the most common and dangerous pollutant from these
industries, can sicken and even kill infants if it gets into the water
supply, according to Merced County's Department of Health.
Merced County may be a bucolic place filled with flowering almond orchards,
but some of the worst pollution in the county -- groundwater pollution -- is
connected to some of the very industries that are at the heart of the area's
economy.
To be sure, the economic benefits of these industries are undeniable. Hilmar
Cheese employs 750 people at its plant, 40 of whom work at the water
treatment plant. And according to David Sunding of the Department of
Agricultural & Resource Economics for the University of California,
Berkeley, the economic impact of Hilmar Cheese in Merced was more than $1.8
billion in 2005.