ANR hearing scheduled for  6:00 PM, Dec. 2  at Twinfield Union School in Plainfield.

Before this diary peters out and off the front page, I’d like to suggest that anyone who finds this news disturbing take a couple of minutes to e-mail ANR and tell them so. If AgriMark/Cabot wants to discharge waste over additional lands, why aren’t they simply told to build that sewage treatment plant?  The pertinent ANR address is:   ANR.WWMD.PublicComment@state.vt.us and the permit is BR95-0213  AgriMark/Cabot Waste Water Indirect Discharge

Events like Saturday’s Environmental Action Conference in Randolph provide a much needed “tune-up”‘ to the activist engine, which sometimes begins to falter due to unmet expectation and sheer fatigue.  Perhaps the most important feature of these events is the opportunity they provide for fledgling groups to network and resource for one another.  

It was in this way that I heard some alarming details about the “dairy waste” spraying that Agri Mark/Cabot has been routinely practicing in northeastern Vermont for many years.  Cabot resident, Jill Alexander, attended the Environmental Action Conference as a representative  of Whey To Go, a grassroots group of concerned citizens who are asking ANR to deny Agri Mark/Cabot’s current request to add additional properties to the land over which waste may be dispersed.*** The group contends that the original permit specified whey as the material to be dispersed, and that since whey has been identified as a marketable bi-product of cheese-making, it is no longer the primary material in the sprayings.  Instead of whey, a cocktail of chemicals from production and clean-up predominate in the current mix.  Whey to Go takes the position that this noxious effluent represents a threat to human health and the environment, and that it’s discharge does not comply with the original permit.

(***Please note this is a revision to the original text which read,”…to expand permitted spraying operations from 100,000 gallons per day to 150,000 gallons per day. I have just received the text of the public notice from ANR, which prompted this revision.)

Apparently, there are also three unlined lagoons in Cabot, that were formerly whey ponds but now reportedly hold “polished permeate,”  which I gather is sort of  a generic term that does not actually identify the chemical composition of the liquid but rather the process from which it resulted. Whey to Go says that in the late 80’s, Cabot was granted a land-use permit to build a waste treatment plant in order to handle the material collected in these ponds which had already been identified as problematic to the environment.   The plant was never built and the collection of material in the unlined lagoons and spraying of waste water continues to the present.  Jill reports that there is a high incidence of cancers in the region, and it is believed that among other things, the wastewater contains substances such as benzene, a known carcinogen; and tolulene, a lung irritant.

Seven Days did some in-depth reporting on the situation last year, highlighting ANR’s failure to adequately monitor the spraying operation and providing a little background on the phantom waste treatment plant that never got built:

The current fight over Agri-Mark’s Act 250 permit is not the first time that Cabot’s waste-disposal processes have come under the microscope. In 1986, when the creamery was undergoing a major expansion, the state told the company it must build a sewage treatment plant by 1991, since many of the fields it uses for land application are in the headwaters of the Lamoille, Connecticut and Winooski rivers.

The creamery even received a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to build the plant in Cabot. But, for various reasons, the plant was never built and the funds were diverted to other uses. A few years later, the legislature changed the legal definition of dairy waste so it no longer qualified as “sewage,” eliminating the need for the treatment plant.

Whey to Go is holding a public informational meeting at 6:00 PM on November 16, at Cabot Commons, 36 Glinka Rd. in Cabot, and they really hope people from all over the affected region will make a point of being there.  Contact Jill Alexander: 4reiki@fairpoint.net with any questions.

The ANR public hearing concerning AgriMark’s request to expand the volume of spraying will take place on December 2 at 6:00 PM at the Twinfield Union School, 106 Nasmith Rd. in Plainfield.  It is vitally important to have a strong public showing at the hearing in order to send a clear message to ANR that clean-up of the Cabot operation is a public priority.

Chances are pretty good that if you don’t live in one of the towns that have been exposed to the spraying, you do live near one of the affected streams, brooks and rivers.  I am adding a long list of the affected communities and waterways at the end of this posting.  Have a look and try to be at the ANR Hearing if you can’t make it to the November 16 pre-meeting:

Affected Towns: Plainfield, Glover, Marshfield, St. Johnsbury, Lyndon, Sheffield, Barton, Craftsbury, Cabot, Hardwick, Peacham, Walden, Danville, East Montpelier, Greensboro, Albany, Wolcott, Calais, Barnet, Wheelock, Barton, Brookfield, Stannard, Irasburg, Morristown

Jill has just sent me some additional information that I thought I would share with you:

…there are three ways Agri-Mark disposes of waste:

1.  The non-sewage dairy wastewater is sprayed onto fields via trucks.

2.  This same non-sewage dairy wastewater is trucked to farmer’s manure pits and pumped into them so the farmers can spread it “wily nilly” without restrictions at all.

3.  The so called polished permeate is pumped from the Agri-Mark main building to three unlined lagoons where it is stored.  They claim this stuff is “pure water” but aren’t allowed to put it into the river directly.  (Does that tell you that it isn’t “pure water” or what!)  Then it is pumped UPHILL for about a quarter of a mile.  This stuff is Not ALLOWED to be land applied anywhere else except on my old family farmstead and a small field below it.  There are huge sprayers, we counted around 20 but I never wanted to go near enough to physically count them, that solely spray this junk onto the same areas from something like May-Nov. 1 EVERY DAY in hopes that it will “evaporate” and become airborne.  Naturally since I live due East of these sprayers, I am bound to get some residues.  The remained of the “permeate” water runs downhill and makes it’s path wherever water does with the Winooski river nearby.  At a District 5 environmental commission site visit, I insisted that we visit the fields, lagoons.  Pecolar (AGri-Mark) insisted that there were no sprayers in the beautiful old hayfields on our old farm.  I rather forced them to stop and walked the entire commission and citizens out into my old field  (which Agri-Mark had purposely turned the sprayers off that day probably in fear that this might happen,) and showed them that there were INDEED many, many sprayers located there and discovered even more of them on a steep slope on a field below that one. (I would estimate at least 20 sprayers)   I also pointed out areas where cinderblocks were placed to slow down the flow of these waters and apparent erosion clear to me and Jessica Miller to be the result of water flow that had been taken place.  I also noted that our beautiful hayfield had turned to moss.  Agri-Mark announced that they were going to have it planted to winter rye but had been letting my neighbor grow pumpkins commercially there for the past couple of years.  The upper part of that same field has been seen to also receive “non-sewage dairy waste” sprayings as well.  No pumpkins were planted this year at all so apparently things didn’t grow that well there as my neighbor reported across the street.  On that same site visit, District 5 Environmental, Agri-Mark, party status members present, I asked Agri-Mark’s Pecolar why the backhoes were down making repairs on these lagoons several times if they were so secure.  He at first denied this and then when I reported that I SAW them there several times he offered up that the Muskrats had made holes in the sides of the embankment causing the ponds to “leak” on many occasions.