Environmentalists sue Outlook dairy over methanol emissions

While dairies across the country have been sued for various environmental threats, from contaminating water with liquid manure to illegal dumping in irrigation ditches, the lawsuit appears to be the first to target methanol under the federal Clean Air Act.

YAKIMA -- Local environmentalists made good Wednesday on their threat of a year ago to sue the DeRuyter Brothers Dairy in Outlook for allegedly polluting the air with methanol, a potentially hazardous airborne emission from manure, silage and, yes, cow gas.

While dairies across the country have been sued for various environmental threats, from contaminating water with liquid manure to illegal dumping in irrigation ditches, the lawsuit appears to be the first to target methanol under the federal Clean Air Act.

"This is yet another one of the problems with big dairies," said Charlie Tebbutt, a lawyer with the Western Environmental Law Center, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Yakima on behalf of the Community Association for Restoration of the Environment (CARE).

DeRuyter Brothers is one of the largest dairies in the state with more than 6,000 cows on about 100 acres.

The Western Environmental Law Center, which is based in Eugene, Ore. and has several offices around the West, threatened litigation last May against dairies in Washington and Nevada, claiming they must apply for state and federal permits under the Clean Air Act if they have the potential to emit 10 tons or more of methanol a year.

The lawsuit alleges that DeRuyter is emitting 20,000 pounds, which is 10 tons.

Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said they aren't aware of any instance in which the agency has required a methanol permit from a dairy.

"Methanol is a hazardous air pollutant under the Clean Air Act," said Pat Nair, an environmental engineer with the EPA in Boise. "But we've never seen it for a dairy. No one's really linked the methanol to dairies."

Tebbutt called the lawsuit is a "wake-up call" to the EPA and the Yakima Regional Clean Air Authority, which is designated by the state to issue air-
operating permits.

The DeRuyter families' lawyer, Lori Terry of Seattle, did not return phone calls requesting comment.

Jay Gordon, executive director of the Washington State Dairy Federation, said he doesn't believe Tebbutt and Helen Reddout, the president of CARE based in Granger, had made any overtures to the DeRuyters to talk about the issue.

"If this is a serious problem, we'll sit down and talk about it. We address serious issues," Gordon said. "But Charlie and Helen want to head to court."

Research on hazardous emissions from dairy cows and fresh manure is relatively limited. A study at the University of California, Davis, last year concluded that dairy cows and fresh manure have the potential to emit considerable amounts of alcohols, including methanol, but that more research is needed to determine what might be effective solutions.

The study found that lactating cows produced "considerably more gaseous emissions" than dry cows.

Excessive exposure to methanol has been linked to premature births, an increase in the number of births by Caesarean section and delay in sensory development in babies exposed prenatally.

The adversaries in the lawsuit know each other well. Reddout has long been an active environmentalist in the Lower Valley. A retired teacher, she comes from generations of a farming family.

CARE and Tebbutt sued the DeRuyters and other dairies in the late 1990s under the Clean Water Act and won a 2001 settlement that resulted in attorneys fees, a water-quality study and the planting of trees to buffer against the odor of manure. DeRuyter admitted no wrongdoing.