SEWERS OF THE LAND
Every Silence Tells a Story
Like a relative that no one wants to talk about; the County’s Plan tiptoes around the effects of agricultural pollution in a blatant example of skewed environmental reporting.
The presentation of some of the arguments is a bit technical; the facts are unequivocal.
The County Plan: “Fall Creek, Cayuga Inlet, and Sixmile Creek play a significant role in determining the quality of water in the southern basin of Cayuga Lake as they contribute approximately 40 percent of all the surface water entering the southern end of the lake.”
• Salmon Creek is located in Tompkins County and is one of “the three largest watersheds in the Cayuga basin as a whole.”
“The watershed land uses range from the highly urban and forested Cayuga Inlet to the mostly agricultural Salmon Creek.”
Nutrient pollution from runoff and groundwater discharge “are relatively minor in the urbanized watershed but are much more significant in the two more agricultural watersheds, Fall Creek and Salmon Creek. The high contributions from groundwater in those watersheds, 55% and 72%, respectively, pose difficult challenges for management because only long-term changes in land use can reduce these loads.” — Quoted from Nutrient Loads to Cayuga Lake, New York: Watershed Modeling on a Budget, 2012
Why was Salmon Creek or agricultural pollution never mentioned in the County’s Plan?
The County Plan: “Most of the phosphorus that enters the southern end of Cayuga Lake is bound up with the sediment carried by Fall Creek, Cayuga Inlet, and Sixmile Creek. This sediment is largely the result of stormwater runoff and erosion of stream banks.”
• Actually, the percentage of bioavailable particulate phosphorus [available nutrient for algae growth] measured in Salmon Creek was more than twice that of Fall Creek, and more than three times that of both Cayuga Inlet, and Six Mile Creek. [Phosphorus Bioavailabiltiy and Loads, Upstate Freshwater Institute, 10/22/2015]
The County Plan: “Impaired water bodies and their related pollutants, are published by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC). The most recent list published in 2012 identified the southern end of Cayuga Lake as impaired by three pollutants: phosphorus, silt/sediment, and pathogens.”
Phosphorus
• “Mean annual TP [Total Phosphorus] load to Cayuga Lake is just under 100 Mg∕year, of which 60 Mg∕year is DP [Dissolved Phosphorus.] The largest source of both DP and TP is agricultural runoff, providing 45% of the DP and 47% of the TP. Urban runoff provides 13% of the TP but negligible DP. The largest urban TP source, at 8%, is high-density impervious residential land.” — Quoted from Nutrient Loads to Cayuga Lake, New York: Watershed Modeling on a Budget, 2012
Silt/sediment
• The County’s Plan makes no mention is made of the wide-spread agricultural practice of “tiling” fields [installing subsurface drainage on the entire field]. Tiling will drain a field in minutes, rather than hours; not only causing water to flow into streams more quickly and allowing less water to replenish the groundwater, but increasing the flow of sediment and manure into Cayuga Lake tributaries.
Pathogens
• The County’s Plan makes no mention of pathogens.
• From “The Effects that Liquid and Solid Cattle Manure have on the Water Quality of Drainage Ditches in Putnam County, Ohio”, Bowling Green State University, Janelle Horstman, 2014: “Conclusion” – “My results allow me to conclude that the most nutrient and pathogen pollution occurs after large rainstorm events, especially after manure has been applied to land for months with no precipitation events, and after manure application on frozen ground. These results support the findings from similar studies. I can also generalize that many of the soils from the field sites that I collected from had buildups of phosphorus, which likely contributed to the high concentrations of phosphorus in the runoff samples that I collected. I can also conclude that the manure pathogens that I examined for antibiotic resistance were resistant to high levels of ampicillin. This result further supports the severity of antibiotic resistance and the negative health effects and environmental effects that they can cause.”
• From “Antibiotic Resistance, Gene Transfer, and Water Quality Patterns Observed in Waterways near CAFO Farms and Wastewater Treatment Facilities” West; Liggit; Clemans & Francoeur, 2009: “Increased phosphorus levels were also detected after precipitation in the agriculturally impacted areas, and fecal coliform densities were much higher after precipitation. The strong correlation of turbidity, total phosphorus, and fecal coliform densities suggests a common source for these parameters. Elevated total phosphorus, turbidity, and fecal coliform densities are presumed to be the direct result of runoff from nearby tiled fields sprayed with liquid manure as reported by MDNRE in numerous previous waste discharge infractions by the CAFO farms in close proximity to our AI sites (Michigan Department of Environmental Quality 2003a, 2004b).”
The “Point Source” Runaround
The County’s Plan claims:
“New York State regulates pollution discharge into waters through its State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) permit program, including the control of all point source discharges to surface waters. The program is designed to maintain water quality consistent with public health, public enjoyment of water bodies, protection and propagation of fish and wildlife, and industrial development in the state.”
But fails to mention that this program does not adequately regulate pollution from agricultural sources:
• From “Maintaining a Healthy Water Supply While Growing a Healthy Food Supply: Legal Tools for Cleaning Up Agricultural Water Pollution” Mary Jane Angelo, Professor of Law & Director, Environmental and Land Use Law Program University of Florida Levin College of Law: “The Clean Water Act provides a comprehensive regulatory scheme for many discharges of pollutants to waters of the United States. Through the primarily regulatory NPDES permitting program, significant improvements have been made to the quality of the country’s water bodies. However, the NPDES permitting program only applies to point sources discharges, thus most agricultural discharges are not subject to permitting or other federal regulatory control. Nonpoint sources, including those from agriculture, remain the most significant water quality challenge facing the nation. Moreover, the CWA’s exemption from section 404 permitting for normal farming practices continues to allow many wetlands to be degraded by agricultural activities. Because the CWA does not provide direct federal authority for regulating many agricultural sources of water pollution and wetlands degradation, the responsibility for addressing water quality degradation from agricultural activities has fallen largely to the states. To date, most programs designed to address agricultural water pollution have been voluntary or incentive-based programs designed to encourage farmers to implement best management practices. These programs have been only minimally successful, and agricultural pollution continues to be one of the most significant sources of water quality degradation in the United States, meaning that there is a need for a more comprehensive regulatory system to address the water impacts of farming.”
Stormwater Runoff and Flooding
The County Plan: “Increased stormwater runoff has a significant impact on floodplain management. As land area is converted to more urbanized uses, the amount of impervious surface associated with that land use generally increases, causing water to flow into streams more quickly and allowing less water to replenish the groundwater.”
• Once again, the County refuses to acknowledge agricultural sources as a problem. When the increased runoff from “tiled” farm fields: an opaque, strong smelling liquid blend of water, sediment and agricultural contaminants; began to overflow the ditch in front of my house and spread across my lawn — the County merely dug a deeper ditch and put in a larger culvert.
Wetland Protection
The County Plan: “At the state level, NYSDEC regulates wetlands of at least 12.4 acres in size and smaller wetlands of unusual local importance. Taken together, these regulations have the effect of leaving responsibility for regulation of isolated wetlands of less than 12.4 acres to local governments. Identification and protection of these otherwise newly unregulated wetlands is a priority.”
• However New York State Agricultural Law has a different priority for land use that allows “grazing and watering livestock, making reasonable use of water resources, harvesting natural products of the wetlands, selectively cutting timber, draining land or wetlands for growing agricultural products and otherwise engaging in the use of wetlands or other land for growing agricultural products,” thereby completely undercutting the authority of local government to protect these valuable wetlands.
Riparian Corridors
The County Plan: “Riparian corridors are the lands bordering streams and represent a transition zone from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems. Maintaining lands adjacent to streams in their undeveloped state helps to support the natural functions associated with stream buffers, including protecting water quality, stabilizing stream banks and preventing erosion, trapping sediment and nutrients, improving floodwater retention and groundwater recharge, and shading stream channels in summer.
Riparian stream buffers in headwaters have proportionally greater impact on watershed health than buffers in downstream waters. Clean and healthy headwater streams are critical for protecting the water quality, stream stability, and wildlife habitat of an entire watershed. The downstream effects of even minimal disturbances in small upstream creeks may be compounded as waters join to feed into larger and larger streams.
Providing vegetated buffers of at least 100 feet either side of stream banks, or 50 feet from intermittent streams, is critical in achieving water quality benefits”
• Unfortunately, New York State NRCS agricultural manure spreading standards for CAFOs requires only 35-foot setback, where the entire setback width is a vegetated buffer; and just a 15-foot setback with incorporation within 24 hours of application to be maintained between manure applications and surface waters and surface inlets.
Well Water
The County Plan: “The amount of available drinking water is primarily an issue in rural areas that obtain drinking water from groundwater. As more homes and businesses are built in these areas, they are supported by new wells withdrawing more water from groundwater supplies. In some parts of the county it has been observed that new wells noticeably decrease the supply of water in nearby wells.”
• While slamming rural families; the County’s Plan deliberately ignores the massive negative impact that current “farming practices,” especially that of CAFOs, are having on the county’s groundwater supply. One CAFO owner in Minnesota reported a well water use of 570,200,000 gallons in 2017. [The average unrestricted water use for a family of four is 320 to 400 gallons a day.]
When the County’s Plan recommends that “Land uses and facilities that pose the greatest threats to groundwater should be located away from areas that contribute to drinking water supplies” — they are clearly excluding agriculture.
Climate Change – Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The County Plan: “While global energy and climate problems cannot be solved exclusively at the local level, and leadership is needed from global, federal, and state organizations, locally we can identify, plan for, and take steps to address these issues.”
“PRINCIPLE Tompkins County should be a place where the energy system meets community needs without contributing additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”
The Plan goes on to state:
“Emissions from residential, commercial, and industrial buildings together accounted for the largest proportion of community emissions and transportation accounted for more than a third of all community emissions.”
But finally admits:
“. . . it appears that it would be more accurate to use a much greater GWP for methane to reflect its extreme potency in the shorter duration when reductions will most help in limiting warming that may result in a cascade of uncontrollable negative impacts. Such an analysis of methane will likely be incorporated into future energy plans, and would primarily affect the waste and agriculture sectors, as they are currently the highest emitters of methane.”
This admission that the “agricultural sector” is one of the “highest emitters of methane” is the one and only time that the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan acknowledges the negative impact of any agricultural practice on either the residents or the environment; and even then only states that it “will likely be incorporated into future energy plans.“
• Farm use of distillate fuels increased by nearly 11% between 2010 and 2015, more than 8 times the residential sector increase, while both the commercial and industrial use declined according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Open Burning
• While New York State prohibits the burning of garbage or leaves year round: Agricultural exemptions for open burning allow farmers to burn as much “agricultural waste” as they want, whenever they want. This includes but is not limited to: “Agricultural wastes generated on site, Naturally grown products, Fully organic waste generated on premise, Paper feed bags, wood shavings, baling twine, and other non-plastic materials.” This exemption also extends to “liquid petroleum fueled smudge pots.” This last is a further example of New York State’s ecological foot-dragging, since other states have already implemented incentive programs to move farmers to the much cleaner burning propane.
Conclusion
The City and Town of Ithaca sit like a spider in the center of the county; with redistricting placing 8 of the 14 Legislative Districts at least partly within their borders. The large student population living there [30% of the county’s total population] gives those County legislators a great deal of power; but little accountability, from a constantly shifting youthful population with no history or permanent ties to the area, and no association with the county’s rural communities. This leaves county and local government vulnerable to the influence of corporate and corporately-controlled entities like Cornell, and Cornell Cooperative Extension; who are only too ready to guide the future of the county and to serve their own interests. Tompkins County’s repeated refusal to acknowledge the amount or extent of agricultural pollution in any of their planning and reporting is clear evidence of this influence.
“Tompkins County” is in the process of yet another redistricting: in a program of ridding themselves of the rural population whose traditions and ethnicity they deride — and whose lands they covet.