Many of us in northeast Ohio’s “soil and water world” were treated to a great day of training at an exceptional dairy farm earlier this month, as we visited Clardale Farms in Stark County for a field day coordinated by the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The focus of the training was a cause near to the hearts of all: agriculture pollution abatement.
Folks may not commonly realize that one of the many duties that befall your local soil and water crew is the investigation of agriculture pollution complaints.
Boots on the ground
When a call comes into the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution hotline, the next call made is to the soil and water conservation district operating in the county where the incident has taken place.
Because we are the most local to the site, familiar with the lay of the land and often known to producers as an agency that’s “here to help,” it makes sense for us to be the first “boots on the ground.”
In an emergency situation — when there has been an accidental manure overflow, discharge or surface application that has gone wrong — the critical first step is to locate the source and get it stopped.
Training on the day-to-day workings of an operating farm is key to understanding the many things that can go wrong resulting in an accidental discharge. The greatest advantage of visiting an operation like Clardale Farms is seeing firsthand the amount of thought, planning and preparation that conscientious producers go through to minimize the risks inherent in animal agriculture.
Clean water
During a tour of the facility, one thing that really jumped out at me was that water has been a big consideration in every move the dairy has made for decades.
Conservation of fresh water, efficient reuse of gray water and the safe segregation of clean stormwater on its way to the stream have all been exhaustively thought through before a spade had been turned, a post set or a slab of concrete poured.
One of our continuing mantras, as we work with producers in conservation planning, is: “keep the clean water clean.” Simply put, this means moving roof water and the rain that falls on surfaces uncontaminated by livestock waste — whether straight from the cow or inadvertently spread about by the wheels and tracks of machinery — beyond those areas where contamination can take place.
Safely routing this clean water by gravity through a gutter, pipe and open ditch across a landscape that’s seen a few hundred years of continuous change presents some unique challenges.
Efficiency
Containing and handling the wastewater that is inevitably produced by normal operations at Clardale begins first with an eye on conservation. “Begin with the end in mind,” a quote attributed to management guru Stephen Covey, comes immediately to mind.
The less clean water you use, the less dirty water you’ll need to deal with on the other end of the production process. That mind toward efficiency is evident throughout.
Fate and Mother Nature are both quite fond of testing the best-laid plans of men. The folks at Clardale are well aware of that truism and in response have added a unique feature that I’m sure many of us in the crowd wish could be added to every operation.
It’s a downhill detention basin that serves as a final collection point for every drop of rain that falls on the facility. If an accident should happen, the basin provides a single point where pollution can be stopped before having the chance to enter the waters of the state.
Whether or not a producer has a plan in place when an incident occurs, it’s important to know that local soil and water personnel are there to help identify the problem, get it stopped and work to ensure that the chances of it happening again are minimized. We are always, quite honestly “here to help.”
