Surprising

In San Joaquin Valley, Cows Pass Cars as Polluters
Air district says bovines on the region's booming dairy farms are the
biggest single source of smog-forming gases. The industry takes
issue.
By Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writer
August 2, 2005

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...home-headlines

Got smog?

California's San Joaquin Valley for some time has had the dirtiest
air in the country. Monday, officials said gases from ruminating
dairy cows, not exhaust from cars, are the region's biggest single
source of a chief smog-forming pollutant.

Every year, the average dairy cow produces 19.3 pounds of gases,
called volatile organic compounds, the San Joaquin Valley Air
Pollution Control District said. Those gases react with other
pollutants to form ground-level ozone, or smog.

With 2.5 million dairy cows — roughly one of every five in the
country — emissions of almost 20 pounds per cow mean that cattle in
the San Joaquin Valley produce more organic compounds than are
generated by either cars or trucks or pesticides, the air district
said. The finding will serve as the basis for strict air-quality
regulations on the region's booming dairy industry.

The San Joaquin Valley, Houston and Los Angeles have the three worst
air-pollution problems in America. Their relative rank varies from
year to year depending in part on weather conditions. Over the last
six years, however, the San Joaquin Valley has violated the federal
limit on ozone smog over an eight-hour period more than any other
region. That "eight-hour standard" is the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's main barometer for the severity of smog.

The dairy industry will be forced to invest millions of dollars in
expensive pollution-control technology in feedlots and waste lagoons,
and may even have to consider altering animals' diets to meet the
region's planned air-quality regulations. Not surprisingly, industry
officials challenged the estimate as scientifically unsound.

"Science is supposed to guide this regulation, not fairy dust," said
Michael Marsh, chief executive officer of Western United Dairymen, a
lobbying group that said it was considering a lawsuit to block
regulations based on the new finding. "It's impossible to capture
emissions that scientists can't even detect."

Air-quality regulators defended their estimate as a conservative one
based on the best available research. But it was criticized by some
scientists — including one whose work was used by the district to
arrive at the figure.

"If you closed all the dairies in California tomorrow, you would not
see much of an impact on ozone formation," said the scientist, Frank
Mitloehner of UC Davis, who was hired by air-quality officials to
study cow emissions and now contends his findings were misconstrued.

"We really don't have the science to back this number up," he said.

Five members of Congress and 12 state legislators had demanded that
the district reconsider a similar draft estimate, calling it absurdly
high. Environmentalists and some community groups, meanwhile, called
the same figure too low.

The entire exercise of estimating cow emissions has been lampooned on
talk radio as "fart science" run amok —although most gas actually
comes from the front end of the cow.

"I'd like to challenge the people that came up with this information
to enclose yourself in a shop with a cow, and at the same time have
someone enclose themselves in a similar shop with a car or truck
running," one critic, Steve Hofman of Ripon, Calif., wrote to the
Modesto Bee. "Then let me know the results."

Cars do emit many significant pollutants that cows do not, and they
are responsible for more smog-forming emissions overall. But in a
region where many children suffer from asthma and officials issue
smog warnings on hot summer days, supporters of strong regulations
said the role of cows in emitting organic gases is no laughing
matter.

"This is not some arcane dispute about cow gases," said Brent Newell,
an attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. "We
are talking about a public health crisis. It's not funny to joke
about cow burps and farts when one in six children in Fresno schools
is carrying an inhaler."

The dairy industry is growing fast in the San Joaquin Valley as farms
driven out of the Chino area in Southern California by urbanization
move into the Central Valley. Government officials estimate that over
the next several years, the number of cows in the San Joaquin air
basin will increase from 2.5 million to about 2.9 million.

Although air-quality officials now have a figure on the extent of the
cow pollution problem, it remained unclear how far they could push
dairies to reduce bovine emissions.

Most of the gases, scientists believe, come from the bovine digestive
process, which consists of constantly swallowing and regurgitating
food. This is known as rumination, or "chewing the cud," which
produces large amounts of gas.

Cow manure is also a major source of emissions and will probably be
targeted for regulation. Officials said they may also require dairies
to alter the food cows eat in order to reduce flatulence.

New dairies will be required to use the best available equipment to
curtail emissions. Existing dairies will face less-restrictive
requirements, but will also be forced to make changes to reduce cow
gases.

Possible measures include scraping manure from cow corrals more
frequently so it won't fester in the heat and installing digesters to
break down pollution in the lagoons where cow waste is later flushed.

"We need immediate regulation now. We know the pollutants are coming
off these dairies," said Tom Frantz, a native of Shafter, Calif., who
heads a group called the Assn. of Irritated Residents. He says that
he developed asthma in the last five years as factory dairy farms
moved into the region. "Ag hasn't been regulated in the past, but
times are changing. Our lungs will not become an agricultural
subsidy."