Iowa defends itself against a legal action by the state because of a water spill that killed 163,000 fishes and fouled 18 miles of stream in the northwestern part.
On Tuesday, the US Environmental Protection Commission unanimously voted to refer Sunrise Farms to the attorney general for enforcement of violations of administrative regulations and state laws. Sunrise Farms has 23 barns that hold up to 8 million hens near Harris. Since the DNR has limitations in its administrative regulations, the violations were referred to the attorney general in more severe cases.
KCCI reported that the lawyer of Sunrise Farms, an affiliate of Sioux Falls Sonstegard Foods, says the wastewater discharge happened a few months after the bird flu outbreak which killed 3.8 million chickens. Sunrise Farms said that they never had experience with this kind of production issue since they started the egg business.
According to The Des Moines Register, the egg industry in Iowa employs about 8,000 individuals and contributes about $2 billion in total sales. Nearly six years, Iowa's egg industry sickened thousands of people due to a salmonella outbreak. A study made by Iowa Farm Bureau in 2015 estimated that the state bird-flue related losses reached $1.2 billion.
The company is hopeful to get the complaints resolved and use the process to improve upon the issues raised by Eldon McAfee and the DNR. The documents submitted by the DNR to the commission indicate that the farm is allowed to treat and hold wastewater from its egg breaking operations in lagoons, reports Miami Herald.
An on-site farm manager, who denied knowing what happened, was grilled by the DNR. Days after the investigation made by DNR agents, he acknowledged telling the farm's night shift workers to dump 12 truckloads of wastewater. The DNR reported that each truckload of wastewater holds as much as 1,500 gallons.
The dumping of waste water clearly violated a section of Iowa law which prohibits the discharge of pollutants in waterways. It also violates an administrative regulations of DNR that prohibits farms from dumping wastewater contrary to their licenses and prohibiting wastewater toxic to plan, animals, and human life from being released.
474 permits for new and expanding livestock farm in 2015 were approved by the DNR.
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