Stream contaiminated

[agmantoo]

I have spent the last few days putting a second partition fence between my place and the neighbor's to better isolate my cattle from theirs. The recently closed dairy is now raising replacement heifers for others and leased. That farm has a good spring and the water leaves that farm and flows onto mine. Yesterday the spring water was pristine. Today it is as a cesspool. The lagoon was pumped through an irrigation system onto the pastures of the defunct dairy and obviously with no one attending to the task. The pumped lagoon contents went into the spring water! I was depending on grazing the cattle in this area for the next two months and I need to water the cattle using the spring as a source. What action would you take if this happened at your place? Here is the spring water today as it enters onto my place.

[KSALguy]

are they still pumping the lagoon? if they stopped the stream should run clear before too long,

[oneokie]

If it was the only source of water, I would be on the phone with DEQ, local health dept. and EPA.

[gone-a-milkin]

Hopefully it does run clear really soon.

If you decide you are going to call, be sure your place is perfect beforehand.
Once those EPA folks start investigating, all the neighbors will get looked at carefully too.
Just saying.

Good luck. What a crappy thing for the neighbor to do.

[CrashTestRanch]

agmantoo, is there some redundancy built into your watering system? I have this concern too, being in an Open Range county and seasonal water flows thru my property as well as multiple neighbors, if one of decides to "alter" or contaminate the seasonal flow, the rest of the folks are &^%$*. I feel your pain.

I have looked into building our own stock ponds as back-ups to the well and seasonal flows. I need the "security" of water if something happens, I cannot afford to lose a herd, I'm too poor for that kinda hardship.

[jBlaze]

Dept of Ag
DEQ
County Water Master
Look into what sort of water rights each property has.
What dort of discharge permits - if there was a lagoon built there has to be some sort of permit for that I would think?
County extension office
Soil and Water Conservation Districe
Local Watershed council

[triple divide]

Depends on what state you live in. Here in Pa there are definate options that could be persued as mentioned by others. I personaly wouldn't go that route. Something in my nature prohibits me from involving an agency like DEP in an action against a neighbor. I'd go to the source and document everything including recording a meeting at the site. If reparations weren't made, I'd sue for any damages and clean-up. But, that's me.

If you live in NC, you're screwed, blued, and tatooed. IME (and I have plety of it in NC) lagoon oopsi-daisies happen with such frequency almost nobody wants to be bothered by them. Things may have changed in the past five years sice I farmed there though...

I wish you luck.

[Madsaw]

Well, here in dairy country. What you have is a case for the Department of Natural Resources. If its their first offence they will get off with a mild fine. If they admit knowingly pumping it and knowing it will contaminate groud water then they better get rid to get the hell fined out of them. I woulld keep my cattle away from it for a couple of months atleast. Due to the diease that can be in the slurry and bacterias its better safe then sorry.Bob

[topside1]

I wish I could contribute more, unbelievable mess.

[springvalley]

Well first thing I would do is talk to the neighbor, tell him whats up and you don`t like the manure running in the creek, if he tells you to go jump in the creek then you may have to play hard ball. I would not call any government office unless your ready to open a big can of worms. They are not such nice guys around here, as they have shut down several small farms with runoff problems. So be very careful who you call about what, as you will be looked at also. Hope you get this resolved soon, maybe a good rain will flush it out. >Thanks Marc

[onthespot]

So sorry this happened. That's just awful. Do the neighbors have any clean water source they can spare you?

[Ebenezer]

Hate to see it. Was it intentional or a broken irrigation pipeline? Nothing you can do for WQ until the water clears and you can test or nitrates. I'd chlorinate it after it looks clear to drop out any diseases and such.

[agmantoo]

Ebenezer
The problem arose from an unattended lagoon waste pump pumping through an irrigation system. Negligence!

[pointer_hunter]

I know the DEQ here in Michigan is very strict when the want to be on these matters. A local farmer has had a small stream run through his cattle pasture for decades. DEQ came in and gave him a specific timeframe to have it fixed up. He had two choices. 1 - Fence the entire stream off so that the cows couldn't get into the stream and pipe water to them. 2 - Fence off the stream and put fencing in so that the cows could only get their mouths into the water and not any other part of their body. With that, they needed to follow DEQ requirements for making a landing made from specific stone gravel built at a specific graded slope. ...He went with the fence method.