Concerned Area Residents for the Environment v. Southview Farm
34 F.3d 114, 1994 WL 480646 (1994)
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Rule of Law:
A large-scale animal feeding operation that confines animals in an unvegetated area qualifies as a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO), which is defined as a "point source" under the Clean Water Act. Discharges from such an operation, including runoff from fields over-saturated with liquid manure, are not shielded by the "agricultural stormwater" exemption.
Facts:
- Southview Farm is a large dairy operation with approximately 2,200 cattle, including 1,290 mature cows.
- The cows are confined in barns and are not pastured for grazing on the farm's fields.
- The farm collects liquid cow manure in several storage lagoons, one of which has a capacity of six to eight million gallons.
- Southview spreads millions of gallons of this liquid manure onto its crop fields using equipment such as large tanker vehicles, a center pivot irrigation system, and a "hard hose traveler" sprayer.
- On July 13, 1989, plaintiffs observed liquid manure that had been spread on a field flowing into a swale, through a pipe, into a ditch, and ultimately into a stream connected to the Genesee River.
- On other dates, such as September 26, 1990, and April 15, 1991, which experienced rainfall, witnesses observed runoff from fields that had been heavily saturated with liquid manure flowing into waterways.
Procedural Posture:
- Concerned Area Residents for the Environment (CARE) sued Southview Farm and its owner in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, alleging violations of the Clean Water Act (CWA).
- After a three-week trial, a jury returned a verdict in favor of CARE on five of the CWA violations.
- The defendants then filed a motion for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(b), asking the judge to set aside the jury's verdict.
- The district court judge granted the defendants' motion, overturning the jury's verdict on the five CWA claims.
- CARE, as the appellant, appealed the district court's judgment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
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Issue:
Do the liquid manure spreading operations of a large dairy farm, where waste runs off fields into navigable waters, constitute a discharge from a "point source" under the Clean Water Act, or are they exempt as non-point source agricultural stormwater discharges?
Opinions:
Majority - Oakes, J.
Yes, the liquid manure spreading operations constitute a discharge from a point source. The court identified multiple bases for this conclusion. First, the manure-spreading vehicles themselves, as "rolling stock," qualify as point sources. Second, the swale, pipe, and ditch that collected and channeled the manure runoff into the stream constitute a "discernible, confined and discrete conveyance," which is the definition of a point source. Most importantly, the entire farm operation qualifies as a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) because it confines more than 700 mature dairy cattle in an area where no vegetation is sustained. Under the Clean Water Act, a CAFO is explicitly defined as a point source. The district court erred by considering the presence of crops on adjacent fields; the determinative factor is the lack of vegetation in the actual area of confinement. Finally, the agricultural stormwater exemption does not apply because the discharges were not caused by precipitation, but by the farm's practice of over-saturating fields with manure, which then washed away during rainfall.
Analysis:
This decision is significant for environmental law as it clarifies that large, industrialized agricultural operations cannot use the agricultural stormwater exemption to shield themselves from Clean Water Act liability. By holding that a CAFO is a point source in its entirety and that its manure-spreading vehicles and runoff channels can also be point sources, the court narrowed a potential loophole. This precedent empowers citizen suits against large-scale farms, subjecting them to the same regulatory framework as other industrial polluters and distinguishing them from traditional farms whose runoff is treated as non-point source pollution.
