Farm, feedlot operators accused of fouling aquifer
BURLEY, Idaho – Two state agencies have filed a lawsuit against a Cassia County farmer and feedlot manager, accusing them of injecting animal waste into the region’s aquifer.
The Idaho State Department of Agriculture and the Department of Environmental Quality filed the suit against Cory and Vicki King and their partner, Chris Drakos, of Blackfoot. The three own and operate the 16,000-acre Double C Farms and feeding operation southeast of Burley, the Twin Falls Times-News reported.
The agencies claim that workers with the Department of Environmental Quality found five water quality violations during an inspection on May 23, 2005.
The five alleged violations include a breach in the berm of the feedlot’s waste lagoon – which allowed wastewater to run into an irrigation pond – and two backflow prevention valves that had been installed backward on irrigation wells.
Inspectors also found that wastewater was being injected into the aquifer through an irrigation well.
Neither Drakos nor Cory King would comment on the lawsuit, but an attorney representing them at the Boise firm Givens Pursley said the corporation would “vigorously defend the lawsuit.”
Inspections done by the state Agriculture Department in 2003 and 2004 showed the corporation was in compliance with water laws, according to a release from the law firm.
The accusation that wastewater was injected into the aquifer “is absolutely false and unsupportable,” the release said.
In the lawsuit, the Agriculture Department and the Department of Environmental Quality claim that officials saw wastewater flowing from animal pens into Willow Creek, and that coliform and fecal coliform levels in the creek were extremely high. Two irrigation wells at the site also were found to have higher than allowed levels of fecal coliform and E. coli, according to the lawsuit.
The state is asking that either Double C Farms be fined $10,000 for each of the alleged violations or that the defendants be fined $1,000 a day until the corporation is in compliance, whichever amount is greater.