Quote HDF/Group 70 Draft environmental Impact Statement: With the dairy in operation, during periodic seasonal storm water runoff events (about 10 times a year) there may be additional nutrients introduced to the agricultural ditches which ultimately will drain to the
Quote HDF/Group 70 Draft environmental Impact Statement: With the dairy in operation, during periodic seasonal storm water runoff events (about 10 times a year) there may be additional nutrients introduced to the agricultural ditches which ultimately will drain to the near shore.
HDF always knew this runoff would occur, yet it took a massive and lengthy confrontation with facts beginning in January 2014, before they admitted it. Knowing that this awareness would create problems for them, they continued to send three different proposals for approval pledging “zero run off and no pollution.” They know they have 360 acres of ground that has a saturation rate of 0 to .20 inches. They know that significantly more than 10 days a year they will create the same condition that has destroyed a significant number of streams, rivers and ocean area in New Zealand.
Actually there are 26 single days in the last 25 years that exceed the amount of rain which created flooding from the Mahaulepu dairy area. About 27,000 gallons per acre falls with one inch of rain. In a not uncommon sustained storm event or rapid rain event, that’s nine million gallons of water per inch of rain, mixed with manure and urine that will drain to property ditches and on to the Waiopili stream running to the ocean.
Quote: ( HDF proposal, pg. 73) “However, less than two days after a heavy rain, with rapid removal of the surface water during and after a significant rain event they are observed dry enough to graze on.” Rapid removal to where? The ocean of course.
The ditches on the property will never be free of pollution: they can’t be; with full build out, the land will be covered each day with at least 100 tons of manure and urine.
Every day that amount falls on the land either by rainfall or sprinkler system, effluent is running an eventual path.
Why is any Kauai resident ignoring or favoring this project? I’ve smelled the Chico, California dairy stench that eventually ran the dairies out of there. Greeley Co. now tries to have funny signs and advertising to mitigate the smell from Momfort Beefs feed yards. Try the highway between Bakersfield and Tulare and see how pleasant that drive is, or the high way midway between Las Cruces and EL Paso. Has no one heard of the dairy disaster of Yakima Valley in Washington? Dairies the stocking size projected by HDF on only 570 acres have never been tried as other than a feed yard complex.
In reality, what Mahaulepu becomes is one large tilted effluent pond. Kauai should never be a testing area for a proposal that basics knowledge tell you it will do significant serious and lasting harm.
Again, why does any one favor such folly?
•••
Ronald John is a resident Salt Lake City, Utah.
