By John Henderer, The Chronicle, Feb 5, 1998
ADNA - Lucky for dairyman Tony Schilter, the manure police came up nearly empty. Now, if it weren't for those ducks.
Two state inspectors toured Schilter's dairy on Bunker Creek Road Wednesday afternoon as part of the state's expanding effort to guarantee clean water in rivers and streams.
Dairy inspections by the state Department of Ecology began in 1996 in the Chehalis River basin, where water stagnates and causes poor water quality.
State concerns originally focused on cities and industries that dumped wastewater directly into rivers. Studies on the total maximum daily load of pollutants allowable in the river indicated very low tolerance because of lake-like conditions near the city of Chehalis.
That led DOE to order the city and Darigold to halt summer discharges by 2003.
Now, DOE officials are fanning out, inspecting 54 dairies in the basin's 2,600 square miles upstream of Porter.They believe dairies and other indirect polluters may cause 50 percent of the river's pollution.
Sewage entering the river demands large amounts of oxygen, leaving little for biological life. In some cases, this can kill fish by the hundreds.
DOE inspectors travel in pairs because some farmers are inhospitable. Some have drawn guns on the inspectors and threatened bodily harm or death.
When farmers refuse to allow access to property, DOE can pursue a search warrant through a lengthy legal process or turn it over to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"The FBI would be here," Schilter said, during the inspection.
"No," answered DOE inspector Marilou Pivirotto, "the EPA."
"Well, what's the difference?" Schilter said.
Despite some apparent underlying resentment, Wednesday's inspection was friendly. Schilter, a Lewis County Conservation District board member, permitted a reporter from The Chronicle to observe the event. It was the first time DOE inspected his farm.
"We sure don't want to pollute," Schilter said.
Inspectors found little fault with Schilter's family dairy operation except for manure storage.
"I expected a more stringent, Hitler-type regime," he said, jokingly. "I think we got a good inspector. I think she's going to be fair."
Pivirotto questioned the farmer about his waste-management plan, buffers between manure spread as fertilizer and streams and waste storage.
Pivirotto and her partner ? Charles Toal, an Ecology fisheries biologist ? toured the farm, wearing hip waders and rubber boots. They inspected the silage storage area, feeding barn, adjacent fields, creeks and the farm's sewage lagoon. They took four water samples around the lagoon to check for runoff pollution.
Where inspectors discover manure dumping directly into a stream they may place the farm under a three-year permit, requiring monitoring and more inspections, unless the farmer can correct the problem quickly.
Pivirotto said Schilter's farm was one of the better ones she has inspected and not an example of a "downright dirty dairy." Some less-pristine dairies discharge manure directly into streams or rivers.
In one case, Pivirotto said she had to chisel through dried manure to reach a stream.
"Based on my inspection today, I wouldn't put him on a permit. He has a really good operation," she said. "He has some problems with storage."
Schilter milks 215 Holstein dairy cows and has about 125 more, including heifers and calves. Cow manure from the dairy is pumped into the 3-million-gallon lagoon. Schilter uses no commercial fertilizers. Instead, he applies the waste mixture as fertilizer, spraying it on about 250 acres of farmland with a gigantic sprinkler.
But during the winter months the spraying mostly ceases. Soils become saturated and grass stops growing. Until the plants can consume the putrid brew it accumulates.
On Wednesday, the lagoon appeared nearly in danger of topping its banks.
Pivirotto said Schilter must pump down the level to avoid spilling waste into an adjacent stream.
"His lagoon is too full," Pivirotto said. "It's going to overflow, or he has to spray."
Under a tentative plan discussed Wednesday, Schilter will build another sewage lagoon this summer.
Schilter's wife, Sunny, questioned whether they could afford it, signaling her husband during the discussion with a hand gesture to represent money concerns.
"It's out of our pocket and we don't have it because we're still catching up from the last two years we were down," she said.
"I'm not saying you have to get another lagoon," Pivirotto said, noting they can be "a headache." "The only thing we care about is keeping the water clean."
DOE does not allow farmers to discharge manure into streams or dump it in fields. It can be applied as a liquid fertilizer, as Schilter does.
But the waste must be distributed at "agronomic" rates that don't overwhelm the fields, in which plants can use it as food, Pivirotto said.
Schilter jokingly urged the inspectors to ignore murky water in a ditch near the lagoon, blaming it on a flock of wild mallard ducks seen flying away as the tour group approached.
"I don't own those mallards," he said. "See, that's not my fault, that's the ducks."
"I know," Pivirotto responded. "It's the ducks."