The border battle over a proposed 4,000 cow dairy in Brookings County South Dakota will be decided in court on Wednesday. A group in Minnesota that includes the Lake Hendricks Improvement Association, City of Hendricks and a neighboring landowner are appealing the decision of the Brookings County Zoning Board, which approved the conditional use permit for Michael Crinion and Global Dairy. Chuck Nygaard is on the Lake Hendricks Improvement Association Board. He says they oppose the project site because it will be located on the Buffalo Ridge, in the Deer Creek Watershed and just upstream from the lake.
Nygaard says they also have concerns about how the manure will be handled at the site and applied on the land, due to previous violations by Global Dairy as well as outdated regulations in South Dakota. He says they’re also objecting to the project because South Dakota’s environmental rules are not as strict as Minnesota’s.
In fact He says Brookings is one of four counties in eastern South Dakota that is part of a pilot project that has nearly 400 preapproved sites for CAFOs. As a result, Nygaard believes this is just one of the many legal challenges the state of South Dakota will see as it tries to expand the dairy industry. The appeals case will be heard in Brookings District Court on Wednesday at 10:30 am.