"Please forward this. Thank you, Jan Whitefoot (509)-848-2539
Subject: Landowners beware
Letter to the editor
Landowners Beware
Have you taken the time to examine your leases before signing them? After talking to several people about leases, here is some information you might find interesting.
Trust land is being leased to dairies and or LLCs (Limited Liability Corporations) in dairy’s names. These leases includes some land owned by the tribe. Why should you be concerned? The dairies are still being encouraged to do business on the Yakama Reservation.
The Dairy Industry has made it legal to compost their dead cows on site. What’s wrong with this? Many feedlot cows die from disease, not old age. These animals are not being tested for prions (Mad Cow). All the law requires is 2 feet of manure under the dead animal and 3 feet of manure on top. No barrier under the animal is required. In some places our water table is 4 foot deep. Do you see the potential for disaster? According to John H. Kirk’s, University of California Davis, “Pathogens in Manure,” study, there are over 400 pathogens in manure. Over 200 of these pathogens are harmful to humans. Some paid dairy experts will try and tell you that composting destroys all harmful pathogens. Not true. If you get on WSU’s, mortality composting website and dig a little deeper, you will find neither composting and or digesters can destroy all the heavy metals, prions and diseases in feedlot manure. To make matters worse, a local manure composter says he gets ponch from the local slaughterhouse and has seen dead cows in the manure he uses. He calls his manure “organic compost.” I see these piles of manure stacked near tribal members backyards. These piles of manure have the potential to pollute individual tribal wells and make people sick.
Another issue with some leases I have examined is that the bonding which is on a lease to protect the land, is being waived. What’s wrong with that? In Chino, CA, where many of the Yakima Valley Dairies have migrated from, dairies have created a “Brown Zone,” where nothing will grow. Who pays for these ecological disasters costing millions of dollars to clean up? Take a look at the Sunnyside feedlot that was supposedly cleaned up. It created a 700 foot pile of manure. After several years nothing will grow on this property. What is the value of this land now? Who is cleaning the groundwater?
According to government guidelines on leases, when the lease is up, your property is supposed to be returned to you in good condition. Who is monitoring this situation? No one. There is no enforcement, no protection on these leases.
What happens if the ground water is contaminated on your property? Who pays? Who is liable?
The huge mega dairy trying to go in near the Tri Cities is proposed to use 1 million gallons of drinking water a day. We have a 14,000 cow dairy near Harrah. Do the Math. How much of our drinking water are these factory farms depleting? Did you know some of these dairies are getting this drinking water for free? What is happening to the aquifer underneath your property?
Last summer, a Sunnyside dairy brought manure in from Sunnyside and applied it on land on Pumphouse Road. What’s wrong with that? Dairies are supposed to apply manure in agronomic rates. Some local dairies/feedlots are using poop sprinklers to get rid of their manure. This may super saturate the soil where some crops may become poisonous for consumption by animals and or humans.
The WA State Dept. of Ecology's Granger Drain Study said 150 tons of nutrient loading (manure) a day was going into the Yakima River. The report by Greg Bohmn said the source of this manure was 5 dairies. What about the fish? Who's watching out for them? No fines. No one cares.
No one monitors this either. Do we want the Yakama Reservation to become the dumping grounds for the whole state? Our we willing to let these mega, corporate polluters lease our land, and leave when they have used up and destroyed our health, land, air and aquifer? What can you do as an individual? Question the officials preparing your leases. Demand that your land and resources be protected from outside exploiters. Jan Whitefoot , Harrah, WA 509-848-2539"
Smart land owners, lessors, and activists, and advocates will educate every tribal member and every other concerned land owner to aggressively negotiate leases in favor of the land owners or to have the Tribal Councils nation-wide pass resolutions specifically addressing the ownership of the waste materials generated on these CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). The problem may lie in that your lease may say:
..."Joe Farmer will only farm Ben Dover yearlings delivered by Ben Dover, and sell any of the yearlings owned by Ben Dover Corporation to an authorized Ben Dover Buyer, while feeding Purino grain and feed products in accordance with an agreement between Ben Dover Corporation and Purino"....
The problem is that
- the Corporate (farm) Interests will own the delivered young animals
- The Yakama Owner/Operator/Land Owner will raise the animals to a marketable size
- The Yakama Owner/Operator/Land Owner will only use approved feed products (the corporation's friends)
- The Yakama owner will then sell the Corporate "cash cow" to the Corporate's friends or to the corporation itself.
- When it's all a done deal, the corporation walks away with a profit, and the Yakama land owner walks away with a profit.
- Then the waste is left behind, owned by........the Yakama Land Owner....
The antidote to the entire fiasco? It's your lease. Aggressively negotiate the leases ahead of time to include language that when the animals leave the lot, the waste must be removed by the corporate owner of the animals. Or have tribal councils pass land lease resolutions that specifically stipulate that any waste generated by corporate operations on tribal land must be removed with the animals. The Land owner didn't own the animals, they didn't own the feed, they didn't own the medicine given to all the animals, so why should they be left holding the bag full of you-know-what, and now be responsible for finding some safe way to get rid of the waste generated by the Corporation's animals? I would think that tribal councils would be the safest way to ensure that BIA doesn't sign off on leases that can't be negotiated with these corporations. Somewhere in recent, memory I believe that BIA officials thought that "best use of the land" was spelled out in the Reservation-Wide-appraisals with the damning statement, "agricultural use" or whatever term the appraiser uses. That means that if you disagree with the corporations offer and refuse to sign, (let your land go idle) that the BIA has a right to come in and say they are acting in your best interest and will get you money from a lease that they will sign--since you won't.
Either it goes in the lease before-hand, or Tribal Councils outlaw leases which leave land owners (including Tribal Councils themselves) holding onto 20 million pounds of Bullshit that is now toxic waste and endangers the water table of not only the tribe but the surrounding community members as well. That is a whole different liability issue I would think, when a community would come in and request relief (damages) from a tribe because their water table was polluted by the "tribal" dairy, chicken, or hog farm operation.
Like Jan Whitefoot asked all of us land owners to do, "examine your leases". Examine them early and often. If you don't understand it, ask someone to help you understand what is in in your lease, and what isn't in your lease that needs to be in the lease language. Fulfill the notion that we truly are the guardians of the land.
Here's how you manage leasing
http://nativelandguardian.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html
The only good Indians
http://nativelandguardian.blogspot.com/2008/11/good-indians.html
Tribal Chairmen arrested defending the use of their land
http://nativelandguardian.blogspot.com/2008/11/another-american-indian-tribal-chairman.html
Hog Farm Protest leads to arrests in South Dakota
http://nativelandguardian.blogspot.com/2008/04/protest-over-battle-for-of-all-things.html
Hog Farm Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr8SM8-WQg8
This is only Chicken manure! Think of Dairy manure on a grander scale
