After euthanizing several thousand contaminated cows, Art Schaap is losing not only a once-thriving dairy farm but a place where he and his family have lived for a quarter-century.
He has no choice, he said, because the polluted runoff from Cannon Air Force Base that tainted the groundwater, soil and his livestock with cancer-causing chemicals has left Highland Dairy in Clovis an empty shell.
“This was our home, and it’s devastating,” Schaap said. “Now we’re having to relocate and start all over again. That’s just the cards that we got dealt.”
Schaap euthanized 3,665 dairy cows in phases over the past four years, when he first learned they’d become contaminated with PFAS from drinking polluted groundwater.
PFAS is short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Dubbed “forever chemicals” because they last indefinitely in the bloodstream, PFAS can cause increased cholesterol, reproductive problems, impaired immunity and cancer.
Highland Dairy, a 3,500-acre farm, is a casualty in an ever-growing environmental and health issue as PFAS increasingly turn up in public drinking water, private wells and food.
They have been used in firefighting foam, carpets, nonstick cookware and other common household products.
Military firefighter training for years involved using the PFAS-laden foam, which led to toxic runoff polluting groundwater around installations. Those include both the Cannon and Holloman Air Force bases in Clovis and Alamogordo, respectively.
Schaap said he learned of his potential PFAS contamination several years ago when federal regulators began analyzing groundwater in the areas around Cannon. Subsequent tests he conducted on his livestock confirmed his cows were affected, he said.
In 2018, the New Mexico Department of Agriculture suspended his license and barred him from selling milk. Companies stopped buying his aging cows to slaughter for beef because they were wary of potentially bad meat, compelling him to euthanize the cows instead.
A big question is what to do with the cow carcasses now half-buried in giant earthen composting pits.
Schaap said he will test the composting soil for contaminants. If it doesn’t contain PFAS, then he will suggest to state regulators the carcasses be fully covered and left where they are.
If there’s lingering PFAS, the carcasses should be hauled away and incinerated by a company that specializes in such work, he said.
But state Environment Secretary James Kenney wants to hear from experts on the best course of action, with the aim of establishing a national standard for dealing with livestock contaminated with PFAS. The first step was drafting a plan for removing the carcasses, he said.
Dead cows laced with PFAS on this enormous scale is novel, Kenney said, adding: “We want to make sure we’re doing this right.”
Composting will reduce the volume of carrion, but it won’t eliminate the PFAS itself, so the heap of contaminated soil at Highland Dairy will be another hazardous material to manage, Kenney said.
Kenney said he has requested information from those with knowledge in this field, including large companies that have hazardous-waste landfills and incinerators.
The Environment Department will use $850,000 from the state’s emergency hazardous-waste fund to pay for the disposal.
Schaap said the site is wrecked for any kind of farming. No one will want to buy land with a record of severe PFAS contamination.
The U.S. Department of Defense could be the most probable buyer. It received $175 million in the last military spending bill to clean up Cannon and Holloman’s groundwater and buy PFAS-contaminated sites around those bases.
Schaap said he would be fine with the military buying his property at fair market price for reclamation.
He also has sued the military for his losses, including an estimated $6 million for the euthanized cattle and $8 million for milk he had to dump. There’s also the loss from his scrapped business that he has yet to put a price tag on, he said.
Schaap said the military knew about the chemicals’ pollution and their hazards in the region long before it began investigating.
The PFAS plume extends more than a mile east of his land and, given how slowly it moves, it likely affected his cows years before he was alerted in 2018, he said.
“There was milk that left here that was probably contaminated,” Schaap said.
Kenney has bashed the military for refusing to take care of its PFAS pollution and rejecting the state’s authority to order it.
State regulators sued the Air Force in 2019, saying it has a responsibility to clean up the PFAS plumes it created.
Both that lawsuit and Schaap’s were lumped in with an array of suits — many of them seeking monetary damages from PFAS manufacturers — and are tied up in a South Carolina federal court.
Schaap said he asked federal agricultural managers four years ago to reimburse him for the costs of replacing his herd, but they refused.
Instead, they insisted he try to purge PFAS from the cows by giving them filtered water while paying him compensation for the milk he wasn’t allowed to sell, he said, adding the experiment failed and, ultimately, will result in the feds paying much more.
“I feel like I’ve been a science project,” Schaap said.
Source: Santa Fe
