Mega-dairies, which confine tens of thousands of cows, create devastating environmental and economic impacts on the communities where they take root. Despite the known impacts on clean water and greenhouse gas emissions, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency decided to forgo an Environmental Impact Statement for Riverview’s proposed West River Dairy expansion near Morris, Minn.
If built, the 18,000 cow facility would be the largest factory farm in the state — more than 60 times the size of the average Minnesota dairy — producing over 200 million gallons of waste annually. The expansion would also generate a minimum of 66,000 tons of additional greenhouse gas emissions each year, although this number severely underestimates the full scope of the project’s climate impacts.
Food & Water Watch and the Land Stewardship Project sued MPCA for failing to require an EIS on the impacts before approving this factory farm expansion, which is a violation of state and federal law.
Food & Water Watch and FarmSTAND are representing the Land Stewardship Project in this action, and Food & Water Watch is also representing itself.