Tompkins County and Tammany Hall [I can’t seem to find any difference at all]

WHOSE PLAN IS THIS ANYWAY?

Part 5

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

It’s ethics that gives a government legitimacy

There’s a big piece missing from the planning agenda in Tompkins County: What needs to be done about the environmental destruction caused by modern farming methods? — and in a not-so-surprising coincidence: this same issue is missing from the County’s Comp Plan as well.

The “Environment” section of the Comprehensive Plan holds up Agriculture as a model of stewardship and conservation; while suppressing any mention of the agricultural methods and regulatory exemptions that have made them the biggest polluters in Tompkins County — tiptoeing around their role in the impairment of our water resources and depletion of the ecosystem in a blatant example of cronyism and skewed environmental reporting.

The presentation of some of the arguments is a bit technical; the facts are unequivocal.

The County Comp Plan:

“Fall Creek, Cayuga Inlet, and Sixmile Creek play a significant role in determining the quality of water in the southern basin of Cayuga Lake as they contribute approximately 40 percent of all the surface water entering the southern end of the lake.”

Comments:

Salmon Creek also enters the southern part of Cayuga Lake in Tompkins County and drains one of the three largest watersheds in the Cayuga basin.

“The watershed land uses range from the highly urban and forested Cayuga Inlet to the mostly agricultural Salmon Creek.”

Nutrient pollution from runoff and groundwater discharge “are relatively minor in the urbanized watershed but are much more significant in the two more agricultural watersheds, Fall Creek and Salmon Creek. The high contributions from groundwater in those watersheds, 55% and 72%, respectively, pose difficult challenges for management because only long-term changes in land use can reduce these loads.” — Nutrient Loads to Cayuga Lake, New York: Watershed Modeling on a Budget, 2012

Salmon Creek is never mentioned in any of the Comprehensive Plan’s water quality discussions; and agricultural nutrient pollution is never mentioned at all.

The County Comp Plan:

“Most of the phosphorus that enters the southern end of Cayuga Lake is bound up with the sediment carried by Fall Creek, Cayuga Inlet, and Sixmile Creek. This sediment is largely the result of stormwater runoff and erosion of stream banks.”

Comments:

Actually, the percentage of bioavailable particulate phosphorus [available nutrient for algae growth] measured in Salmon Creek was more than twice that of Fall Creek, and more than three times that of both Cayuga Inlet, and Six Mile Creek. [Phosphorus Bioavailabiltiy and Loads, Upstate Freshwater Institute, 10/22/2015]

The County Comp Plan:

“Impaired water bodies and their related pollutants, are published by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC). The most recent list published in 2012 identified the southern end of Cayuga Lake as impaired by three pollutants: phosphorus, silt/sediment, and pathogens.”

Comments:

Phosphorus

“Mean annual TP [Total Phosphorus] load to Cayuga Lake is just under 100 Mg/year, of which 60 Mg/year is DP [Dissolved Phosphorus.] The largest source of both DP and TP is agricultural runoff, providing 45% of the DP and 47% of the TP. Urban runoff provides 13% of the TP but negligible DP. The largest urban TP source, at 8%, is high-density impervious residential land.” — Nutrient Loads to Cayuga Lake, New York: Watershed Modeling on a Budget, 2012

Silt/sediment

The County’s Plan makes no mention of the wide-spread agricultural practice of “tiling” fields [installing subsurface drainage on the entire field]. Tiling will drain a field in minutes, rather than hours; not only causing water to flow into streams more quickly and allowing less water to replenish the groundwater, but increasing the flow of sediment and manure into Cayuga Lake’s tributaries.

Pathogens

The County’s Comp Plan makes no mention of agriculture as a source of pathogens.

 “My results allow me to conclude that the most nutrient and pathogen pollution occurs after large rainstorm events, especially after manure has been applied to land for months with no precipitation events, and after manure application on frozen ground. These results support the findings from similar studies. I can also generalize that many of the soils from the field sites that I collected from had buildups of phosphorus, which likely contributed to the high concentrations of phosphorus in the runoff samples that I collected. I can also conclude that the manure pathogens that I examined for antibiotic resistance were resistant to high levels of ampicillin. This result further supports the severity of antibiotic resistance and the negative health effects and environmental effects that they can cause.” — “The Effects that Liquid and Solid Cattle Manure have on the Water Quality of Drainage Ditches in Putnam County, Ohio”, Bowling Green State University, Janelle Horstman, 2014

“Increased phosphorus levels were also detected after precipitation in the agriculturally impacted areas, and fecal coliform densities were much higher after precipitation. The strong correlation of turbidity, total phosphorus, and fecal coliform densities suggests a common source for these parameters. Elevated total phosphorus, turbidity, and fecal coliform densities are presumed to be the direct result of runoff from nearby tiled fields sprayed with liquid manure as reported by MDNRE in numerous previous waste discharge infractions by the CAFO farms in close proximity to our AI sites (Michigan Department of Environmental Quality 2003a, 2004b).” — “Antibiotic Resistance, Gene Transfer, and Water Quality Patterns Observed in Waterways near CAFO Farms and Wastewater Treatment Facilities” West; Liggit; Clemans & Francoeur, 2009

The “Point Source” Smokescreen

The County Comp Plan:

“New York State regulates pollution discharge into waters through its State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) permit program, including the control of all point source discharges to surface waters. The program is designed to maintain water quality consistent with public health, public enjoyment of water bodies, protection and propagation of fish and wildlife, and industrial development in the state.”

Comments:

The County fails to mention that this program does not adequately regulate pollution from agricultural sources:

 “The Clean Water Act provides a comprehensive regulatory scheme for many discharges of pollutants to waters of the United States. Through the primarily regulatory NPDES permitting program, significant improvements have been made to the quality of the country’s water bodies. However, the NPDES permitting program only applies to point sources discharges, thus most agricultural discharges are not subject to permitting or other federal regulatory control. Nonpoint sources, including those from agriculture, remain the most significant water quality challenge facing the nation. Moreover, the CWA’s exemption from section 404 permitting for normal farming practices continues to allow many wetlands to be degraded by agricultural activities. Because the CWA does not provide direct federal authority for regulating many agricultural sources of water pollution and wetlands degradation, the responsibility for addressing water quality degradation from agricultural activities has fallen largely to the states. To date, most programs designed to address agricultural water pollution have been voluntary or incentive-based programs designed to encourage farmers to implement best management practices. These programs have been only minimally successful, and agricultural pollution continues to be one of the most significant sources of water quality degradation in the United States, meaning that there is a need for a more comprehensive regulatory system to address the water impacts of farming.” — “Maintaining a Healthy Water Supply While Growing a Healthy Food Supply: Legal Tools for Cleaning Up Agricultural Water Pollution” Mary Jane Angelo, Professor of Law & Director, Environmental and Land Use Law Program University of Florida Levin College of Law

Stormwater Runoff and Flooding

The County Comp Plan:

“Increased stormwater runoff has a significant impact on floodplain management. As land area is converted to more urbanized uses, the amount of impervious surface associated with that land use generally increases, causing water to flow into streams more quickly and allowing less water to replenish the groundwater.”

Comments:

Once again, the County refuses to acknowledge agricultural sources as a problem. When the increased runoff from “tiled” farm fields: an opaque, strong smelling liquid blend of water, sediment and agricultural contaminants; began to overflow the ditch in front of my house and spread across my lawn — the County merely dug a bigger, deeper ditch and put in a larger culvert for my driveway. Tompkins County makes no effort to reduce the runoff from agricultural fields; they just continue digging bigger ditches.

Wetland Protection

The County Comp Plan:

“At the state level, NYSDEC regulates wetlands of at least 12.4 acres in size and smaller wetlands of unusual local importance. Taken together, these regulations have the effect of leaving responsibility for regulation of isolated wetlands of less than 12.4 acres to local governments. Identification and protection of these otherwise newly unregulated wetlands is a priority.”

Comments:

New York State Agricultural Law has a different priority for land use that allows “grazing and watering livestock, making reasonable use of water resources, harvesting natural products of the wetlands, selectively cutting timber, draining land or wetlands for growing agricultural products and otherwise engaging in the use of wetlands or other land for growing agricultural products,” thereby completely undercutting the authority of local government to protect these valuable resources.

Riparian Corridors

The County Comp Plan:

“Riparian corridors are the lands bordering streams and represent a transition zone from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems. Maintaining lands adjacent to streams in their undeveloped state helps to support the natural functions associated with stream buffers, including protecting water quality, stabilizing stream banks and preventing erosion, trapping sediment and nutrients, improving floodwater retention and groundwater recharge, and shading stream channels in summer.”

“Providing vegetated buffers of at least 100 feet either side of stream banks, or 50 feet from intermittent streams, is critical in achieving water quality benefits”

Comments:

Unfortunately, New York State NRCS agricultural manure spreading standards for CAFOs requires only 35-foot setback, where the entire setback width is a vegetated buffer; and just a 15-foot setback with incorporation within 24 hours of application to be maintained between manure applications and surface waters and surface inlets. 

Well Water

The County Comp Plan:

“The amount of available drinking water is primarily an issue in rural areas that obtain drinking water from groundwater. As more homes and businesses are built in these areas, they are supported by new wells withdrawing more water from groundwater supplies. In some parts of the county it has been observed that new wells noticeably decrease the supply of water in nearby wells.”

Comments:

While slamming rural families; the County’s Comp Plan deliberately ignores the massive negative impact that high water-use “farming practices,” especially those of CAFOs, are having on the county’s groundwater supply. One CAFO owner in Minnesota reported a well water use of 570,200,000 gallons in 2017. [The average unrestricted water use for a family of four is 320 to 400 gallons a day.]

While the County’s Comp Plan recommends that “Land uses and facilities that pose the greatest threats to groundwater should be located away from areas that contribute to drinking water supplies” — the Plan’s suppression of agricultural pollution as an environmental threat reveals an unannounced policy to exclude agriculture from any County restriction or regulation.

Climate Change - Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The County Comp Plan:

“While global energy and climate problems cannot be solved exclusively at the local level, and leadership is needed from global, federal, and state organizations, locally we can identify, plan for, and take steps to address these issues.”

“PRINCIPLE Tompkins County should be a place where the energy system meets community needs without contributing additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”

The Plan goes on to state:

“Emissions from residential, commercial, and industrial buildings together accounted for the largest proportion of community emissions and transportation accounted for more than a third of all community emissions.”

But finally admits:

“. . . it appears that it would be more accurate to use a much greater GWP for methane to reflect its extreme potency in the shorter duration when reductions will most help in limiting warming that may result in a cascade of uncontrollable negative impacts. Such an analysis of methane will likely be incorporated into future energy plans, and would primarily affect the waste and agriculture sectors, as they are currently the highest emitters of methane.”

Comments:

This admission that the “agricultural sector” is one of the “highest emitters of methane” – is the one and only time that the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan acknowledges the negative impact of any agricultural practice on either the residents or the environment; and then only that this “will likely be incorporated into future energy plans.”

The Town and City of Ithaca sit like spiders in the center of a web; with recent redistricting placing 8 of the 14 Legislative Districts at least partly within their borders.

The large student population [30% of the county’s total population] gives those legislators a great deal of power; but little accountability, from a constantly shifting youthful population with no history or permanent ties to the area, and no association with the county’s rural communities. This leaves county policy making vulnerable to the influence of corporate and corporately-controlled entities like Cornell University, and the Cornell Cooperative Extension.

The Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan’s glaring refusal to acknowledge the reality of agricultural pollution in their reporting is clear evidence of this influence.

“Tompkins County” government is in the process of yet another legislative redistricting . . . and the Tompkins County Legislature will appoint the committee on reapportionment.