"WHEY" TO GO

A Grassroots Organization Calling on Agrimark/Cabot Creamery to Clean Up its Water Use and Waste Disposal Practices

New Wastewater Test Reveals the Worst
Recent random sampling of AgriMark/dba Cabot's wastewater confirms years of worry over "chemical cocktail." Chemical analysis shows that the soil amendment and food system additive contains toluene, butanone, benzene, acetone, cresols, chloroform and a whole slew of other carcinogens.
To download a copy of the recent water test, please visit our cloud file sharing site: http://www.mediafire.com/?fc5iqcmflmqqtoh

APRIL 12th 2012 UPDATE, We need your help!
AgriMark, a Delaware based Corporation operating under the name of Cabot Creamery, currently has been permitted to dispose of 185,000 gallons a day of their chemically laced industrial wastewater on fields in Vermont. Now they want to add more sprayfields in the Towns of Barton, Craftsbury, East Montpelier, Elmore, Glover, Greensboro, Hardwick, and Plainfield. Thanks to the public outcry, a public hearing on the proposed expansion of the toxic waste disposal will be held :
April 12, 2012 @ 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. at the
Hardwick Elementary School
135 South Main Street, Hardwick, VT
Members of the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) will be present to receive public comment on the proposed expansion of AgirMark unique INDIRECT DISCHARGE permit. Whey to Go encourages folks to get to the public hearing early and sign up for the speaking order or else submit written comments on the issue to the VANR by April 23rd, 2012 by mail or e-mail address:
State of Vermont Agency of Natural Resources Department of Environmental Conservation
Drinking Water and Groundwater Protection Division
103 South Main Street – The Sewing Bldg
Waterbury VT 05671-0405
ATTN Permit #: ID-9-0043-1A   
OR
ANR.WWMD.PublicComment@state.vt.us  
And add "ID-9-0043-1A" to the subject of the e-mail.

***Want more ways to get involved? Download a citizen action sheet here: 
wtg_citizen_letter.doc
File Size: 32 kb
File Type: doc
Download File
THE PROBLEMS:
It's not whey! It's waste water and it does not belong in our food system!
  • AgriMark, doing business as Cabot Creamery, currently sprays 150,000 gallons of industrial waste water daily on Vermont farm fields and manure pits from Randolph to Craftsbury and Irasburg.
  • Another 35,000 gallons a day of waste are pumped into unlined pits on site.
  • Whey is removed from the waste water, processed, and sold to other food and supplement producers. 
  • The waste water includes a range of industrial sanitizers and cleaners that could cause:
  1. Nausea, vomiting, and severe inflammation of the stomach and intestinal tract
  2. Damage to the nose, throat, and respiratory tract
  3. Potentially, Cancer: see Bernard Greenberg's letter on the More Info page
Cabot Creamery's Withdrawal is Untested
  • Cabot Creamery pulls 100,000 gallons/day of groundwater at the Cabot, VT plant. However, Cabot Creamery has never tested the capacity of the aquifer and so could be threatening the groundwater source. 

A History of Violations
  • Cabot Creamery amassed 13 environmental violations between 1996 and 2009. Click here for a list of violations from 1983-2008 
  • In 1983 and again in 2005, Cabot Creamery spilled ammonia into the Winooski River damaging the river for miles. The 2005 spill killed an estimated 15,000 fish alone along 5.5 miles of the river. Regulators discovered after the second spill that Cabot had not fulfilled its 1983 commitment to develop hazardous materials policies.

Chemical cocktail, a problem for Vermont Waters, Vermont Farmers
2008 Report Points to Vermont non-point sources

Picture
Any resident of Hardwick VT can tell you, seeing a Cabot truck roll through town on a spray trip is as sure a sight as the sun coming up everyday. Cabot Creamery's dairy processing operations run 365 days a year, come rain, shine, or frozen ground. In wetter times local residents have noticed trucks spraying the Creamery's wastewater onto fully saturated fields, threatening the surrounding groundwater of the area and neighboring streams, rivers, and lakes with a chemically-caustic cocktail of industrial cleaners, and sanitizers, many of them incredibly phosphorus-rich. Could there be a relationship between this application of nutrient-rich industrial wastewater, rain or shine, and the ongoing nutrient (phosphorus) nutrient loading of Vermont's lakes, streams, and rivers? Phosphorus loading in Vermont's Lake Champlain has been a big challenge for Vermonters, especially when trying to pinpoint its sources. “A 2007 report from the Lake Champlain Basin Program, estimated that 46% of the nonpoint source phosphorus load came from urban land uses and about 38% is from agricultural land.” (State of the Lake, 2008). Cabot Creamery's disposal of wastes on existing agricultural land and their direct discharge into manure pits on dairy farms shifts the burden of the disposal and its environmental impacts to the farmers and their animals.

Much of Cabot Creamery's wastewater gets sprayed onto active hayfields. Whey To Go! has also urged inquiry into what the chemicals from this water might be doing to the hay that Vermont farmers are going to feed to their animals. 
Works Cited:                                                                                                                                           State of the Lake 2008, Lake Champlain Basin Program. <http://www.lcbp.org/PDFs/SOL2008-web.pdf>




 


Organized Waste Disposal
Vermont Legislates Practice of Dairy Processing Waste Disposal

Cabot Creamery can legally dispose of its non-sewage dairy processing wastewater in Vermont through spraying on agricultural and multi-use fields, and injecting into manure pits and lagoons via the state of Vermont's Guidelines For Land Application of Dairy Processing Wastes, a waste disposal permit process enforced by the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Permits Compliance and Protection division. In this 1990 declaration the Agency states that, "Dairy processing wastes, although traditionally treated as wastes in the past, have recently been considered as resources and research and development should continue towards recycling these wastes....The nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium content in most dairy processing by-products should not be overlooked as a fertilizer amendment to the soil." The guidelines pays vague mention to what non-sewage dairy processing wastewater is and bares little regard for the development and addition of chemicals and chemical processes used in maintaining, cleaning, and sanitizing dairy processing equipment. AgriMark's yearly addition of processing chemicals makes its challenging if not impossible account for the co-mingled chemicals and their potential toxicities and environmental persistence. See Bernard Greenberg's response to a 2009 Act 250 hearing on AgriMark's waste disposal methods at our More Info tab.

NOTE: Whey to Go! also urges the consideration of the historical proximity of the publication of the Vermont Guidelines For Land Application of Dairy Processing Wastes and the bankruptcy and eventual buy-out of Cabot Creamery Cooperative by Agri-Mark Inc. This fact cannot be overlooked, as the buyout of the cooperative was actively happening during 1990. Agri-Mark would eventually keep "Cabot Creamery Cooperative" as a trade name, registering it with the VT Secretary of State on 6/23/1992. (VT Secretary of State). The ANR Guidelines for Application of Dairy Processing Wastes says it best, "A large part of Vermont's agricultural economy is based on the diary industry, therfore it has been neceassry to address the control of pollution from dairy processing waste." 

Works Cited:
Agency of Natural Resources. Guildlines For Land Application of Dairy Processing Wastes. 1990. http://www.anr.state.vt.us/dec/ww/indirect/GuidelinesLandApplicationDairyWastes.pdf

VT Secretary of State, Corporation Search: Cabot Creamery.
 http://cgi3.sec.state.vt.us/cgi-shl/nhayer.exe?corpbrow?form_id=corpname?corpnumb=F153850

Picture
courtesy of wilson hughes

Cabot Should Live Up to Vermont's Green Name

    AGRI-MARK (dba CABOT CREAMERY) by NUMBERS

    • According to the USDA, Cabot Creamery's corporate owner, AgriMark makes $575 million in sales annually. AgriMark should ensure Cabot Creamery lives up to Vermont's green name and build a waste water treatment system, which was promised years ago. 
    • AgriMark should provide for independent testing 1.) to discover the capacity of the aquifer from which they withdraw, and restrict its water use at the Cabot plant to that level, and 2.) to ensure neighbors' wells aren't contaminated with the chemicals and other pollutants stored at the Cabot plant.
    • Cabot sprays enough wastewater to fill 1/2 of all the septic tanks in Vermont on a DAILY BASIS. 
    • Cabot Creamery sprays twice as much waste as the entire town of Cabot uses in water each day (185,000gallons wastewater/80 gallons =2312 people, where 80 gallons is the average gallons of water used per person per day in the U.S. and the population of Cabot is population is just over 1200) 
    • 185,000 gallons of total permitted wastewater a day (150,000 waste water and 35,000 gallons of polished permeate) day of wastewater  
    •  67.5 million gallons of permitted wastewater spraying a year
    • 1.3 millions gallons a week
    •  1 truck leaves the Agri-Mark Cabot Creamery every 10 minutes in order to keep pace with their demand to dispose of such enormous amounts of its industrial waste water.