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When one thinks of a dairy farm, the stereotypical vision involves sprawling pastures and quaint red barns. But in New Mexico, where the dairy industry contributes some $1.2 billion annually to the economy, this vision is far from reality. On a typical dairy farm, large herds – sometimes consisting of as many as 2,000 milk cows – will live grouped on small feedlots between their thrice daily trips to the milking barn. Each cow produces six to seven gallons of milk daily, along with as much as 18 gallons of manure. Considering the 300,000 dairy cows in the state, that’s 5.4 million gallons of manure each day. And the dairies’ so called manure-management has come under recent scrutiny from locals, who say that the manure has contaminated the water.
Typically, dairies will deal with their manure in one of two ways. Workers will hose muck off of concrete milking barn floors, allowing the contaminated run-off to collect in a plastic or clay lined lagoon, where it eventually will evaporate. Other manure from the feedlots is collected and used as fertilizer for grains. On the surface, this seems like an environmentally responsible, sustainable business plan. But according to the New Mexico Environmental Department, at least two thirds of the state’s dairy farms are contaminating groundwater with excess nitrates from the cattle excrement. So it would seem that either some of the lagoons are leaking, or too much fertilizer is being applied to other fields.
The Federal EPA lacks any sort of broad power to crack down on these dairies, though they have been able to issue some of the dairies citations for violating the Clean Water Act, as some of the manure laden runoff has washed into tributaries of the Rio Grande. The powerful dairy lobby at the state level has managed to block tough regulations to this point, though the tide may be changing. Recently, residents of the town of Caballo were able to shoot down a proposed dairy farm, claiming the runoff would pollute the Rio Grande Watershed. It seems that after decades of acceptance of business as usual, the dairy industry’s free ride in New Mexico has come to an end.

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