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NEVADA DAIRY FARM AND MANAGER PLEAD GUILTY TO CWA VIOLATIONS
Release Date: 01/29/99
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FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JAN. 29, 1999
NEVADA DAIRY FARM AND MANAGER PLEAD GUILTY TO CWA VIOLATIONS
Rockview Farms Inc., (Rockview), which operates a dairy farm in Amargosa, Nev. under the name of Ponderosa Dairy, and its manager, Eric Goedhart, pleaded guilty on Jan. 21, in U.S. District Court in Fresno, California to violating the Clean Water Act (CWA). The court ordered Rockview to pay a fine of $250,000, to reimburse investigating costs of $6,900, to enact an extensive environmental compliance plan, to obtain a CWA permit and to donate $10,000 worth of investigatory equipment to the local Dairy Waste Enforcement Task Force. Goedhart was fined $5,000 and placed on three years probation. The offenses occurred in February 1998, when Goedhart and another employee illegally discharged 1.7 million gallons of dairy waste water contaminated with urine and feces. The waste water flowed approximately 8 miles across the desert and then into the Amargosa River in Inyo County, Calif. Exposure to fecal coliform and other pathogens in animal wastes can cause intestinal and other infections in humans and can also be harmful to aquatic life. The investigation was
conducted by the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division, the California Department of Fish and Game, Regional Water Quality Board, the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection, and prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
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