Ensuring greenhouse gas pollution is addressed in every proposed development

When a dairy in Winona County proposed a massive expansion, MCEA was very concerned. The Daley Farms expansion would create 46 million gallons of manure per year, from over 4,600 cows. Located in the karst country of southeastern Minnesota, the millions of gallons of manure that would be created and then spread on cropland risked contaminating local drinking water. 

We partnered with the Land Stewardship Project to oppose this expansion. Land Stewardship Project has long been working to prevent mega-dairies from polluting local groundwater, and Winona County has an ordinance in place that caps the size of feedlots to protect local drinking water. The Daley proposal would be four times the size of what local ordinance allows. 

Extreme weather, floods and hail driven by climate change are already harming Minnesota farmers. Unless we take action to prevent more greenhouse gas pollution, agriculture will take the brunt of the impacts from climate change. The greenhouse gas pollution from this proposed mega-dairy would be significant. It’s the equivalent of 22,500 additional cars on the road each year. But the environmental study of the proposal by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) failed to look at greenhouse gas pollution at all. 

Since agriculture is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas pollution in Minnesota, we argued that the failure to document and mitigate emissions from the Daley expansion violated Minnesota law. The Minnesota Court of Appeals agreed, and required the MPCA to redo its environmental study to include an analysis of Daley Farms’ greenhouse gas pollution. 

We know how to mitigate the greenhouse gas pollution from this proposal and other feedlots. The MPCA has studied 21 different management practices that could be used to offset the emissions from this proposal. And even better, we can protect our drinking water and prevent greenhouse gas pollution with the same practices. 

Alongside our legal work in the Daley Farms case, MCEA has been pushing the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board (EQB) to add greenhouse gas pollution to environmental review studies across Minnesota. Many project proposers were omitting climate pollution from their environmental studies because it was not on the form provided by the state and there was no clear guidance on how to do it. In December 2022, after conducting a pilot study, the EQB adopted these changes. Now all projects required to complete an environmental study in Minnesota will have to report on their greenhouse gas emissions, and whether they considered ways to reduce those emissions, before they can receive a state or local government permit. MCEA will continue to monitor this process to make sure projects accurately report their greenhouse gas emissions and look at opportunities to reduce those emissions. 

We need to make every new proposal in Minnesota climate-neutral, and we can do it. Every industry and all sectors of our economy need to take responsibility for their climate change impact and implement measures to mitigate it. The precedent set in the Daley Farms case is one step toward a carbon-neutral future. MCEA is now using this precedent to ensure that environmental studies include greenhouse gas mitigation and climate change analysis for feedlots, commercial developments, and more.