Pierre Omidyar says he wants to build a dairy along the coast of Kauai to reduce Hawaii’s reliance on imported milk, but locals worry that runoff from such an operation, as well as the flies and odors it would bring, would hurt the island’s crucial tourism business, reports The New York Times.
There are currently at least three operating dairies in Hawaii, some of which have had legal problems stemming from runoff. But the state “imports roughly 90 percent of its food supply,” says the Times, and Gov. David Ige “has pledged to double the state’s food production by 2020.”
“We are concerned with odors and flies from the dairy,” said Lisa Munger, a lawyer who represents the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort & Spa, which successfully sued to force the dairy to do an environmental assessment. “Each dairy cow will produce 90.8 pounds of manure per day — whether there are 699 cows or 2,000 cows, that is a lot of manure.”
Initial plans call for 699 cows at Hawaii Dairy, as Omidyar, the founder of EBay, calls his project, just below the 700-cow threshold that would require the EPA to designate it as a “large concentrated animal feeding operation,” or CAFO. Such a designation would mean the dairy would need a discharge permit.
“Residents point out that one drinking-water well supplying the neighborhoods of Poipu and Koloa is within 700 feet of the pastures where the cows will graze, and other wells are within 1,200 feet,” says the Times.
Hawaii Dairy has pledged to take various steps to prevent runoff and other problems, including creating a 35-foot buffer zone “along a stream that runs through the property to prevent contamination of the waterway running through the property to the sea” and using dung beetles to help process manure.