One of northwest Ohio’s largest manure-management investigations has been under way in Williams County for weeks, and it involves both the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
Directors from both agencies have told The Blade the case appears to either be headed toward resolution soon or else for an enforcement action that could result in hefty fines or legally binding orders. The goal is to protect vulnerable waterways, including Fish Creek, the St. Joseph River, and the Maumee River.
The facilities are mostly in the Edon and Montpelier areas and involve thousands of young beef cattle.
Sixteen facilities have been investigated, 10 of which have been found to be improperly managing manure or having other issues related to livestock operations, ODA Director Brian Baldridge said.
Many were operating at or near the threshold of 1,000 cattle for unpermitted livestock facilities.
Two were found to be far in excess of that — with as many as 1,800 cattle on a single site — and should have applied for permits to operate as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, he said.
Animals are younger cattle, between 100 pounds and 700 pounds, Mr. Baldridge said.
“They feed them for a certain time and [then the young cattle] are shipped out to Western states,” he said.
A common denominator has been large, uncontained piles of manure — or manure stockpiles, as they’re called in state violations. Some have appeared as tall as barns. There were no permits issued for those piles nor other measures to contain manure, such as lagoons.
“From a manure storage standpoint, that’s a huge concern,” Mr. Baldridge said.
The facilities are believed to be under the common ownership of Schmucker Family Farms.
The operators were given a Sept. 1 deadline, but that’s a Sunday, and the Labor Day holiday is Monday.
A spokesman for the family, Michael Schmucker, told The Blade he is optimistic the situation will be resolved to the state’s satisfaction but did not elaborate and hung up when asked about Sunday’s deadline for compliance.
“We are working with the ODA,” Mr. Schmucker said. “We have a really good relationship with them and the Ohio EPA. I don’t have any doubt that we can’t make things work.”
Another Schmucker family member, Noah Schmucker, Jr., did not respond to a request for an interview.
Mr. Baldridge and Ohio EPA Director Anne Vogel told The Blade they see the case as an outlier and are determined to hold the facilities accountable for violations.
Both said inspectors from their respective agencies will be heading back to the area on Tuesday to see what work has been done.
Mr. Baldridge said he’s not immediately aware of manure releases into area waterways, but he and the violation notices sent by his agency describe that as a risk. Their notices include photographs of standing water in some fields where manure stockpiles are present.
Ms. Vogel said the Ohio EPA has found “manure-laden water” leaving some property through field tiles. She said she has instructed a team from the Ohio EPA’s Division of Surface Water in Bowling Green to gather water samples over the next couple of weeks.
“We have not been notified of any aquatic kills or fish kills yet,” she said.
The Ohio Department of Agriculture first got involved earlier this year after receiving complaints about multiple facilities in close proximity to each other, Mr. Baldridge said.
“Both the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Ohio EPA are worried about [the livestock operations] contaminating any waters of the state,” he said. “We have to fix this problem now before there is an event. This is a priority through our enforcement team.”
It is not immediately clear what sanctions are likely if the facilities are not in compliance soon.
A spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said that office has not received referrals for prosecution.
Ms. Vogel and Mr. Baldridge are part of Gov. Mike DeWine’s Cabinet.
The governor “takes these things seriously,” Ms. Vogel said.
“We will stay on top of this; I will guarantee you that,” she said.
One possibility, if violations are not immediately resolved, could be enforcement through her in the form of an Ohio EPA director’s notice, Ms. Vogel said.
“We’ve been out there several times and have seen evidence they are doing a lot of work to stop discharge,” she said. “We haven’t encountered pushback.”
The most important thing is protection of the water resource, she said.
“We’re going to make sure there is no discharge happening,” Ms. Vogel said. “We’re not going to take their word for it.”
Edon resident Lyle Brigle, who lives near some of the facilities cited for violations, said the Schmucker group has outbid area grain farmers for land as it becomes available and has paid as much as $20,000 an acre, in some cases more than three times its worth.
Then, it has split acreage into different parcels and put it into different names. Nobody knows where the money is coming from, Mr. Brigle said.
“The bottom line is there is not enough land to spread that amount of manure on from all of these cattle barns,” Mr. Brigle said.
He said barns don’t have concrete floors, so he fears some manure is seeping into the nine-county, three-state Michindoh Aquifer shared by Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan.
“Smell is getting to be noticed as well as flies,” Mr. Brigle said.
He and other residents have done their own private sampling of waterways for two years and have paid Jones & Henry Laboratories of Northwood to analyze their samples.
“All waters are polluted, especially Fish Creek,” Mr. Brigle said.
He called on Ohio politicians to pass stricter regulations.
Lake Erie Waterkeeper founder Sandy Bihn has also called for stricter enforcement of Ohio’s meat and dairy industry.
She said that what’s been happening in Williams County has been akin to a “shell game” by the way cattle are moved around. Her belief is that has been done to avoid much of the permitting costs and manure-management regulations.
Ms. Bihn has said she believes Ohio regulators, scientists, and lawmakers need to be more aggressive about manure management, especially if they want to make a meaningful reduction in western Lake Erie algal blooms.
Susan Catterall lives across the state line in Steuben County, Indiana, near Hamilton Lake, Ind., about 10 minutes from Edon.
By a 5-0 vote, the Steuben County Board of Zoning Appeals rejected a plan the Schmuckers presented in January of 2023 to bring as many as 8,000 head of cattle to a 78-acre site in that part of Indiana. She claims that’s why the family business got more interested in adjacent Williams County, right across the state line.
“It’s a really big network,” Ms. Catterall said. “I can tell you there are some [manure stockpiles] that are two stories high.”
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