An environmental lawyer representing a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization says it intends to sue Meadow Gold Dairies Hawaii and its president, Bahman Sadeghi, and Cloverleaf Dairy and its president, Edward Boteilho Jr., for alleged violations of the federal Clean Water Act.
The Aug. 9 letter by Seattle attorney Charles Tebbutt, representing the Center for Food Safety, gave Meadow Gold and Cloverleaf 60 days notice of its intention to sue in U.S. District Court in Honolulu.
The suit alleges that every time Hawi receives a half-inch or more rain, two manure storage lagoons at Cloverleaf overflow, causing a discharge of pollutants into the ocean. Other allegations include improper disposal of dead dairy cattle at Cloverleaf, located in Hawai, and that Meadow Gold transports waste milk from its Hilo processing plant to Cloverleaf to dump it, instead of disposing it through the county’s sewage treatment system.
“In the last two years alone, nine such discharges likely occurred on July 30, 2022, March 2, 2023, March 3, 2023, April 4, 2023, May 26, 2023, May 31, 2023, Nov. 30, 2023, Dec. 1, 2023 (and) May 13, 2024, based on rainfall exceeding 0.5 inches on those dates,” the letter states.
“It’s been going on for awhile, and it’s time to stop it,” Tebbutt said Thursday. Tebbutt, who represented local nonprofits in a lawsuit that resulted in a consent decree that closed Big Island Dairy in Ookala in 2019, said his clients received “a lot of information from local people about problems” at the Hawi dairy.
“We’ve done all the research; we’ve done everything we need to do,” Tebbutt said about filing the suit. “It’s ready to go when the notice period runs out. “The problem has to be fixed. I don’t know if they will fix it in 60 days or can. I suppose it’s physically possible, but who knows? It’s up to them at this point.
“They have all the specific information they need to fix the problem. They’ve known about this problem for years. And they’ve ignored it.”
Tebbutt said if Meadow Gold and Cloverleaf are found liable for polluting the ocean, “There are civil penalties they’ll have to pay.”
“The most important thing is that they stop polluting Hawaii, stop polluting the Big Island and the sacred sites that are around there,” he said. “King Kamehameha was born down just below that site, so they’re desecrating sacred sites and causing pollution to the fishery and the whales … .”
Tebbutt described Cloverleaf, the last remaining bovine dairy operating on the Big Island, as a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO. The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines a CAFO as “an intensive animal feeding operation in which over 1,000 animal units are confined for over 45 days a year. An animal unit is the equivalent of 1,000 pounds of ‘live’ animal weight.” According to the USDA, 1,000 animal units equates to 700 dairy cows.
Sadeghi, who bought a majority interest in Cloverleaf from Boteilho, called the letter’s allegations “completely false, so much misinformation.”
“They’re claiming that we’re a megadairy, a CAFO,” Sadeghi said. “We’re not a CAFO operation, we’re a pasture-based dairy, and we’re milking less than 350 cows today. We’ve never milked 700 cows.
“And we’re not in violation of the Clean Water Act. We’ve never discharged into the ocean or any waterway.”
Asked it Meadow Gold or Cloverleaf have been cited by either the EPA or the state Department of Health, Tebbutt replied, “I don’t know if they’ve been cited for violations or discharges, but eight or nine years ago, DOH sent them a letter saying they had to synthetically line their lagoons — and they haven’t.
“What’s worse, Meadow Gold takes their waste milk and is dumping it. This isn’t coming from Cloverleaf, it’s coming from the milk processing center in Hilo — and they’re trucking it an hour-and-a-half away and disposing of it so they can dump it for free, instead of taking it to the sewage treatment plant, where it should be going.”
Sadeghi said Meadow Gold does take “milk that doesn’t meet our quality standards — which is not very often, a rare occasion” and “apply that as a nutrient to our pastures.”
“Lactic acid bacteria is added to the soil as a practice in regenerative farming. So, we apply it as a nutrient,” he said. “We don’t consider it to be a pollutant, especially because it doesn’t leave our property nor does it get into any waterways.”
Sadeghi also said the area where they bury dead cattle is sometimes disturbed by feral pigs “that get in there, and they make a mess of it” but denied that dead cow parts get into waterways.
“We’ve never had any complaints from our neighbors or any government regulators,” he said. “We have a good relationship with our Hawi community. And we’ve got this mainland advocate group unattached with Hawaii that’s pursuing an anti-dairy agenda.
“We’re going to fight this vigorously, and we’ve not done anything to violate the Clean Water Act.”
The Tribune-Herald reached out to the state DOH but didn’t receive a reply to questions in time for this story.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.