MORRIS, Minn. — By giving the green light to what will be the largest concentrated animal feeding operation in Minnesota history, Stevens County officials have cast a vote for a type of livestock production that threatens water quality, puts small and medium-sized farmers out of business and empties rural Main Streets, said the Land Stewardship Project. On Sept. 1, the Stevens County Board of Commissioners granted a conditional use permit for Riverview’s West River Dairy expansion near Morris. When completed, the 18,855-cow facility would be more than 60 times the size of the average Minnesota dairy.
The county’s approval comes after farmers and other rural residents expressed deep concerns over the past several months about the potential environmental and economic impacts of this facility. More than 1,400 people submitted official public comments about West River Dairy to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), and 1,140 people signed LSP’s petition calling for a full environmental impact statement (EIS).
“I’m still processing the decision,” said Sandra Fernow, a Morris resident. “My community and I have been saying for months that we need more information about how this operation will impact our water, and we still do not have it. It seems silly to me that the county board has approved this project when we have incomplete water data for our area.”
Riverview, which is based in Morris, is the second-largest producer of milk and milk products in the United States, and has been undertaking major expansions in recent years, building and enlarging its facilities around the country, especially in Minnesota and neighboring states. Calculations by the Bullvine website earlier this year showed that an expanded West River facility would flood the market with so much milk that it would cost a typical 500-cow dairy $57,600 to $86,400 per year in lost revenue.
“One mega-dairy may employ workers, but it does not replace what is lost when independent entrepreneurial farmers disappear,” said Duane Holker, who milks 85 cows near Paynseville, Minn. “The thousands of dairy farms that have gone out of business since Riverview began operating in Minnesota in the 1990s aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet.”
In June, the MPCA announced that it was not ordering an EIS for the proposed facility, despite the fact that it will use 319 million gallons of water per year, require 250 million gallons of liquid manure storage and be located near two impaired waterways. While Stevens County officials were considering the conditional use permit, LSP and its allies asked them to require a deeper examination of the water use requirements of the facility and how that will impact local waterways and aquifers; officials declined to do that. In August, LSP joined Food & Water Watch in suing the MPCA over their failure to order an EIS.
BJ Bonin, a licensed geologist who formerly worked as a hydrologist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and who has consulted on large livestock operations, including Riverview facilities, said Stevens County officials missed an opportunity to place conditions on the permit that would have ensured protection of groundwater and surface water quality, both in the immediate area and downstream.
“That’s a lot of manure, and for example local officials could require the storage system to withstand historically peak flood levels to prevent overflow,” he said. “This doesn’t just impact Stevens County — water flows downstream.”
Gordon Dalseide, a retired Stevens County farmer who has property half-a-mile from a current Riverview facility, said for decades his well provided plenty of water for his beef cattle herd and household use. That well is now going dry, and he’s concerned that over-pumping by Riverview has contributed to the problem. In Arizona, the company recently came to a multi-million-dollar agreement with that state’s Attorney General over its over-pumping of water in the region where it operates dairies.
“Before we go forward with an operation of this unprecedented size, we need baseline testing of all the wells that are in the area so that we know what we’re dealing with,” Dalseide said. “It’s the job of local officials to make sure critical resources like water are available for everyone, not just one mega-operation.”
Matthew Sheets, an LSP organizer who lives in Morris, said the granting of a conditional use permit for West River Dairy makes it even more urgent that state officials hear from the public about the impacts of mega-dairy operations. In July, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) announced that it will be accepting public input until Oct. 1 on the socioeconomic impact of large-scale dairies in the state. The MDA is defining “large scale dairies” as operations with approximately 10,000 or more cows. A summary of the comments, which can be submitted to https://www.mda.state.mn.us/input-socioeconomic-impact-large-scale-dairies-minnesota, will be sent by the MDA to the Minnesota Legislature as it considers possible public policy proposals during its 2027 session.
“We need to be asking ourselves: what kind of future for agriculture and our rural communities do we want?” said Sheets. “So far, the public has repeatedly made it clear it’s not the Riverview model — now state and local officials need to show they are hearing us.”
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The Land Stewardship Project (LSP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering an ethic of stewardship for farmland, promoting sustainable agriculture and developing healthy communities in the food and farming system. LSP has offices in the Minnesota communities of Montevideo, Lewiston and South Minneapolis. More information is available at landstewardshipproject.org.