Tell the MPCA that Industrial-Scale Projects Need Industrial-Scale Review
Minnesota’s largest dairy producer, Riverview, LLP, has applied to build the first livestock facility in Minnesota to hold over 20,000 animal units. If built, the facility will hold 18,855 dairy cattle, bringing the total animal units to 26,397 in one facility. This proposed expansion would be nearly double the size of the next largest livestock operation in our state in terms of animal units. This expanded Riverview facility would be more than 60 times the size of the average Minnesota dairy, which had fewer than 280 cows in 2025. This makes it a fundamentally new and particularly powerful threat to Minnesota farmers and rural communities.
Riverview, based out of Morris, Minn., is one of the largest milk producers in the country. The firm now owns 16 permitted dairy CAFOs in Minnesota alone, and these facilities house a total of more than 135,000 cows, according to the Star Tribune. That accounts for nearly a third of the state’s entire dairy herd. Riverview also has a major presence in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Arizona.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), which is the agency that issues Minnesota’s feedlot permits, must recognize the fundamentally new nature of this threat and give this permit greater scrutiny than it ever has to previous proposals. This proposal by Riverview must be required to undergo a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
How you can act:
Share your concerns about the proposed facility with the MPCA before the comment period closes on Thursday, April 9, at 11:59 p.m. The comment form is found below. If the below form does not work for you, you can also comment directly on the MCPA website here:
Guidance on making comments:
This comment period is open to all Minnesotans. It is critical that they hear from Minnesotans not just on this project but on the precedent set if a project of this size is not required to produce an Environmental Impact Statement. The MPCA uses the environmental assessment worksheet (EAW) process, and any comments received, to evaluate the potential for significant environmental effects and to decide if an EIS is needed for a project.
The EIS provides detailed information about the extent of potentially significant environmental impacts of a proposed project, presents alternatives, and identifies methods for reducing adverse environmental effects. The required form and content of an EIS is described in Minnesota Rules 4410.2300, and shall be prepared using an interdisciplinary approach that includes the natural, environmental, and social sciences. The EIS is not meant to approve or deny a project, but instead act as a source of information to guide approval and permitting decisions. The EIS is completed by the responsible governmental unit (RGU) designated according to Minnesota Rules 4410.
Writing a Comment:
This comment period is open to any member of the public who either lives or owns property in Minnesota. Once the comment period closes, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is required to respond to all comments before they issue their decision on the permit. The MPCA will then choose to approve, deny, or determine that the proposal requires further review.
Your comments can include anything you would like them to include. That means your comments can cover environmental, economic, or community-focused topics and can include facts, opinions, statistics, analysis, or anything else you believe the MPCA needs to hear before they rule on this permit application. You can also upload documents to submit alongside your comments if you wish.
While comments can be about anything, the most effective comments respond to something directly in the permit application documents or the Environmental Assessment Worksheet (EAW) that have been created for this proposal. Those documents can be found by clicking the green “Review Documents” button on the form or below:
• Public Notice
• EAW Form
• Attachments 1-12
• Attachments 13-24
Ideas to Include in Comments:
This proposed operation is the first of its size in Minnesota. It would be nearly double the size of the next largest operation in our state in terms of animal units. This expanded Riverview facility would be more than 60 times the size of the average Minnesota dairy, which had fewer than 280 cows in 2025. This makes it a fundamentally new and particularly powerful threat to Minnesota farmers and rural communities.
Riverview, based out of Morris, Minn., is one of the largest milk producers in the country. The firm now owns 16 permitted dairy CAFOs in Minnesota alone, and these facilities house a total of more than 135,000 cows, according to the Star Tribune. That accounts for nearly a third of the state’s entire dairy herd. Riverview also has a major presence in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Arizona.
Minnesota is already losing dozens of dairy farms annually due to inconsistent and often below cost-of-production milk prices. Massive dairy operations, like the one Riverview is proposing to build, have glutted the market and tightened Big Milk’s stranglehold on the industry, allowing them to push small and medium-sized family farms out of business and off the land. This operation would only exacerbate the situation and accelerate the loss of dairy farms in our state, decimating Main Street economies in the process.
No feedlot has ever undergone an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in Minnesota. Each time the MPCA has determined that an operation should undergo one, the operator that requested the permit has withdrawn their application. And all of those operations that were determined to need an EIS were significantly smaller than Riverview’s proposed operation will be.
If built, the Riverview operation would be allowed to pump up to 226 million gallons of water per year from an off-site well. For reference, the City of Morris, which is home to over 5,000 people, is permitted to pump up to 300 million gallons of water a year. Once constructed, the facility would produce 202,744,000 gallons of liquid manure and wastewater a year and 26,400 tons of solid manure a year.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has not yet completed a mapping of Stevens County’s groundwater resources and aquifers for their County Geologic Atlas Series. In fact, they have not even begun the hydrological survey of the county. It is irresponsible to other water users and residents of the area to move forward with this permit without a full understanding of the potential impacts.
The Pomme de Terre watershed, where this expansion is proposed, is already considered a sensitive watershed. The MPCA already lists the two closest waterways to the facility, the Pomme de Terre River and an unnamed creek, as impaired, and this proposal would only exacerbate the impairment.
More Information
For more information, contact LSP organizer Matthew Sheets at 320-500-7375 or via e-mail.
