Minnesota Residents Plan to Fight Big Dairy

Officials in Brookings County, SD have granted a permit for the construction of a 4,000-cow dairy farm on a hill that shares a border with the small town of Hendricks near Minneapolis, MN. Hendricks residents fear that pollution generated by the farm would seep into Lake Hendricks, a body of water recently cleaned of debris and toxins. “If there’s a major spill,” resident Tom Landmark said, “it’s a South Dakota problem for one hour and it’s a Minnesota problem for a long period of time.” According to calculations by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, should the farm indeed be constructed, its 4,000 cows would produce an equivalent amount of waste as a city with 650,000 people. The total human population of Hendricks is 1,100.