Three Yakima County, Wash., dairies have asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay a lower court order requiring them to test nearby wells, provide drinking water to area residents and check a manure lagoon for leaks.

Cow Palace, DeRuyter and Liberty dairies filed the appeal Friday, just after U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice in Spokane declined to reconsider his order.

The dairies said in a court filing they need immediate relief because Rice has ordered them to present a plan for testing wells and supplying drinking water by Jan. 16. Cow Palace must file by Jan. 7 a plan to test the lagoon.

The dairies claim the requirements imposed by Rice are unnecessary and will be costly. Although a lagoon liner was damaged while being installed in a windstorm, it is not leaking, Cow Palace maintains.

Checking the liner for leaks may require removing approximately 14 million gallons of liquid manure and may be impossible, according to the appeal.

“The manure cannot be land applied in the Lower Yakima Valley, and there doesn’t appear to be a facility that can process that much manure,” the appeal reads.

Rice issued the order at the request of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA claims the diaries have not done enough over the past decade to reduce nitrates seeping into groundwater from cow pens, compost piles, fertilized fields and from soil underneath former manure lagoons.

The dairies deny the allegations and say they’ve already spent millions of dollars testing wells, providing drinking water and controlling nitrates. Rice has rejected the dairies’ arguments.

In his ruling Friday, Rice said high nitrate levels in the groundwater remain an extreme danger to public health.

The EPA has until Jan. 3 to respond to the dairies’ appeal to the 9th Circuit.

Liberty Dairy auctioned its cows in October, but remains a defendant in the lawsuit.