Two dairy farms in Washington’s Yakima Valley have settled a lawsuit alleging violations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in their handling of manure.

The dairies — DBD Washington LLC and SMD LLC — are owned by Austin “Jack” DeCoster and DeCoster Enterprises and located in Outlook, Wash.

The lawsuit, filed in May 2019, was brought by the Community Association of Restoration of the Environment, known as CARE; Friends of Toppenish Creek; and the Center for Food Safety. They alleged the dairies were contaminating local drinking water supplies with animal waste from their operations.

The consent decree and lawsuit name other limited liability companies as defendants that had some participation in the dairies, but the ultimate owner is DeCoster, said Charlie Tebbutt, lead counsel for CARE and Friends of Toppenish Creek.

“After conducting written discovery and depositions, we learned who the real owner was after tracing through all the LLCs on the way up the ownership ladder,” he said.

“It’s a very complicated shell corporation,” he said.

In the court settlement — filed June 9 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington — DBD and SMD dairies agree to remediate nitrate and ammonia contamination beneath waste lagoons, double line or abandon lagoons, improve land application of waste and improve infrastructure for waste storage and transport.

The dairies also agree to fund research on remediation methods that target shallow aquifers beneath porous soils, install groundwater monitoring wells and fund alternative sources of clean drinking water for residents in the vicinity of the dairies.

Deny wrongdoing

In the settlement agreement, the defendants deny all claims in the lawsuit and contend their conduct has been subject to oversight, regulation and enforcement of their confined animal feeding operation permits by Washington State Department of Ecology.

“They settled because the soil and groundwater data, including their own, overwhelmingly showed that the lagoons and fields were causing groundwater contamination. They knew they would lose at trial and didn’t want to pay lawyers more than they had to,” attorney Tebbutt said.

DeCoster’s attorney, Jay Carroll, has not responded to Capital Press’ requests for comment.

At the time the lawsuit was filed, DBD had about 7,000 dairy cows, heifers and calves, and SMD had about 2,000 cows, heifers and calves, according to court documents.

This is not DeCoster’s first dealings with a court. He — along with his son, Peter — was sentenced to three months in prison and fined $100,000 in 2015 in relation to adulterated eggs from his Iowa-based Quality Egg company.

The eggs were linked to about 2,000 reported salmonella illnesses in multiple states in 2010 and led to a recall of millions of eggs. The company pleaded guilty to federal charges and was fined $6.79 million.