Document text
When waste is want Blue Sky Transportation delivers Tree Top food waste to Clay Charley's White City ranch on June 5, 2015. DEQ photo Sunday Feb 5, 2017 at 12:01 AM Mark Freeman Mail Tribune @MTwriterFreeman For four years, the livestock on Clay Charley's ranch near White City were living the high life while Charley sat back like a ranching version of Tom Sawyer, getting paid to have someone else feed his cows. Since 2011 his herd had been feasting on tons of food processing waste from Tree Top's processing operation in Medford and, later, heaps of scraps of high-end pizza and other organic foods from Amy's Kitchen in White City. Brokered by middleman Blue Sky Transportation, Tree Top and Amy's Kitchen got a break on their disposal costs and Charley was paid $50 for every 10-yard dump truck-load of their food his cattle thoroughly enjoyed, especially in winter. "Usually, you hope they make it through the winter," says Charley, 64, a third-generation rancher. "Mine were getting fat." But by February 2015, it got to become too much of a good thing. This so-called "beneficial use" of food waste — a symbiotic relationship between the food industry and agriculture cultivated by both sides and encouraged by state regulatory agencies — went massively awry, state officials say. Far more food was dumped at his Glass Lane ranch than Charley could feed his cows or till into the ground as a soil enhancer. And thousands of Tree Top's peach pits, not considered cattle food, were dumped there, threatening to leach cyanide into the soil. The peach pits remained for 18 months, despite state Department of Environmental Quality warnings to Charley and Tree Top officials that their presence was illegal. Now Blue Sky is defunct and two of Jackson County's largest food producers have been issued formal warnings for taking part in illegal dumping of food waste. And Charley's ranch has been tagged as an illegal dump site and issued a $19,200 civil penalty on Dec. 27 that he's currently fighting. "I'm going to have to bite the bullet, even though it wasn't my fault," Charley says. The ranch since has been cleared, with Tree Top paying to have the peach pits hauled to Biomass One in White City last summer. Both Tree Top and Amy's Kitchen say they now have their food waste hauled to permitted landfills or compost sites. DEQ spokeswoman Katherine Benenati says there was no indication that surface water or groundwater was contaminated by what transpired on Charley's ranch. But state officials don't know whether the Charley affair is an anomaly or a rare peek inside the longstanding relationship between industrial food producers and agriculture in Southern Oregon. State agencies have no authority or mechanism to track where food waste goes or how much gets spread on Oregon farms and ranches. There are no reports sent to the Oregon Department of Agriculture or DEQ about what food waste falls under this so-called "Agricultural Use Exclusion." Dumped food waste may pose a public health threat by attracting insects and vermin, according to the DEQ. The waste also has the potential to contaminate surface water and groundwater. Yet someone has to complain for the issue to get on state officials' radar screens, like it did in the Charley affair. "It's not part of our jurisdictional authority," says John Byers, manager for the ODA's agricultural water quality/soils program. "It's complaint based, complaint driven." At least four other Jackson County ranches have been identified as places where Blue Sky dumped food waste, and a fifth was discovered with heaps of Amy's Kitchen food scraps hauled by Blue Sky last spring outside of Grants Pass following another anonymous complaint, according to the DEQ. Since the 1970s, DEQ's solid-waste rules have had exemptions specifically for industrial food waste created at production facilities such as Amy's Kitchen and Tree Top. Having the waste consumed or tilled into farm or ranch soils is considered far more beneficial than dumping it in landfills, says Brian Fuller, DEQ's materials management manager for the agency's western region. "It's high up the list, higher than composting," Fuller says. "It just has to be done in a way that protects human health and the environment." Livestock must eat the food laid out for them and the remainder must be tilled into the soil within a day of it being spread on farm or pasture land and it can be done so as long as it improves soil conditions. On the 322-acre Charley ranch, Blue Sky would dump loads of Tree Top and, beginning in early 2015, Amy's Kitchen waste as supplemental feed to Charley's herd of about 120 cattle, records show. Charley says he was paid a $50 "tipping fee" for every 30-cubic-yard load dumped there. Charley says he took Tree Top's peach pits because "they make perfect road-building material." It was a good deal for all, Charley says. He says the companies got rid of their waste for half the cost of taking it to the landfill, Blue Sky made its money, the cows got fed and the ranch's soils later classified as "poor" by the DEQ got some nutrient boost. "Everything we did was OK," Charley says. An anonymous complaint was filed with ODA on Feb. 2, 2015, prompting state agricultural and DEQ representatives to coordinate visits there on March 3 and April 2, DEQ records show. The second visit included Tree Top Plant Supervisor John Bradley, Amy's Kitchen Plant Manager George Pelch and Blue Sky's owners Greg and Leah Baker, DEQ records show.  The group discussed ways to ensure that the food was dispersed effectively and a staging area contained berms to ensure no dribbling into Constance Creek, a Rogue River tributary that flowed about 200 yards away, DEQ reports state. "At the time, the focus was to get the materials to be used productively," Benenati says. DEQ officials also pointed out that the thousands of peach pits piled there did not qualify for the exemption because they are not considered agricultural food and contain cyanide that can contaminate soils, according to DEQ's notice to Tree Top detailing its solid-waste violations. DEQ followed up that April visit with a Sept. 9, 2015, letter granting the operation its necessary exclusion from dumping restrictions but based it on a series of conditions that had to be continuously met to ensure the practice did not create a public health or environmental hazard. For instance, it allowed Charley to spread and till up to nine tons of Tree Top waste per acre of pasture per year, or five tons of Amy's Kitchen waste. It also required soil tests to prove that doing so improved the soil conditions. It also set a March 31, 2016, date for an annual report sent to DEQ detailing exactly how much food waste was distributed on Charley's ranch and where it was. "We all thought we were all in compliance with things," Charley says. But soon after, Charley says, things went haywire. Blue Sky began hauling in more food material than his cows could eat, Charley says. Moreover, some of the Amy's Kitchen food was "pretty sloppy" and of poor feed quality, and conditions were such that he couldn't spread it and till it into the soil, he says. Pelch, Amy's Kitchen's plant manager, says his company did not learn until December 2015 that Blue Sky was not properly managing its food waste at Charley's ranch and asked Blue Sky not to deliver there. During the investigation, Amy's Kitchen self-reported that Blue Sky hauled 181 loads of food waste from the plant in 2015, but it was unknown how much of that went to Charley's ranch, Pelch says. The hammer came, Charley claims, when Blue Sky leadership and drivers changed hands, leading to what Charley calls five "unauthorized" dumps of food waste totaling 150 cubic yards in December and early January 2016. "That's the 150 yards that supposedly are getting me in trouble," Charley says. Charley says he stopped getting Blue Sky deliveries in February 2016. When March came around, he was still waiting for conditions to improve so he could spread some of the excess food waste. He didn't file that DEQ report because he figured the operation was over, he says. When April 1 came with no Charley report, "that's when we switched from a technical-assistance mode to an enforcement mode," Fuller says. Amy's Kitchen terminated its relationship with Blue Sky on May 28 and all of its food waste now is trucked to the Dry Creek Landfill, Pelch wrote in an email. Blue Sky dissolved as an Oregon corporation and the Bakers could not be located for comment. Fuller says the agency believes they have left the state. The thousands of peach pits deemed solid waste and illegally dumped on the property remained, despite the April 2015 warning to Tree Top and Charley. The DEQ believes the peach-pit deliveries continued into December 2015, totaling an estimated 250 cubic yards. When the DEQ issued its Aug. 22 warning to Tree Top and outlined its violations, it gave the company a Sept. 30 deadline to remove those pits, DEQ records show. After an extension was granted, the pits were mostly gone by mid-November, records show. Some peach pits used as a ranch road surface remained because the potential disturbances from removing them could be worse than simply leaving them, Fuller says. Tree Top spokeswoman Sharon Miracle says company officials believed they were legally disposing of peach pits at Charley's ranch and cleaned up the pits after it received its warning letter and completed the cleanup by the end of October. Miracle did not elaborate or detail why the time lag from initial warning to removal occurred.  Fuller says "it's not so cut and dry" that companies like Amy's Kitchen know where their food waste goes and that it's handled properly. "I'm sure everyone had good intentions and that the companies were looking at a cheaper way to get rid of their waste," Fuller says. While the amount of food waste dumped at Charley's ranch was massive, the surface and groundwater there were not damaged, Fuller says. "While the volume was egregious, there was no impact to the waters of the state," Fuller says. The whole Charley affair has led the DEQ and ODA to create a memorandum of understanding that better spells out the roles and responsibilities of the two agencies to deal with future cases like this. "We've definitely learned some lessons on this one," Fuller says. Though the two agencies still have no authority to require any industrial food processor to tell them how much waste is going where, Fuller is confident someone's nose will discover the next time beneficial use goes awry. "If it was happening at the scale as it was with Amy's Kitchen and Tree Top, we'd know about it," Fuller says. "Somebody would have complained." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 541-776-4470 or by email at [email protected].