Until recently, the answer to all those questions was basically, “not much.” That is not the case anymore.
Farmers are being sued from coast to coast by unhappy neighbors claiming that the farm next door is violating federal hazardous waste laws or federal clean water laws because of the ways in which they use manure and other fertilizers.
Typical farm liability policies have pollution exclusions that leave farmers high and dry when they are sued under these federal statutes, says Dave Dybdahl, president of American Risk Management Resources, which has designed policies that cover farmers in this brave new world.
“The biggest factor driving this litigation is that increasingly large farming operations are starting to look like industrial polluters to the neighbors,” Dybdahl said, citing litigation in several states.
In the State of Washington, he said, neighbors of four farms successfully applied RCRA—the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act--in a citizens action against farms that were spreading a lot of manure on fields. Water, whether from irrigation or natural precipitation was then running off of these farms and onto neighboring lands or into neighboring groundwater tables.
“This increased nitrates to 75 ppm and the cleaning drinking water standard is 10,” he said. “What caught everyone by surprise is the citizens’ action was successful and the farmers were found to be in violation of running a solid waste disposal facility without a permit.”
He said there is a suit involving farms near Des Moines, Iowa for $100 million alleging that farmers have been operating a water treatment facility without a permit—that facility being the farmers’ fields. Neighbors are using the federal Clean Water Act as the basis of that litigation, he said.
This is the first of a 4-part series looking at pollution laws as currently being applied to farms, and the implications of such suits on the insurance industry. The next installment will be published April 11.
