By Sara StrongFeedlots in Rock County are still opening their gates to inspections and waiting for environmental ratings. For the most part, their scores have been favorable, with about 75 percent having no environmental concerns.Land Management Director Eric Hartman said the site inventories are going well, and that from his view, livestock producers aren’t as apprehensive about the inventories as they once were. That can be chalked up to increased communication with producers, especially through the Feedlot Task Force that was formed when the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency started supervising the inspections spring of 2002.The actual site visits are done by a county employee and a representative from the Board of Water and Soil Resources. The visits involve the most complete of feedlot overviews, called Level III inventories.The resultso275 feedlots have been visited of the 618 in the countyo262 are active siteso200 are active with no environmental concernso44 are active with runoff concerns onlyo7 are active with basin and runoff concerns (making 51 total with runoff concerns)o11 are active with unpermitted basinso20 sites need engineering assistance for a two-year interim permit scheduleo31 sites need engineering assistance under an open lot agreemento22.37 percent are open lots with runoff concernso23.66 percent of the facilities have environmental concernsTotal cost to the county so far has been $45,000.The inventories are a special situation in Rock County because they were ordered by the U.S. District Attorney when bribery crimes in Pipestone County involved Rock County’s former Land Management Director. Rock County had set a goal of doing the Level III inventories on every feedlot in 1997, so the order is speeding up the process. Rock County’s inventories will be completed by December 2004. The MPCA has said it wants every county to eventually complete the inventories.Room for improvementThe average Feedlot Evaluation rating is 29 for feedlots that have a recognized runoff problem.The Feedlot Evaluation numbers are calculated by assessing various risk factors for a site: number of animals, nearby water movement and cleaning frequency for instance. The lower the number, the better the score. Even though lower is better, Hartman said the scores for the evaluations aren’t on a linear scale — an 8 isn’t three times better than a 24.The highest in Rock County is 71 and the lowest is 8.Hartman said the 71 rating isn’t as alarming as it first looks. "If it was next to the Rock River, it would be different," he said. "This particular one is not considered a real high concern, but it is going through changes to become compliant."The 31 sites that need engineering assistance are having some difficulty in knowing how to get that assistance. Producers have to pay for an engineer sign-off for improvements to feedlots. There could be state money available for an engineer’s work. However, state rules haven’t been finalized and the county is leery of using an engineer to sign off on rules that could change.Just recently, though, the National Resource Conservation Service published standards that probably won’t be varied from much when the final rules are published.Hartman said, "Everybody has signed off on the standards. The MPCA is putting together guidelines on how to interpret these standards."The engineer option is open to the county because of a state grant that would allow a regional engineer to be housed out of Rock County for two years. The local cost would be mostly "in kind" costs of about $34,000 that would come from providing a work area, telephone and vehicle for the engineer.The two-year grant allows most of the engineer’s time to be dedicated to working with feedlot owners in Rock County who have to make changes based on the Level III inventories. Until the rules are finalized, though, the county is waiting on the engineer. Hartman said he doesn’t think the rules will be much different from the interim rules recently published, but the fear is that "there will be new hoops to jump through."
