There were no fish in the water that day. The small insects in the stream were impaired.
The state investigated. They found their culprit: Nearly 8,000 cows and a young farmer who has led his family’s cattle business since the death of his father.
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation says it needs to shut down his and his mother’s Clay County operations to prevent further pollution from manure running off into nearby waters, at least until he can get his permits and put the proper controls in place.
The farmer, Trace Browning, said recently he didn’t know he was supposed to get permits and create runoff controls. And since the state told him about the issues last year, he said, he’s being doing his best to rectify them. He’s not sure what will happen if he has to shut down his farm, located north of Cookeville near the Kentucky border and one of the largest cattle feeding operations in the state.
Lawyers will argue in a Dec. 19 hearing whether the Brownings should have to pause any cattle feeding operations in Tennessee. Davidson County Chancellor Russell T. Perkins is the judge overseeing the case.
The Tennessee attorney general sued Trace Browning, his mother and two of his companies Dec. 8 alleging that Browning has flouted state environmental law by allowing large amounts of cow waste to flow into state waters. The state also says he lacked the necessary permits to run an operation of this size.
Investigation finds environmental issues
Browning took over his family farm after his father died in 2015, when he was 15 years old. He soon “fell in love with the industry,” he said in a 2021 interview when he was named Clay County’s Young Farmer of the Year.
In 2020 he moved the cattle to his current location on Leonard Road. He kept growing the operation, adding more cattle at his feedlot, where he takes in small heifers and bulls and grows them to about 700-900 pounds, at which point they’re sold. By November 2023, he said he had about 7,000 to 8,000 cattle on his property, which had also grown over the years.
He said he didn’t know what he needed to do to keep things in compliance.
“I was a 20-year-old kid,” Browning said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “I just honestly had no way of knowing that anything like that will be needed.”
The state Department of Environment and Conservation first started investigating Browning in July 2022 after receiving complaints about the water quality in the waterways downstream of his farm on Leonard Road. Over the next year-and-a-half, the department received 15 complaints about water quality and being unable to use Wilson Branch and large portions of Trace Creek, which TDEC in August 2023 warned should not be used for swimming or fishing.
The department completed several inspections of Browning’s farm and nearby waters since July 2022, observing:
- “few macroinvertebrates and no fish in streams impacted by discharges from the Site” in May 2023;
- “dangerously high E. coli levels” in August 2023;
- “moderate to severe impairment in the impacted streams’ macroinvertebrate populations” in August 2023;
- “discoloration, foam, (and) odors” in impacted streams on several occasions;
- “no erosion protection and sediment control measures (EPSCs) were in place, leaving bare soils exposed to stormwater runoff and sediment discharge” in January 2023.
TDEC said it inspected a farm owned by Rita Nell Browning, Trace Browning’s mother, in August 2023 and found she did not have the appropriate permits for her 1,700-head cattle farm and that cattle carcasses and other waste had been disposed of in “an open pit from which stormwater could carry pollutants to waters of the state.”
Permits not yet approved
Barry Sulkin, an environmental scientist with Tennessee Riverkeeper and former chief of enforcement in TDEC’s water quality control division, reviewed the lawsuit and attached exhibits.
“It looks pretty severe,” Sulkin said of the alleged pollution to the streams near Browning’s farm. “About what I would expect when you have thousands of cattle impacting land that’s draining into these relatively small streams.”
There are other farms near Browning’s that his attorney said may also have polluted the waters.
“I don’t think the evidence is good that it’s from this facility,” attorney David Moore said Wednesday.
TDEC first formally told Browning that it believed he was violating the Tennessee Water Quality Control Act and that he needed to obtain a permit for his large-scale cattle feeding operation in August 2022.
Browning then hired a consultant to handle his permit applications, records show. She later left the project. She told TDEC employees she left due to lack of communication with the farmer, while Browning and his attorney said they disagree with that characterization.
Browning has since retained Settje Agri-Services and Engineering to finalize permit applications, but the applications have not been approved yet.
Browning said Wednesday there are several different types of controls he cannot begin putting in place until his permit applications are approved. He also said he felt TDEC employees have not been sufficiently cooperative in helping identify what is lacking from his applications.
Browning said he now has about 6,000 cows as he has been selling but not buying as he wrestles with the state. Not able to purchase cows from fellow farmers, he’s also reduced the amount of feed and other supplies he buys.
“It’s stressful while we’re in this situation not being able to help others,” he said.
He also said he’s scared for other agricultural workers in Tennessee and surrounding states.
“If this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” Browning said.
Source : The Tennessean