Eastem-Leprino cheese operation draws DER fire
BY JANE BRESEE
Staff Correspondent
SOUTH WAVERLY - Alleged
improper waste disposal practices
at the South Waverly cheese plant
of Leprmo Foods and Eastern Milk
Producers Cooperative drew in
creasing fire this week from state
environmental officials in both
Pennsylvania and New York.
The practices involve two types
of violations.
First, officials of Waverly, N.Y.
and the New York Department of
Environmental Concern are
considering action against Leprmo
for violation of waste discharge
limits into the Waverly Sewerage
Treatment Plant.
Also, the Pennsylvania
Department of Environmental
Resources is determining the
seriousness of violatioir and what
action should be taken against
Eastern Milk Producers for
negligent disposal of the whey
from the cheese production -
process.
James Chester, Regional
Director for the DER, brought the
whey problem to a head last week
when he addressed the spring
meeting of the Bradford-SuUivan
County Farmers Association at the
Monroeton Fire Hall.
“Since the summer of 1979,”
Chester told the farm group, "we
have tried to get the whey problem
solved smoothly without being
hardnosed. , “Lepring and
Eastern said that they were wrong
and promised to correct their
practices.
“Now, we are as far as we can go
and we feel that we have been
deceived and have asked Lepnno
and Eastern to separate them
selves from the process of getting
rid of the whey.”
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Chester said that about 90,000
gallons of whey are produced each
day as a by-product of the cheese
making.
The DER official reaffirmed his
position this week
“Eastern should get out of the
whey disposal business,” he said.
“their record has been one of
repeated failures and negligence.”
Eastern, he explained, holds a
permit to spray irrigate the whey
in sections of Smithfield Township
in Bradford County. But ap
plication is supposed to be limited
to an inch per acre per year.
“This area has been grossly
overloaded,” Chester said.
“There has been excess
discharge runoff of 50,000 to 100,000
gallons and it has fouled a pond
and wells."
Chester said that a penalty of
$17,000 had been levied against
Eastern in late-1980, which in
cluded promises that operations,
practices and even personnel
would be changed.
The agreement called for a
cessation of application in a cer
tain area, according to Chester.
“In the past week, we’ve found
the improper application of tens of
thousands of gallons of wfiey in the
same area where the operation
was supposed to have been halted.
“We have been given numerous
assurances that the practices
would be changed, but there has
been repeated failures to carry
them out.”
Chester also told the Bradford-
SuUivan Farmers Association that
the weUs of the Masonite Corp. in
East Towanda are being fouled up.
“You have a tremendous
problem coming up around you,”
Chester told the farm group.
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“You who are a part of Eastern
Milk should be intimately involved
in how to deal with the situation ”
Eastern has a 20-year full supply
contract with Leprino to provide
the milk for the cheese plant.
Eastern owns about 11 percent of
the plant and its efforts to get
financing to purchase the plant and
lease it to Leprmo have been un
successful.
The Farmers Home Ad
ministration just recently denied a
$2O million loan guarantee to
Eastern, primarily for credit
reasons.
Chester of the DER also men
tioned the proposed location of a
Schep’s cheese plant in Wyoming
County. Installation of a 1,000-
gallon capacity sewage plant has
been approved, he said, but what
about the 160,000 gallons of whey
that are produced each day.
He said that a plan to feed it to
livestock is being investigated,
wondering how many head are
needed to consume these large
amounts.
Chester said that water will be a
hot and heavy problem during the
coming year. He said that another
regulation about to be acted upon
are the vapor recovery systems on
underground gasoline tanks. He
said that a day is coming when the
granting of extensions will run out
for their installation.
“Another problem is the algae in
lakes which is caused from the
nutrients in agricultural fer
tilizer,” Chester said.
“This problem was experienced
a year ago and will likely occur
again,”
Chester told the farming
audience to get involved in the
The Lauchmahs say: "With
our old system the cows had
sore and infected teats which
made it difficult to apply
milkers. After installing the
Bodmin System, within 3
weeks this condition was
corrected. We are not ex
periencing any drop off
problems like before, the
milker units now stay on the
cows. Ever since we began
using this milking system, our
production of pounds has
increased continuously. Need
less to say we are very happy
with our Bodmin milking
units.”
-jepartment of Environmental
Resources James Chester, right, explains regulations to
Lewis Neuber, of Sugar Run, following spring banquet of the
Bradford-Sullivan County Farmers Association. Chester
severely criticized improper disposal practices involving whey
from the Leprino Foods and Eastern Milk Producers cheese
plant at South Waverly.
process of locating sites
hazardous waste dumps.
“What are you going to do when
a company buys 500 acres in your
area?” he asked.
“They will already have looked
at the zoning. They’ll hire two
lawyers to appeal your protests
through all the courts. All the state
will do is look only at the criteria
and regulations.”
He further explained that the
DER is being sued presently for
allowing solid wastes to be dumped
into a site, which is definitely
unsuitable. But the mayor of the
area and local legislators had
insisted that the site be used
Kevin Ferris, president of the
*>s3-farm familv organization, was
Research seeks
to drought
LANCASTER - While
politicians, weather forecasters
and nearly everyone else talk
about the effects of drought on the
economy, few U.S. crop scientists
are actually doing something to
help advert its disastrous blow on
food supplies in the future.
But at least one company,
DeKalb Agßearch, Inc., DeKalb,
Illinois a major supplier of
hybrid corn and sorghum seed
has been working to improve food
supplies for more than a decade.
Their research has attempted to
drought-proof the hybrid com seed
that farmers plant each spring.
One approach DeKalb resear
chers are actively investigating is
a genetic system that induced
semi-dormancy in order to protect
com plants during short drought
periods. The goal is to develop
hybrids that match or exceed
present yields but do so with less
water than is now required.
Benefits would be two-fold: (1)
irrigation farmers could reduce
water needs and irrigation costs
and (2) growers in moisture-short
areas could produce a respectable
yield compared to little or nothing
at all.
Much of DeKalb’s research work
focuses on a genetic system called
“latente.” This is the Spanish word
for “dormant.” Plants with the
latente system have the ability to
go dormant during drought periods
and resume normal growth when
revived by rainfall or irrigation.
Like other drought-tolerance
chairman of the meeting. A
resolution to raise annual dues
from $35 to $5O was passed.
Marilyn Bok, a member of the
League of Women Voters,
demonstrated and explained the
electronic voting machine whose
use will be decided in a referen
dum in the upcoming Primary
Election.
Visitors at the meeting were
Rep. Roger Madigan, Bradford
County Commissioner William
Gannon and wife, Barbara; Fred
Tiffany, PFA director, and wife,
Jean, a director on the PFA
Women’s Committee; and Jeff
Patton, regional organization
director.
•proof com
characteristics, the mode of
operation of this latente system is
difficult to pm down.
“This does not appear to be a
simple one or two-gene complex
which can be easily transferred
into corn inbreds (parents of
hybrids) for making new drought
tolerant hybrids,” according to
DeKalb’s com physiologist Ron
Castleberry, DeKalb, Illinois.
Currently, DeKalb plant
breeders are transferring this
latente source of drought tolerance
into modem hybrids. Company
officials say “the hybrids are
under test at many locations and
look very promising.”
Com breeders say intensified
efforts to drought-proof com are
already paying off for many far
mers.
“Last season, DeKalb’s new XL
-25 com hybrid demonstrated how
built-in tolerance to dry weather
stress can be a good ace-m-the
hole,” DeKalb vice president
Harold Noren explains, “At
DeKalb’s testing locations m
drought-stricken Illinois, lowa,
Minnesota and Michigan, XL-25
managed to squeeze an average of
109.8 bushels per acre out of
available moisture while 25
competitive hybrids yielded an
average of only 99.1 bushels per
acre.”
Until scientists find a way to
control the weather, you can bet
that corn breeders will continue
their search for better hybrids.