A36‘Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 21, 1991
Maintenance Of Manure
(Continued from Page Al)
Lax in operation
As a result, one thing was cer
tain many fanners were lax in
the operation, maintenance, and
safety of structures.
"If everything’s going right,
nobody ever says anything,” said
William J. Bowers, state conserva
tion engineer, who helped write
the report.
With the aid of conservation dis
tricts in each of the counties across
Pennsylvania, the SCS study eva
luated 99 manure storage facilities,
including those with and without
USDA/Soil Conservation Service
(SCS) assistance.
“There needed to be an organ
ized effort to look at structures that
‘lf everything’s going right, nobody
ever says anything
had been in existence over the outside lots did not control bar
years to see how they were per- nyard runoff.
forming,” said Bowers. And 51 percent are near a water
source, which concerns SCS.
Jumped out
The study, funded by the SCS Operated properly
and the Department of Environ- “If they are being operated cor
mental Resources (DER) Bureau rectly and are structurally sound,
Farmers can learn about the proper maintenance and
operation of manure faclltles, as they did during a special
manure tour held in Elizabethtown last July. Here, the termi
nal end of the 200-foot underground pipeline at the Jay
Brandt farm empties manure into this 12-foot deep storage
tank. Photo by Vern Achenbach.
Minimize Safety Hazards
HARRISBURG (Dauphin Co.)
Many safety hazards can be
minimized by proper design, con
struction, and operation of a man
ure storage facility.
The following procedures will
help when building a storage facil
ity and can be incorporated into
existing storages:
• Keep in-bam pits for liquid
manure to a minimum volume and
divide pits into small compart
ments to reduce or eliminate the
need for agitation.
• Locate pump-out openings for
manure pits outside of buildings.
Use heavy covers or grates for pit
access points and keep them in
place.
• Equip ventilation systems
with an alarm to. indicate power
failure, and provide a backup ven
tilation system.
• Build railings for all walk-
of Soil and Water Conservation,
focused in on the design and con
struction of the facilities and found
very little wrong. Of 99 farms,
only 7 percent were structurally
amiss. But the thing that jumped
out at the surveyors was the safety,
operation, and maintenance of the
facilities, according to Bowers.
“We found out a lot of things
that are not being done as safely as
they should be. And some of those
things we need to correct,” he
said.
Of the farms surveyed, 34 per
cent were routinely filled above
design depth, 22 percent had over
topped at least once, 49 percent
had inadequate or no safety fences,
and 51 percent had no safety gate
or stop. Thirty-three percent with
ways on piers or walls along open
manure storage structures. Push
off platforms or piers should have
a barrier strong enough to stop a
slow-moving tractor. If animals
are to be on a pier, install a low
guardrail to keep them from rolling
into the pit if they slip.
• If the manure storage is out
doors, provide a gas trap or other
device in pipes running to the stor
age to prevent gases in the storage
structure from reentering the
building, especially during pit
agitation.
• Install a fence around open
storages, ponds, treatment basins,
and lagoons. The fence should be
tight enough to keep out small
children. Warning signs should be
placed near open storages and
above-ground tanks, and a rescue
pole and rope should be located
conspicuously in the area.
Structures
that’s probably not a concern,”
said Bowers, “other than the fact
that they are that close, which
means they need to be structurally
sound and they need to be operated
properly. If they are that close and
they overtop on a regular basis,
that’s a concern.”
Overtopping also concerns
Frank Goodlander, who served on
the project’s steering committee
that represented the Ag Advisory
Committee to the DER.
“According to regulations, the
facilties are supposed to have two
feet of freeboard —in other words,
you don’t fill it completely, you
have two feet that you don’t use. In
the study, they found that almost
every one of them at one time or
another overflowed.”
Goodlander said that one of his
concerns throughout the develop
ment of the study was the fact that
many structures were built too
close to water supplies. In the
study, said Goodlander, about 20
percent of the facilities were
located within 30 or 40 feet of
water wells.
Needs follow-up
“My feeling is that they need to
do a study on groundwater pollu
tion as a result of these facilities,”
he said. “There will be something
to come out of this as to a follow
up in order to correct some of the
problems with safety and
maintenance.”
About nine storage facilities
were located within 50 feet of a
stream, according to the report.
Twenty-five farms are reported
within 200 feet of a stream.
Approximately 51 percent of the
manure storage facilities in the
study are within 200 feet of a water
source.
“I don’t think you’re going to
get a manure storage facility farth
er away than 200 feet,” said
Robert J. Thompson, agricultural
engineer with the Lebanon Co.
SCS office, who analyzed the data
and helped write the report. “And
within your farmstead you’re
going to have a well, and if you’re
going to have manure storage,
you’re going to have a manure
storage facility near your
farmstead.”
According to the SCS engi
neers, the type of facility con
structed has a lot to do with its
safety factor near water sources. A
sealed concrete structure if con
structed well will stand up to scru
tiny within 50 feet of a water sour
Frank Goodlander, ilka many farmers, is concerned
about the maintenance of manure on his farm. Goodlander
tends the beef heifers on his farm in Lewlsberry. He served
on the Ag Advisory Committee for the manure storage
study.
Manure storage facilities were under scrutiny during a
special manure tour held last summer. Several farmers peer
down into a manhole-like opening at the Jay Brandt farm In
Bachmanviile. The gutter scraper is visible above their
heads. The grooved cement In the foreground drains a heif
er yard not seen to the left, and keeps all manure and
manure-contaminated drainage from going anywhere else
but down the manhole, like a huge french drain. Photo by
Vorn Achanbach.
ce. But a manure storage pond
needs to be well-planned,
designed, built, and maintained if
it is close to a spring, well, stream,
or pond. The design is determined
specifically for the needs of each
farm, and the SCS can provide
assistance to farmers in designing
and constructing such a facility,
according to Bowers.
Of the farms surveyed, 34 percent
were routinely filled above design
depth, and 22 percent had overtopped
at least once.
Positive action
“A well-constructed, well
maintained pond or structure with
in 50 feet of a stream, if it’s catch
ing the barnyard runoff that got in
the stream before, I think it’s a very
positive action that the farmer has
taken,” said Bowers.
• ‘Whether we need to make reg
ulations or specifications regard
ing distance, we don’t know yet,”
said Thompson. “Maybe some
body else would take this and go
make manure standards, out of it
and determine how far away.”
“No one can come up with the
magic number as to how far away
these need to be,” said Bowers.
According to SCS, several factors,
such as manure ponds located in
limestone ground or those located
in shale ground with a hand-dug
well have different requirements.
“If you have a cast-in-place rein
forced concrete structure next to a
well that is cased SO feet to bed
rock, as far as I’m concerned, they
could be side-by-side.”
Bowers said that you “can’t
make a nice, neat chart” for how
close different structures can be to
water structures. But the fact that a
high percentage of the structures
are close to water at all is a big
concern.
Need to be concerned
"I think fanners are in a posi
tion where they need to be very
concerned that die structures don’t
pollute by leaking or by overtop
ping,” he said.
Other concerns include plug
ging problems on gravity loading
systems, such as dropping a bale of
straw into the pipe system, or
snow, ice, or dry manure clogging
the system.
Goodlander and the Council
itself will use the information pub
lished in the repon and provide it
to extension offices and farm rep
resentative agencies to educate the
farmer about the importance of
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