Farmers and River Protectors Take State Back to Court to Stop Mega-Chicken Factory Farm

31 December 2024, Oregon: Today, local farmer and river protection groups filed an updated challenge to the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s (ODA) individual water quality permit to J-S Ranch, a mega-chicken production facility capable of raising 3.5 million broiler chickens per year. The permit allows construction and operation of the large factory farm in the sensitive area of the Wiseman Island reach of the North Santiam River. The newly issued permit requires only minor improvements to the operation and minimal additional monitoring, failing to address most of the issues that brought farmers and community members to court in 2022. The new permit also failed to comply with the current law after SB 85 (the first legislation in decades to reform the regulation of Oregon’s factory farms) was passed in 2023. 

“The state is giving J-S Ranch a pass from complying with our hard-passed updated rules for CAFOs, despite the operation being so close to the North Santiam River, neighboring homes, and likely to pollute ground and surface waters in this very wet area,” said Amy van Saun, attorney for the petitioners. “ODA cannot define away the will of the community, which passed a one-mile setback for new large chicken CAFOs, and we will fight for their rights in court.” 

Once constructed, J-S Ranch will collect, store, and export massive quantities of livestock waste—approximately 4,500 tons of manure-laced chicken litter a year—while blowing tons of ammonia and dust from the chicken litter out of its barns located just 1/4 of a mile from the river. Despite the strenuous objections of community members and concerns of surface and groundwater pollution from the proposed facility, ODA issued only a general groundwater quality permit for the mega chicken factory in May 2022. Two years later, ODA voluntarily withdrew the permit for reconsideration on the eve of trial in litigation brought by community farmer and environmental groups, including Farmers Against Foster Farms, Friends of Family Farmers, Willamette Riverkeeper, and farmer and neighbor Christina Eastman. 

On October 31, 2024, ODA issued a new Large Tier II Individual NPDES Permit to J-S Ranch, without addressing these groups’ concerns, including pollution of groundwater (used by neighboring farmers) and nearby rivers, including the North Santiam River and the South Santiam River and tributaries, which all provide recreation and wildlife habitat. Again, the state denied that air-borne ammonia and dust from the chicken houses deposited in the North Santiam is a water quality issue, and continues to claim that groundwater pollution will not occur despite making no changes to the infrastructure of the chicken barns. Further, despite the new permit being issued after SB 85 and after Linn County’s one-mile setback rule, the agencies claim that J-S Ranch is an existing CAFO, despite the facility not yet being built – much less operated with livestock. 

The second amended petition filed today challenges the unaddressed issues as well as these new deficiencies in the permit, and ODA’s rule defining “New CAFO” that improperly includes J-S Ranch merely because it was previously permitted, despite never being in operation. 

The plaintiffs are represented jointly by the Center for Food Safety and Sugarman Dahab law firm.

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