-June 4,2021-
On May 3 the Corcoran City Council voted to settle a city-initiated lawsuit against the nearby Curtimade Dairy, records show. City Clerk Marlene Spain confirms that the council voted in closed session to settle the long standing legal action and reported that out that evening.”Since then there has been no update” says Ms Spain.
Online – the settlement notice first appeared in the city’s May 25 agenda packet.The council vote was unanimous.
In their complaint, the city had argued that their muni water wells were increasingly contaminated with high nitrates beginning back in 2004, testing above acceptable limits for toxicity. “Since then nitrate levels have only increased.” Meanwhile, ” the city has undertaken an expensive and unsustainable mitigation while at the same time assessing the case of the on-going increasing contamination that is coming from their adjacent neighbor, defendant Curtimade Dairy.” The suit claims Curtimade’s operation produces more than 200 million pounds of manure and almost 800 million gallons of process wastewater. That water is applied to about 1000 acres of land not far from city well
In their legal filing, first bought by the city about 6 years ago against the family dairy, and in subsequent filings, the city asked for $65 million in damages from the contaminated water. The matter has been slow to move forward but had been scheduled to go to court later in 2021.
Curti’s lawyers have suggested that the suit was spearheaded by City Manager Kindon Meik, when the city voted in June of 2015 to pursue legal action against the dairy. They say the case started with a notice of intent to sue for $8 to $9 million, and morphed to a lawsuit seeking $65 million worth of damages by August of 2019.
Meik has now stepped down as city manager earlier this year.
Curti’s lawyers have argued that their nitrate levels applied to the soil have not been out of compliance and that they are monitored by the state.
They argue there is no firm evidence that the 100-year-old dairy has contaminated city water wells. Meanwhile a dairy industry has carried on a full court press against the city fearing this would be a precedent to go after other Central Valley dairies.In the past year the California dairy industry and the Kings and Tulare County Farm Bureaus have collected donations to help the Curti family in their battle with the city. Farm Bureau leaders also say they are concerned about the precedent aspects that the lawsuit might mean.
Meanwhile the Curti family have said that if they lose they could go out of business. They argue that the city should negotiate with landowners and want the city to seek public funds to drill new wells and seek grants.
Curti attorney Leonard Herr has argued that the burden rests on Corcoran to prove their water was specifically contaminated by Curtimade Dairy. The town is – after all- surrounded by thousands of acres of farmland, farm operations, who all till with fertilizers that may or may not have migrated.
In recent years, the whole town has been sinking with the earth collapsing more than 11 feet, bringing down well infrastructure, levees and canals in the area due to ag water pumping in these drought times (see next story).
More news coverage of sinking town of Corcoran
This year’s drought in Kings County makes it likely area farmers will pump more groundwater to supply their crops again making it more bad news for Corcoran area infrastructure over the next 12 months, suggests a handful of recent news articles.
“Over the past decade, the farming town of Corcoran, California, has been sinking two feet every year as agriculture firms pump underground water to irrigate crops.”
“The 7.47 square-mile area in California’s San Joaquin Valley has 21,960 people and has sunk 11.5 feet in the last 14 years.
While Corcoran has sunk about four feet in several places since 2015, the city could sink to another six to eleven feet over the next two decades.”
“…The Corcoran Irrigation District had to build three lift stations to pump water through ditches due to infrastructure disruption.
The river used to flow by gravity alone. Still, the sinking caused sags in the ditches, causing the water to collect rather than flow out. Hence, the district had to spend $1.2 million over ten years on lift stations to help propel the water along, with farmers footing the bill, according to theNew York Times. The newspaper” report claimed that the levee had fallen from 195 feet when it was constructed in 1983 to 188 feet in 2017.”