Workers from Three Mile Canyon Farms Columbia River Dairy walk along Highway 395 Saturday evening protesting working conditions and environmental concerns at the dairy. Some workers at the dairy want representation from the United Farm Workers Union.

By Karen Hutchinson-Talaski

Staff writer

HERMISTON About 40 people marched in protest of working conditions and air quality at Boardman’s Threemile Canyon Farms Saturday evening in Hermiston.

Shouting “Yes, it can be done!” in Spanish, the protesters walked along Highway 395, holding banners and placards asking for fair working conditions at the farm and Columbia River Dairy, which is where many of the protesters work.

Threemile Canyon Farms is an Oregon-based joint venture owned by R.D. Offutt Company-Northwest and Bos Family Oregon Farms, two organizations that excel in large-scale farming enterprises. The company owns 93,000 acres of Columbia River Basin land just west of Boardman, about 150 miles east of Portland.

Cecilio Cobian, a dairy worker for Columbia River Dairy, says that, although some problems have been solved, there are still many to be resolved.

“If you look at their (Threemile Canyon Farms) Internet site, what they say about the benefits they give us, it is all lies,” Cobian said through an interpreter. “They said BMCC (Blue Mountain Community College) would come and help us learn English and job skills and they haven’t come.”

Cobian does admit there are BMCC pamphlets at the farm, however, he says the pamphlets do not apply to the dairy workers.

Workers at the dairy start at 6 a.m. and work until 4 with only a half-an-hour lunch and one 15 minute break in the morning, says Cobian.

“If we don’t get the work done by 4, they get mad at us,” Cobian said.

The problem, says Cobian, is that more and more work is piled on to workers due to the arrival of more cows, but there isn’t anyone to help out.

“They keep adding cows, we don’t have enough people to do the work and when they bring new people in,” Cobian said. “They don’t last.”

Kendra Kimbirauskas of the Sierra Club says she came out in support of the workers and concern about the “large amount of ammonia gas” this is being emitted on the farm from animal waste.

“We are worried about what it is doing to the neighbors, but more specifically to the farm workers who have to breathe this in every single day at work,” Kimbirauskas said.

Animal wastes contain 150 toxins, Kimbirauskas says, a couple of which are hydrogen sulfide and methane.

According to the Centers for Disease Control’s National Ag Safety Database, hydrogen sulfide is considered the most dangerous of the byproducts of manure decomposition. Methane’s main hazard is its flammable, explosive nature.

“Threemile Canyon Farms like to tell the public they are a sustainable farm,” Kimbirauskas said, “but you can’t have 55,000 cows in one location and call yourself sustainable.”

To the Sierra Club, ?sustainable’ means that all practices done on a farm stays on the farm.

“Threemile basically, their practices, the reason they are able to profit is at the expense of public health and the environment,” Kimbirauskas said.

Threemile Canyon Farms is in the process of building a methane digester. Work on a clarifier which would remove sand from the manure and then be used in the digester has started and should be completed by the end of August, says Len Bergstein, spokesperson for the Farms.

Threemile Canyon Farms will use steam and energy generated by the digester to run an ethanol facility. which is planned for this fall. The farm also has a full composting facility.

As to other allegations made by the United Farm Workers and workers on the farm, Bergstein could not address those issues as it was too late in the day to determine the validity of the charges. However, Bergstein did say that Threemile has had an email from Stephanie Hallick stating that “although agricultural operations like Threemile Canyon Farms emit ammonia in a dilute form, the ammonia further dilutes quickly in the air below harmful levels. So there is no health impacts in a community.”

The National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control, visited Threemile Canyon Farms two weeks ago.

According to Bergstein, NIOSH toured the facility and also placed monitors on workers centered in the milking parlor, barns and lagoons.

“They found levels that were very below those levels that are permissible,” Bergstein said.