Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Water Quality topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
NRCS helps Long Green Farms close aging manure lagoon near Chesapeake Bay
Summary
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service provided financial and technical assistance to Long Green Farms in Rising Sun, Maryland, to remove a roughly 50-year-old manure lagoon and install a new concrete waste storage facility, farm operator Caleb Crothers said.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) representative said NRCS provided technical and financial assistance to Long Green Farms in Rising Sun, Maryland, to close an aging manure lagoon and install a new concrete waste storage facility.
Caleb Crothers, operator of Long Green Farms, said the farm milks about “140 cows” and is pursuing a multi-year infrastructure plan. “We milk about 140 cows, and we farm 5 60 acres,” Crothers said in the recorded remarks; the acreage wording in the transcript appears as “5 60 acres” and the exact acreage was not specified elsewhere in the record.
The NRCS representative described the practice as a “waste facility closure,” saying the project removes an “old lagoon that they had built 50 years ago” and replaces it with a concrete structure to contain manure. The representative added the old lagoon was “within about a 100 feet of a creek,” a proximity that could allow nutrients to reach the Chesapeake Bay if the lagoon leaked.
Crothers said the new concrete facility will be more reliable and able to accommodate modern equipment, and that NRCS “helped provide financial technical assistance” while the farm used a cost‑share program, EQIP. “Ultimately, it will save us. It'll save us time and money too, and we could not have done it without the help,” Crothers said.
No formal votes or regulatory actions were recorded in the transcript. The discussion focused on the technical and environmental rationale for removing the lagoon (age, leakage risk, proximity to a creek feeding the Chesapeake Bay) and the finance/assistance arrangement (NRCS technical/financial support plus EQIP cost sharing).
