As Riverview LLP aggressively expands its mega-dairies across the Upper Midwest, advocacy groups and worried residents are mounting legal challenges and orchestrating local efforts to push back.

The Minnesota-based dairy giant, the second-largest producer of milk and milk products in the United States, has been on the march in recent years, building and enlarging its facilities around the country, especially in its home and neighboring states.

“Riverview is just proposing expansions at a crazy clip,” said Dani Replogle, an attorney with the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. “Their rate of expansion is just so beyond any other dairy producer that we’re seeing in the region and they’re already such a huge force in the region that it’s ringing a lot of alarm bells.”

Residents and environmental groups say the company’s massive facilties—some that will milk 25,000 dairy cows—have started to overwhelm small rural communities, threatening them with air and water pollution, largely from the enormous amount of uniquely potent manure produced by dairy cows. They also argue that regulators are undercounting and under-regulating greenhouse gas emissions from Riverview’s operations.

“Minnesota is an agriculture-heavy state. It’s a critical part of our economy. It’s part of our lifeblood,” said Jay Eidsness, an attorney with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “We have also set ambitious climate targets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of our economy. We’re making great progress in a lot of places, but agriculture is a sector where we’re not.”

Agriculture is the second-largest emitting industry in Minnesota, after transportation, responsible for 96 percent of nitrous oxide emissions and 44 percent of methane emissions. Both are especially potent greenhouse gases.

The center recently filed a lawsuit challenging the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency decision to issue Riverview a feedlot permit for its site near Morris, about 140 miles northwest of Minneapolis. The lawsuit notes that facilities of Riverview’s size are required under a state rule to submit a plan identifying strategies to lower emissions, including from manure management. Riverview did not do that, the lawsuit says.

Read the full article about Riverview LLP by Georgina Gustin at Inside Climate News.