Jun. 4—OTTAWA — The Ohio Attorney General’s Office filed a civil lawsuit against a Leipsic farm recently, claiming it could cause pollution.

The attorney general’s office wants the court to order C & K Family Farms, 2634 Township Road F, Leipsic, to implement best management practices for manure and composting animal mortality; submit an operation and management plan within 30 days to ODA; and pay civil penalties of up to $10,000 per day for each violation.

According to court documents, on May 20, the Putnam County Soil and Water District contacted the Ohio Department of Agriculture regarding an anonymous complaint of manure discharge at C & K Family Farms. ODA staff went to the farm and observed the manure runoff into a stormwater catch basin and found exposed animal parts throughout the facility’s mortality compost area.

Staff said the mortality compost area did not have the appropriate amount of bulking materials, and it either contaminated or threatened to contaminate waters of the state.

The farm is defined by the state as an “animal feeding operation” which, according to the Ohio Revised Code, is “the production area of an agricultural operation where animals are kept and raised in confined areas.”

According to court documents, at the time of the offenses, the farm housed approximately 2,200 swine weighing more than 55 pounds and 35 mature dairy cows. It collected and stored the liquid and solid manure produced at the facility in a manure holding pond located on the premises and a manure pit underneath the hog barn. A scrape alley and a push ramp connected the dairy barn to the holding pond.

“A stormwater catch basin is located west of the dairy and hog barns, within the drainage overflow area of the manure holding pond and the manure storage pit,” the attorney general’s office wrote in the complaint. “The stormwater catch basin flows, via a drainage tile, into an open ditch, all of which are waters of the state.”

A pretrial hearing for the case is scheduled for Aug. 14.

Reach Charlotte Caldwell at 567-242-0451.