Professor apparently never studied the WA dairies, but scored a big payday for testifying in EPA lawsuit blaming them for groundwater contamination
(YAKIMA, Wash.) Newly uncovered documents reveal federal officials paid a Wisconsin professor over $200,000 to testify against three Yakima-area dairies, casting new doubts over the federal government’s 2024 lawsuit using bad science to blame the farms for groundwater contamination in the area.
So far, two of those dairy farms haven’t survived the legal onslaught, and the one remaining farm’s future is uncertain.
University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Rebecca Larson’s legal declaration in the controversial case netted her at least $215,800, per a contract with the U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the lawsuit. Save Family Farming obtained the official document and numerous others through a public records request.
Larson’s work in the case has already come under fire from experts, including Stuart Turner, a veteran forensic environmental contamination investigator who has served as an expert witness in numerous contamination cases over more than four decades. Turner dismissed Larson’s testimony as bogus.
“It’s a 46-page document that has more manure than manure has,” Turner said. “Here you have an expert being paid an extraordinarily high amount of money, who’s 2,000 miles away, pawing through textbooks to explain something, rather than conducting an onsite investigation.”
Larson filed the declaration in Nov. 2024, several months after EPA and DOJ launched their case accusing the dairies of being the source of excess nitrates in groundwater in an area southeast of Yakima known as the Yakima Groundwater Management Area (GWMA).
“How could anyone trust court testimony that’s been bought and paid for to the tune of over $200,000 by one of the parties in this lawsuit?” said Ben Tindall, Save Family Farming Executive Director. “Her opinions aren’t independent or objective, they’re purchased. And what makes it worse is that the U.S. taxpayer is the one paying the bill. She is bought, and everyone should know it.”
From the beginning, Save Family Farming has condemned the EPA and DOJ action as an unwarranted war on farming. The organization points to a 15-year pattern of misconduct and scientific malpractice by EPA Region 10 in its campaign against these farms–involving bad science, document manipulation, cover-ups, and false statements that have caused great embarrassment to EPA headquarters.
Press Contact: Dillon Honcoop, dhoncoop@savefamilyfarming.org