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Riverview Dairy is seeking to expand its Morris-based West River Dairy operation from 7,855 cows to almost 19,000 cows. Minnesota Reformer drone photo by Rob Levine.
West central Minnesota could soon be home to the state’s largest dairy farm as powerhouse Riverview Dairy seeks to expand its Morris-based West River Dairy operation from 7,855 cows to almost 19,000 cows.
In terms of waste output, that’s roughly the same as a city of 750,000, though the dairy plans to make use of it by spreading it on nearby fields.
Riverview Dairy is the same company looking to develop a 25,000-head dairy in South Dakota in Edmunds County near Mina Lake, which has drawn concern from area property owners.
In Minnesota, the project has rung major alarm bells for locals worried that the operation could put other dairy farms out of business and potentially pollute the Pomme De Terre watershed. Some conservation groups and members of the public have demanded the project undergo an Environmental Impact Statement process, which would be a first for a concentrated animal feedlot in Minnesota if completed.
The last time an EIS was ordered by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency — the regulatory body for concentrated animal feedlots — was for a Riverview Dairy proposal in 2015. The project was canceled before the EIS process was initiated.
Brady Janzen, a partner of Riverview LLP, said the project will include engineered manure storage, strict nutrient management planning, manure application setbacks from sensitive areas and ongoing monitoring to prevent water contamination.
Janzen also said that their environmental plan — known as an Environmental Assessment Worksheet — provides enough information about potential impacts to avoid a full EIS process. An EIS would require an in-depth review of the project, present alternatives, and identify methods to mitigate the project’s environmental impacts. The decision to initiate an EIS lies with MPCA Commissioner Katrina Kessler.
“Riverview respects that projects like West River Dairy generate questions and we take them seriously,” Janzen wrote in an email to the Minnesota Reformer. “We are confident in the rigor of Minnesota’s established framework and are committed to working through that process and framework every step of the way.”
Anxiety about economic impact
Although some of the backlash to the West River Dairy proposal has referenced environmental effects, much of the local debate revolves around the economic impacts of the expansion. Some of the most fervent voices against the project say they’re worried about the the impact of this mega-dairy on rural Minnesota and its small dairy farmers.
“The community feels like it’s increasingly becoming tied to the welfare and the success of just one entity,” said Matthew Sheets, a policy organizer with the conservation group Land Stewardship Project.
Riverview is part of a national trend of dairies getting bigger — or dying. The United States has lost more than half of its dairy farms in the past two decades, while the average number of cows per farm has increased 160%, according to Investigate Midwest, citing U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
Sheets grew up in Morris and said the community has changed drastically over the past three decades as large agriculture operations have made it harder for small farms to compete with their pricing. With fewer farms, businesses that once served the myriad of local needs have disappeared from Morris’ main street, Sheets said, as well as the long-time residents who called Morris home.
Stevens County, where Morris is the county seat, lost 0.3% of its population from 2020 to 2024, according to a report from the Minnesota-based Center for Rural Development and Policy. That’s in line with larger population trends across rural America.
“We’re seeing our communities declining,” said James Kanne, a dairy farmer from Renville County. “We don’t have enough families, young families here to keep our schools from consolidating together. The class sizes keep getting smaller.”
Kanne thinks this problem could be remedied with more farmers, but instead, large dairy operations have taken their place. “These huge dairies have just taken over markets,” Kanne said.
Riverview Dairy opened its first farm in Morris in 1995 and quickly expanded, adding 12 more dairies across the state in the 30 years since. The company is Minnesota’s largest milk producer, with an estimated 135,000 cows, accounting for one-third of Minnesota’s total dairy herd, according to feedlot records obtained by the Star Tribune. Riverview Dairy also operates farms in Arizona, Nebraska, New Mexico and South Dakota.
According to the project’s Environmental Assessment Worksheet, which the MPCA requires for feedlot permits, the expansion would involve the construction of a new barn that could house up to 11,000 cows. Three new liquid manure storage areas would be installed, adding an extra 150 million gallons of storage space to the existing facility, which already has the capacity for roughly 200 million gallons of liquid manure. This manure would be spread on nearby fields as fertilizer. Fertilizer runoff can be a contaminant to drinking water, particularly in rural Minnesota where more people rely on private wells than in urban areas.
The project would use groundwater pumped by an off-site well approximately 3 miles southeast of the project area. The well is appropriated for 226 million gallons of water per year to be withdrawn for livestock. That’s about three-quarters the amount the entire city of Morris — home to 5,000 people — is authorized to withdraw annually, at 300 million gallons.
The proposal’s original timeline was for construction to begin in the spring of 2026 upon completion of the environmental review process and the issuance of a feedlot permit. The project is estimated to take 16 to 24 months to complete.
This timeline will likely change based on the volume of comments the MPCA has received. The public comment period has been extended twice now because of the significant public interest, and more than 900 comments have been submitted to the MPCA as of April 14.
“We wanted to provide ample opportunity and time,” said Lisa Scheirer, MPCA feedlot program manager.
The new deadline for comment was Thursday, May 7, and a public information meeting was scheduled for Tuesday, May 12 in Morris. The MPCA will read all the comments gathered during this environmental review process and then decide whether to issue a feedlot permit or initiate an EIS. This deliberation process usually takes 30 days, but Scheirer said the agency will likely extend this process given the number of comments.
This story was originally produced by Minnesota Reformer, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes North Dakota Monitor, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
