Vale Wood Farms exceeds its BOD limit a second quarter running

August 19, 2026Uplands and Valleys of Mixed Land Use

An update, and a correction, on a finding from earlier this summer: on July 14, this feed reported that Vale Wood Farms Dairy in Loretto, PA, had discharged wastewater above its permitted level in early spring.¹ That report described the overage as "nearly double." The underlying record is worse than that. At outfall 001 in the quarter ending March 31, five-day BOD came in 183% over the monthly-average permit limit — close to three times what the permit allows — while total suspended solids ran 55% over.¹ Two very different numbers, and averaging them into one rounded phrase undersold the oxygen-demanding half of the discharge.

EPA's compliance database now also carries a formal Significant Non-Compliance designation for the facility, coded as an effluent violation on a monthly average.¹ And the spring quarter is no longer alone: a second set of exceedances at the same outfall, dated August 14, puts BOD 144% over the limit and TSS 92% over.¹ BOD has eased somewhat but is still more than double the permitted level, and suspended solids have gotten worse, not better.¹ This is a documented pattern across two monitoring quarters rather than an inference drawn from the non-compliance flag.¹

The timing works against the stream. Cold spring runoff can hold roughly 12 to 13 milligrams per liter of dissolved oxygen at saturation; by late August, water near 25 °C holds closer to 8. That is a meaningful loss of margin, and it is exactly when organic-rich, oxygen-demanding discharge is landing. What we cannot say is what it has actually done downstream — no in-stream dissolved oxygen reading is available near the outfall, so the ecological consequence remains unmeasured.² The regulatory trajectory is the documented part: a spring exceedance, an active non-compliance finding, and a second quarter of exceedances in the low-oxygen heart of summer.

A problem that might have resolved on its own instead persisted through the season when it counts most. That pattern is worth watching alongside the work of local groups such as the Clearfield Creek Watershed Association and the Chest Creek Watershed Alliance, both of which monitor water quality in this part of the Central Appalachians' upland dairy country.

1. EPA ECHO
2. USGS

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