The Environmental Protection Agency moved Monday to stop EPA letters and emails from being introduced in court by a Yakima County, Washington, dairy, which claims it was deceived into spending millions of dollars to line manure lagoons and take other steps to protect groundwater pollution.

The EPA argues the documents are irrelevant to its moves in 2013 to require the Cow Palace and other dairies in the Lower Yakima Valley to change operations.

The records, however, are central to allegations that the EPA misrepresented the strength of a study that accused dairies of contaminating drinking water.

“This is just another move by the EPA to try to engage in a procedural maneuver to hide their culpability,” Cow Palace attorney Kent Krabill said Wednesday.

Dolsen and the Washington State Dairy Federation are suing in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to force EPA to retract the study.

They argue the letters and emails should be admitted as evidence because they show the EPA knowingly misled Dolsen and the public about the report’s official classification.

The emails disclosed that EPA employees in 2013 discussed whether the agency could justify publicly calling the report critical of dairies as “influential science,” a formal designation reserved for studies with a high level of peer review.

The letters include one from EPA Regional Administrator Chris Hladick informing Save Family Farming in 2019 that the study was actually categorized in 2012 as less substantial “other science.”

In court records, Cow Palace owner Adam Dolsen said that was news to him.

The EPA told him the case against his dairy was “bullet proof” and based on “influential science,” Dolsen said.

The EPA argues the letters and emails aren’t part of the record on which the agency based its decisions. Letters written in 2019 obviously had no effect, and the emails were simply employees deliberating and expressing opinions, according to the agency.

The emails were obtained this year through a Freedom of Information Act request by Save Family Farming. 

In one email, an EPA attorney says she believes the agency has done “everything we should have done for an influential document.”

Another email outlines the agency’s response to public complaints that the report was inadequately peer reviewed for an influential study.

In the third email, an EPA official said she was bothered that the peer review did not include public participation and that the study was not reported to the Office of Financial Management and Budget. Both are requirements for “influential” reports.

The EPA asked that if the court allows the three emails to be admitted to the record, it should be allowed to introduce more emails to add context.

The dairy lawsuit already has survived one procedural challenge. The EPA moved to dismiss the suit, arguing it had been filed too long after the 2013 order. The court rejected the motion, allowing the suit to go ahead.

Outside agencies criticized the study when it came out. The EPA has stood by the report and says agreements with dairies have improved water quality.

The study was reviewed by three EPA scientists and a U.S. Geological Survey chemist. A USDA agronomist reviewed part of the report, but asked that his name not be listed because he was not provided with the full report.