The Belle Fourche City Council voted Monday to withhold additional comment to the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources on a proposed feedlot south of town, at least until their next meeting in two weeks.

The proposed 4,000-head cattle feedlot is about a mile from the city's water supply between Spearfish and the Redwater River on the Butte-Lawrence County line.

The council's decision to delay additional comment came despite suggestions that the owners could drop environmental protection plans and simply put the cattle onto their 320-acre property with no need for a permit.

They had been requested to soften their official comment to state regulators expressing concerns that more study be undertaken to protect shallow underground water galleries that produce about 60 percent of the city's water.

Butte and Lawrence County Commissioners opposed the proposed feedlot along with Spearfish and Belle Fourche city councils.

They had written the DENR about concerns for the Belle Fourche city water, and that studies in the area so far have not ruled out the possibility of contamination by a concentrated livestock operation.

Attorney Ken Barker told the council that as a city resident, he also wants to protect his own drinking water.

But, he added, he would not represent the application from Bart and Harvey Krautschun of Spearfish if he felt there is a concern.

Barker has represented the Krautschuns' Two Tone Cattle Company at public meetings in the two counties recently after opposition to the expanded 40-acre feedlot coalesced this fall.

He told the council that news reports on the local response to the feedlot application suggested that it was "a secret process."

That is untrue, Barker said.

Butte County Commissioners and Belle Fourche City Council members have said they knew nothing of the application until the final days of a state public comment period - and heard about it only after an informal discussion between a Lawrence County Commissioner and a local city councilman.

"I have saved you the dog and pony show," Barker told the council. But he discussed general updates in the Krautschuns' plans for the feedlot which would include safeguards beyond their initial proposal.

If the feedlot plan is not approved, Barker said, perhaps the same number of cows could be held on the 320-acre farm without any state or federal environmental requirements.

"This has always been an agricultural area," he said, adding that in the past the flatland between Redwater Hill in Butte County and Spearfish city limits was "dotted with dairies."

There was no argument that Belle Fourche and Spearfish concerns appear to be different.

The Belle Fourche letter to the DENR focused on concerns that the city water supply could be put in jeopardy by the feedlot and asked for additional study over a year's time to ensure safety of water flowing into the city's water collection galleries in all four seasons.

Barker noted that Spearfish concerns were more about future development of the area northwest of the junction of U.S. Highway 85 and I-90.

Lawrence County Planning and Zoning recently recommended denial of a use permit for the Krautschuns on that basis.

But as City Council member Cindy Snook said, if the Krautschuns chose to put 4,000 cattle on their entire property with no additional permits or safeguards, "There is nothing you can do to stop it."

"They could do it right now if they get mad enough," she added.

A suggestion from the council meeting audience that a lawsuit might stop that many cattle was left unanswered. A past lawsuit by the city resulted in a sanitary sewer district in the area to protect the water galleries.

Barker didn't directly respond to Snook's comment.

The issue apparently will be revisited at the Dec. 15 Belle Fourche council meeting - and at a Dec. 30 Lawrence County Commission meeting.

City Engineer Terry Wolterstorff said he is not an expert on groundwater movement which is why he expressed his belief that more studies be done.

He added his request has been that if the feedlot is given a permit, it should be the type that includes specific, written environmental protections rather than just a general OK from the state.

As a former state engineer, he said his best estimate of the current permitting process is that, "probably this application is sitting on a desk in Pierre waiting until Dec. 30."

That fit with Barker's comment that DENR apparently took the local government concerns as a way to informally table the feedlot application.

"I think the DENR decided they would just duck," he said.

Barker added that he was concerned that when the Lawrence County Planning and Zoning Commission held its hearing on the proposal, he was not allowed to question witnesses who brought up a wide range of concerns about the feedlot plan.

He said no matter what questions the Krautschuns might answer, the opposition would find additional questions to slow the process.

That's exactly, he said, the type of opposition that killed the development of the ProEco ethanol plant in Belle Fourche - where all state requirements were met, but the delaying tactics still ended plans for a $200 million investment that would have brought major improvements to the local economy.

He said the feedlot would not only be relatively small and mostly for backgrounding livestock over the winter, but also that it would be employing four to seven people.

Suggestions in Lawrence County that the Krautschuns move the feedlot "north" toward Belle Fourche show that the concerns there are not for a family agricultural facility, he said, or for Belle Fourche and Butte County.

"If we have presented a plan that meets all their (DENR and federal) standards, or exceeds them, give them a break," he told the council.