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Critics say a Sunnyside family planning to start a dairy with up to 7,000 cows on the Yakama reservation started work too early.

The Sytsma family did not seek a Yakima County demolition permit before it tore down a small house and shed where farming chemicals were being kept on about 480 acres they bought earlier this year along Pumphouse Road south of Harrah.

Neighbors also accuse the family of building a lagoon and small dam on the property without required permits.

But agronomist Stuart Turner, who is helping the family with the project and serving as their spokesman, said he didn't think the family needed a permit to tear down buildings that were little more than empty shells and that he gave the farm chemicals to a grower. As far as the lagoon goes, he said, it was there before the Sytsmas bought the land.

Either way, the work is fueling distrust among neighbors who fear the family -- which now operates a 1,600-cow dairy in Sunnyside -- has been trying to sneak a dairy on the property without proper notice.

Demolition permits require property owners to explain how they intend to dispose material from structures they tear down and whether it contains any contaminants or asbestos, said Yakima County Building and Fire Safety manager David Saunders.

"They could well be in violation of other regulations that apply, such as clean air and whether they disposed of the material in a proper manner," he said.

Turner said he believed the material was taken to a landfill.

Not so, said neighbor Glen Hohmann.

"They torched it first," he said. "They knocked trees over that were around it, pushed it in piles and burned it right on the spot. Then they pushed it over into a hole."

Hohmann also said that there wasn't a lagoon on the property. He accuses the Sytsmas of carving a small coulee off of the irrigation canal into a larger lagoon, and said a lot of dirt on the property was moved to form the lagoon's dam and bury what was left of the torched structures.

Turner contends the lagoon was already there, and the Sytsmas had only cleaned it out.

"He's a liar," Hohmann said of Turner. "You can see where they took the banks of that coulee out and made that lagoon."

County permits are needed for filling and grading when more than 100 yards of dirt are involved and to cut and create banks. County permits haven't been issued on any construction on the property, Saunders said.

The reservation is a checkerboard of tribal and nontribal land.

It's not clear if the dairy will become a reality now that Yakama tribal leaders recently banned new dairies and feedlots from the 1.2 million-acre reservation or the expansion of existing ones.

Concerns about possible impacts such operations have on land, air and water led to the ban, tribal leaders said.

But the Sytsmas still hope to convince tribal leaders to OK their project they call state-of-the-art and environmentally friendly.

"What we have is a political agenda (against the project) that's driven mostly by emotions," Turner said.

* Phil Ferolito can be reached at 577-7749 or pferolito@yakimaherald.com.