Maria Payan has spent the past couple years collecting stacks of paper detailing inspections of concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, across Pennsylvania.

She prefers to call them the "lack-of-inspection" reports.

Payan, of Peach Bottom Township, said her documents, provided by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, show that inspections by the state Department of Environmental Protection aren't conducted as regularly as DEP's Web site suggests.

An examination of DEP's records by the Daily Record/Sunday News last month also found that some annual inspection reports and quarterly self-inspection reports for CAFOs in York County are missing from the files available to the public.

John Repetz, department spokesman, said that doesn't mean the department is doing a poor job of enforcing the state's CAFO regulations.

DEP employees might have pulled the documents for review of a permit, which he said could be the reason several 2007 quarterly reports for the Stone Chimney Hollow Farm in Lower Chanceford Township weren't available in the department's file room in Harrisburg on Feb. 23.

Or the farm was not large enough to be subject to the

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highest levels of inspection. That was the case for the Roy Diem Farm in Manheim Township, he said. Its file contained only one report, a quarterly inspection.

According to Repetz, farms in sensitive environmental areas that are permitted for 500 tons of animals must submit their own inspection reports each quarter.

He said the department also makes it a priority to inspect them at least once each year. He added, however, that it isn't required to do so, since the EPA mandates that the state inspect them only once every five years.

The other CAFOs must conduct self-inspections each quarter but do not have to submit the reports to the state. Those reports, which chart how much manure is generated and what is done with it, are reviewed when an inspector visits the farm.

If anything, Payan said, DEP's suggestion that it examines the most-intense farms every year is misleading. The statement on the Web site implies that it is a rigid policy, she said, even though the files show otherwise.

And that makes her wonder about other discrepancies.

"What they're telling the public and what they're doing are two different things," she said.

Repetz maintained that documents viewed in the department's file room or obtained through open records requests don't reveal the circumstances behind missing reports. The best way to find out is to discuss the issue with a staff member, he said.

"Is it a perfect system? No," he said. "But that's the system we have."

It's a part of a system that's broken, said Jan Jarrett, president and CEO of environmental advocate PennFuture.

The group has also found incomplete files for other counties, a discovery that didn't inspire confidence that DEP is able to enforce its regulations on all CAFOs.

"At any one time, I'm not sure if DEP has a handle on how these things are handled," Jarrett said.

Your farm is a CAFO if you have any of the following:

--- 700 mature dairy cows.

--- 1,000 veal calves.

--- 1,000 cattle.

--- 2,500 swine, 55 pounds or more.

--- 10,000 swine, under 55 pounds.

--- 500 horses.

--- 10,000 sheep or lambs.

--- 55,000 turkeys.

--- more than 1,000 animal equivalent units, or AEUs. An AEU is equal to 1,000 pounds of live weight of livestock or poultry.

--- a confined animal operation and more than 300 AEUs.

Manure storage

What worries most people about CAFOs is the amount of manure produced by the animals in the farms. The manure is typically removed from the livestock buildings or feedlots and stored until it can be spread on field farms or exported to other farms.

If properly stored and applied, manure can provide nutrients for crops. If misused, it can pollute the local water supply and be a source of health issues.

Storage facilities can include tanks, underfloor pits and lagoons.