As a horse owner and general manager of the popular Hansen Dam Horse Park, Marnye Langer has spent years managing its 38-acre equestrian facility in Lake View Terrace.
Nestled between the 210 and 5 freeways in Los Angeles on the edge of the Hansen Dam Recreation Area, the facility can board as many as 200 horses and is equipped with riding arenas, jumping rings and access to miles of trails.
While running the busy park that hosts up to 50 horse shows each year, Langer recently ran into an unexpected problem: managing the horse poop.
As CFO of Langer Equestrian Group, a parent company that owns the facility, Langer has heard about horse stables getting slammed with fines after failing to properly manage horse manure, and for committing stormwater discharge violations.
But instead of spending millions of dollars on fancy catch basins and distilling equipment, she reached out to Duncan McIntosh, a consultant for Langer and the founder of the non-profit Earth-Riders.
McIntosh came up with a simple and catchy etiquette initiative that encourages horse owners to prevent manure piles from running into the water system.
“Turn the water off, scoop your poop, and have nothing but rain, down the drain,” said Langer, who adopted McIntosh’s catchy saying at her park.
McIntosh describes himself as a third-generation horseman and second-generation environmentalist. “The biggest opportunity for contamination to happen is when you wash horses,” he said. “(Horse owners) would just wash it down the drain because nobody taught them that it wasn’t a good option. So we talk to them about ‘scooping the poop’.”
Langer is among the stable owners who are trying to keep horse manure out of rivers and other water systems, avoiding massive fines and potential closures.
According to estimates from the American Horse Council, nearly 700,000 horses call California home and are living in training facilities, backyard barns and racetrack venues. Annually, the City…
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