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 of Los Angeles issues licenses to nearly 1,500 horses that generate more than nine tons of manure every day, according to L.A.’s Bureau of Sanitation.

While horse manure may be considered organic, experts warn that it creates an environmental hazard, especially when it reaches rivers, creeks and eventually the ocean. The bacteria found in horse waste can lead to serious health problems for swimmers and marine life.

In recent years, a number of facilities have been shut down because of poor manure management.

McIntosh worked as a consultant for stable owners, advising them to properly manage the waste. One of his clients was Del Mar Fairgrounds, a 370-acre event venue in Del Mar, which runs the horse racing facility Surfside Race Place.

To help large stables stay open and navigate potential legal proceedings, McIntosh assembled an advisory board from legal, political, equestrian, and agricultural experts and launched his nonprofit Earth-Riders with a pledge to “transform horses from pollution villain to climate change ally.” Among his clients were three stables in San Juan Capistrano in southern Orange County, and in Rancho Murietta in Sacramento County.

McIntosh has been working for about a year with Langer and other stable owners to raise awareness to prevent the runoff of manure into the water system. His focus, McIntosh said, is to control costs and help stable owners avoid fines for water contamination.

Owners of equestrian facilities, he said, are not always aware that avoiding fines is not just about keeping their facilities tidy, “it’s whether or not it can withstand a storm and not lose a big pile of manure in a watershed.”

Installing equipment to process horse manure can cost millions of dollars, he added, as opposed to just “going out to the wash rack, putting up some signs and asking them to ‘scoop their poop.’”

The reason horse manure management has become an issue in recent years, he said, is because owners keep their horses at large stables instead of in their backyards. Some of the stables are designed to keep hundreds of horses, accumulating large amounts of manure that must be properly disposed.

It’s concerning, Langer said, that facilities are being slapped with fines that force them to close. Some of her fellow stable owners, especially those running large equestrian centers, have spent thousands of dollars on equipment, including catch basins and distilling equipment.

But Langer’s solution doesn’t cost a penny.

The group asks horse owners to pick up all manure from stalls, wash racks and arenas and deliver that stall waste to manure transfer stations around the facility. From there, it’s loaded and transferred to the Composting Partner, a company that accepts the horse manure for free.

Related Articles

“Some people get lazy with their horse poop, and they just turn the hose on it and wash the manure down the drain, and they don’t think anything of it,” Langer said.

The park hosts about 50 horse events a year, which generate a large amount of manure. The challenge, she said, is to become poop scoopers instead of washing it down the drain.

“When you know better you do better,” Langer said. “I think we need to be responsible toward our waterways and our water resources.”

To raise awareness, she posted signs and wrote about her initiative in the park’s monthly newsletter while having conversations with horse show organizers.

McIntosh has been spreading the word of the initiative at other horse facilities, but Langer proudly said Hansen Dam Horse Park was the first one to adopt it.

Dealing with strict regulations and fines makes horse owners feel they are being pushed out of urban areas, Langer said, “so I think this is such a positive way to show larger communities, ‘Hey, we’re good neighbors and we’re good for a community in so many ways. And here’s one of many ways that we’re doing good.’”