POCATELLO - It took federal prosecutors a day and a half in court to argue that a Burley feedlot operator polluted an aquifer with illegal injection wells more than four years ago.

Defense attorneys for Cory King, co-owner of Double C Farms, needed less than two hours to throw up a roadblock.

A hearing focusing on exactly what King fed into several injection wells wrapped up Tuesday afternoon, leaving U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill tasked with sifting through scientific testimony and a number of side debates. The issue will play into King's sentence for injecting fluids into an aquifer without a permit.

As prosecutors finished presenting their witnesses Tuesday morning, the defense did its best to pick them apart. David Lombardi, while cross-examining U.S. Environmental Protection Agency microbiologist Stephanie Harris, used her answers to redact parts of a memo she supplied analyzing a key water sample - running a red pen through sentences considered outside her professional qualifications.

In the afternoon, the defense only called one major witness: University of Arizona environmental microbiology professor Charles P. Gerba, who has studied surface and groundwater contamination for three decades and served on an EPA advisory board.

Focusing on other indicators besides fecal bacteria, Gerba said chemical evidence from samples taken across Double C's land in June 2005 show no sign of other traces of manure, including ammonia, nitrates and a measure of organic material. He also criticized the type of test and sampling conducted by Idaho investigators as plagued by false results and not being thorough enough.

Prosecutors chipped away at some of Gerba's conclusions, suggesting, among other things, that heavy agricultural pumping could have obscured the other traces. But they seemed to have a harder time countering his assertions than King's attorneys had with the government scientists.

Both sides veered off on tangents - particularly during the defense's cross-examination of a former Double C employee - and submitted evidence that wouldn't have been accepted in a full trial. Winmill on both days urged attorneys to keep the hearing moving and even had to shut down lines of questioning at times.

Though it's not easy to interpret the federal sentencing guidelines created to advise judges, findings that King both injected a pollutant and caused environmental contamination could add at least several months to his recommended sentence, depending on a number of other factors. Prosecutors during Gerba's testimony pointed out that dirt can even be considered a pollutant in some cases, but later told Winmill they wouldn't make that argument after the judge warned it would be a "non-starter" for sentencing.

Winmill will issue his decision on the pollution issue sometime before the Dec. 18 sentencing.

Nate Poppino may be reached at npoppino@magicvalley.com or 208-735-3237.