As Riverview LLP aggressively expands its mega-dairies across the Upper Midwest, advocacy groups and worried residents are mounting legal challenges and orchestrating local efforts to push back.

The Minnesota-based dairy giant, the second-largest producer of milk and milk products in the United States, has been on the march in recent years, building and enlarging its facilities around the country, especially in its home and neighboring states.

“Riverview is just proposing expansions at a crazy clip,” said Dani Replogle, an attorney with the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. “Their rate of expansion is just so beyond any other dairy producer that we’re seeing in the region and they’re already such a huge force in the region that it’s ringing a lot of alarm bells.”