manure

Keith Schenider Yakima long line of cattle

December 17, 2024

Regulators battle Oregon and Washington farmers over limits to farm pollution

By Keith Schneider

SUNNYSIDE, Washington – Waters from the snowpack of the Cascade Mountains support orchards, vineyards and dairies here in the Yakima Valley of eastern Washington State, boosting a flourishing farm economy and helping to stock store grocery shelves nationwide.

But as the waters flow, so do a host of dangerous farm pollutants, contaminating drinking water wells in the valley and through the adjacent Lower Umatilla Basin across the state line in Oregon.

Regulators and citizen groups have been pressing crop and livestock producers for years to document and rein in the pollution, tightening restrictions on some of the nation’s largest dairies, and bringing litigation against several seen out of compliance.

The actions put both Washington and Oregon among a growing number of US states leading a controversial national campaign to make agriculture more accountable for its mammoth wastes.

“There is a lot of new energy around this problem,” said Salini Sasidharan, assistant professor of groundwater management at Oregon State University. “A lot of investment is being made. There’s momentum here to make a real difference.”

But progress is slow and results are mixed. And farmers are fighting back, saying that they’re doing their best to balance environmental protection and business needs, and the crackdown on their business threatens not just their livelihoods, but also potentially the abundance of the country’s food supply.

December 9, 2024

Iowa is “in crisis” due to illegal manure discharges into waterways, new report says

By Carey Gillam

Iowa regulators are failing to properly penalize Iowa factory farms for illegally contaminating state waterways with animal waste, according to an analysis released Monday by a public health advocacy group.

Between 2013 and 2023, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) recorded 179 incidents in which livestock operators discharged manure in violation of the law, fouling creeks and rivers and killing off more than one million fish, according to Food & Water Watch, which based its report on a review of state discharge enforcement reports. The quantities of discharges ranged up to 1 million gallons, the group said.

The findings show a “state in crisis,” according to the group, which said its analysis found “no area of the state is safe from manure discharging into waterways.”

The group noted the violators have paid less than $750,000 in penalties for the illegal actions, despite the fact that such spills can carry harmful contaminants known to cause birth defects, cancers and other health problems in people.

“While factory farms spur on Iowa’s worsening water pollution crisis, the state is letting corporate giants get off with barely a slap on the wrist,” Food & Water Watch organizer Michaelyn Mankel said in a statement.

September 12, 2024

EPA battles environmentalists in court over regulation of CAFOs and water pollution

By Keith Schneider

A coalition of environmental organizations faced off against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in federal appellate court on Thursday in the latest skirmish in a long-running battle over the agency’s regulatory approach to water contamination connected to industrial agricultural operations.

The groups, led by the nonprofit Food & Water Watch, told a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the EPA must strengthen its oversight of what are known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

The agency is unlawfully allowing roughly half of the nation’s more than 20,000 big livestock and poultry feeding facilities around the country to operate without permits required under the 1972 Clean Water Act, the groups argued to the court. And, they said, the agency is violating the law by authorizing CAFOs to store and spread manure so haphazardly that the drinking water for millions of people is at risk as thousands of streams, lakes and other waterways are polluted with harmful bacteria, nitrates, phosphorus and other contaminants.

The agency has “failed” for more than a decade to adequately regulate these operations, Food & Water Watch lawyer Emily Miller told the court.

The hearing Thursday stems from a petition filed by Food & Water Watch and other groups in 2017 that called for the EPA to require CAFOs to obtain water quality permits and strengthen permit standards to protect waterways from the manure generated by the animal operations. The petition also urged the agency to reconsider an exemption that immunizes CAFOs from any water pollution caused by storms washing manure off of saturated fields.

The Trump administration ignored the petition. Last summer, the EPA formally denied the petition, but announced it would form a committee to recommend any changes in how the agency regulated CAFOs. Food & Water Watch, joined by four other national organizations and eight environmental groups from five states, then sued the EPA, demanding it reconsider its decision.

In the court hearing, EPA attorney Paul Cirino told the judges that the agency had initiated a detailed study of CAFO operations and pollution in January and established a study group last summer that is scheduled to issue recommendations on CAFO oversight next year. The new information, he said, would guide the agency’s actions about how to respond to the environmental groups’ concerns.

But Miller pushed back. “EPA has already spent seven years when it could have been taking its statutory mandate seriously,” she said. “Now they want some undefined amount of time thinking rather than acting.”

A court ruling on the matter could take months.

August 12, 2024

Movement to limit CAFO pollution seen strengthened by Michigan court ruling

By Keith Schneider

A recent state court decision could transform how animal agriculture is regulated in Michigan, and potentially influence how other state and federal regulators oversee the industry’s mammoth waste stream, according to environmental lawyers and activists.

The optimism from environmental advocates comes after the Michigan Supreme Court ruled on July 31 that the state’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) has full authority to require industrial animal agriculture to take much stronger actions to manage the torrent of manure waste polluting waterways. The closely watched case pit the administration of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer against the powerful agricultural industry, led by the Michigan Farm Bureau.

“The decision is extremely powerful language for EGLE to act,” said Carrie La Seur, the legal director of For Love of Water, an environmental law and policy group that intervened on behalf of the state. “It’s clear that EGLE gained a lot of authority through this ruling.”

Michigan is one of many US states contending with rampant ground and surface water pollution caused by agricultural production. A key source of the pollution are the nation’s more than 21,000 large dairy, cattle, hog, and poultry operations, known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs.

The nationwide problem extends across the ocean. On Aug 9, the Center for Food Safety environmental group gave legal notification to a Hawaii “megadairy” of their intention to file a lawsuit in federal court. The allege the dairy has been illegally “discharging animal waste, solid manure, liquid manure, milk waste, and chemical pollutants” into the state’s waterways and into the Pacific Ocean.

August 1, 2024

Michigan notches a victory in effort to rein in polluting farm waste

By Keith Schneider

In a rare rebuke to the industrial farm sector, the Michigan Supreme Court this week ruled that state environmental regulators have full authority to require livestock and poultry operations to improve their handling of billions of pounds of manure that contributes to contamination of waterways.

The 5-2 decision issued Wednesday is one of the most significant environmental protection measures in Michigan in years. It comes after four years of battles between state officials and operators of poultry and hog feeding operations and large dairies over regulatory efforts to reduce agriculture-related water pollution. Farm-related nitrates and phosphorus have fouled Lake Erie and other state waters for decades.

The court’s decision recognizes that the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) not only has the power but also has the obligation under state and federal law to issue permits aimed at cleaning up Michigan’s water keeping it free of dangerous pollutants, said Rob Michaels, managing attorney of the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center, one of eight environmental organizations that filed a brief in support of the state.

The ruling is a rare defeat for industrial agriculture interests, particularly the Michigan Farm Bureau, which is supported by the major state associations for milk, pork, and poultry producers. The bureau did not respond to requests for comment.

“In the context of factory farms taking over rural areas there is, finally, recognition that regulatory bodies have authority for managing nutrient and animal waste pollution,” said Liz Kirkwood, executive director of For Love of Water, a water law and policy center that intervened in support of the state. “It’s huge.”

The Supreme Court ruling stems from a permit issued by EGLE in March 2020 directing the state’s largest meat, milk and egg producers to improve practices for managing manure and other wastes produced by 291concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. Twenty years, ago, fewer than 50 operated in the state.

Michigan ranks sixth nationally in dairy production with 440,000 cows on 900 farms. Michigan also has 1.2 million hogs, 62 million broiler chickens, 53 million turkeys, and 65 million chickens laying eggs. The animals generate an estimated 4 billion gallons of liquid manure and 60 million tons of solid manure on fields annually, according to EGLE. Operators are not required to treat their livestock waste before they spread the tide of liquid feces and urine on fields.

May 7, 2024

An Iowa farm county seeks answers amid cancer rates 50% higher than national average

By Keith Schneider

EMMETSBURG, IOWA –Raised in rural Iowa, 71-year-old Maureen Reeves Horsley once considered her tiny hometown in the northwest part of the state to be a blessed space. She recalls a time when the streams here ran clean and the lake water was clear.

The family farm where Horsley grew up was one of more than 1,200 farms in Palo Alto County in 1970. In her memory, the county’s 13,000 residents enjoyed a thriving agricultural-based economy and close-knit neighbors. Cows grazed in verdant pastures. And seemingly endless acres of corn marched to the horizon.

“We had good crops, corn and soybeans,” Horsley said of her family’s farm along the West Fork of the Des Moines River. “You could make it on a small amount of farmland. You felt safe. It was a good life.”

Two generations later Emmetsburg and Palo Alto County have been radically transformed into a place where many residents worry that the farms that have sustained their livelihoods are also the source of the health problems that have plagued so many families.

Horsley, a certified nurse practitioner who still lives in the county, is among many Iowa residents who ask whether the farms that make up the lifeblood of Iowa’s economy have become a source of disease and death due to the toxic chemicals and other pollutants indelibly linked to modern agricultural practices.

“We drank the water on our farm,” Horsley said in an interview. “My sister had breast cancer. She was only 27 when she died. She grew up here. My other sister had uterine cancer. As a nurse practitioner I’m aware of five people now with pancreatic cancer. I know 20 people who have other cancers or died of cancer here. Look at the obituaries in our newspaper. Everybody is aware this is going on.”

April 17, 2024

EPA called to address “long-ignored health crisis” in Iowa drinking water

By Carey Gillam

US regulators must take immediate action to address a “long-ignored health crisis” stemming from dangerously contaminated drinking water in Iowa, according to a legal petition filed by environmental and health advocacy groups this week.

The Iowa Environmental Council (IEC) and 12 other organizations are calling for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take a series of steps to reduce harmful nitrate pollution found in water supplies in Northeast Iowa.

The petition highlights the fact that for many years, nitrate concentrations found in thousands of private wells and some public water sources have exceeded the federal limit of 10 milligrams per liter for drinking water.

State agencies have documented the contamination, but have “failed to do what is needed to correct the pervasive threat to human health,” the petition states.

“For decades, Northeast Iowa residents have been exposed to dangerous levels of nitrate contaminated water,” Food & Water Watch attorney Dani Replogle said in a press release. “As the state reckons with high cancer levels and ongoing pollution regulation rollbacks, federal action is needed to safeguard the right to clean water. EPA must exercise emergency authority to hold polluters accountable and deliver safe drinking water in Iowa.”

Food & Water Watch is among the groups joining IEC in its petition. Others include the Environmental Working Group, the Center for Food Safety, the Environmental Law & Policy Center, and several state organizations.

All signs indicate that “dangerous contamination levels will continue or worsen, absent EPA action,” the petition states.

Farm operations are largely to blame for the contamination, both from the runoff of fertilizer applied to fields of corn and other crops, and the runoff of liquified manure generated by large livestock operations that is also often spread on farm fields. The runoff carries nitrates and phosphorus into surface and groundwaters, and ultimately drinking water.

Iowa is one of the nation’s largest farm states for crops and livestock, and Northeast Iowa is particularly vulnerable to farm pollutants because of its “karst” terrain, which features porous limestone that allows surface pollutants to more quickly move into groundwater. All of the drinking water in the karst region of northeast Iowa depends on groundwater aquifers.

Despite these facts, only a small fraction of private wells are tested regularly for nitrates, which are known to cause health problems at high levels, especially for infants. Cancer is a specific concern with nitrate exposure. Still, more than 1,200 wells in the 12-county karst region tested above the federal threshold for safety from 2016 to 2023, the petition states.

April 15, 2024

“It’s getting worse” – US failing to stem tide of harmful farm pollutants

By Keith Schneider

VENICE, LA. Kindra Arnesen is a 46-year-old commercial fishing boat operator who has spent most of her life among the pelicans and bayous of southern Louisiana, near the juncture where the 2,350-mile-long Mississippi River ends at the Gulf of Mexico.

Clark Porter is a 62-year-old farmer who lives in north-central Iowa where he spends part of his day working as an environmental specialist for the state and the other part raising corn and soybeans on hundreds of acres that his family has owned for over a century.

Though they’ve never met, and live 1,100 miles apart, Arnesen and Porter share a troubling kinship – both of their communities are tied to a deepening water pollution crisis that is fouling the environment and putting public health in peril across multiple US states.

Arnesen’s home lies near an oxygen-depleted expanse of the northern Gulf known as the “dead zone,” where dying algae blooms triggered by contaminants flowing out of the Mississippi River choke off oxygen, suffocating shrimp and other marine life.

Porter’s farm is positioned at the center of the Upper Mississippi River Basin where streams and other surface waters saturated with farm wastes flood into the big river, and contaminated groundwater permeates drinking water wells. Cancer incidence in Iowa is among the nation’s highest, and is rising.

The culprit at the center of it all is a colossal tide of fertilizer and animal manure that runs off fields in Iowa and other farm states to find its way into the Mississippi River. The same agricultural pollution problems are plaguing other iconic US waterways, including Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie.

US farmers use more fertilizer and spread more manure than in most other countries, accounting for roughly 10% of global fertilizer use, behind China and India. But while the nutrients contained in animal manure and fertilizer are known to nourish crop growth, the resulting nitrogen and phosphorous that end up in waterways are known to create severe health problems for people.

A grand government plan to address the problem has cost taxpayers billions of dollars with minimal results so far, and nowhere is the problem more pronounced than in the Mississippi River Basin.

The reasons for the persistent pollution problem are multi-fold, including strong industry opposition to regulations to control the farm contaminants, and a perverse system in which some government programs incentivize farming practices that add to the pollution even as other government programs try to induce farmers to reduce the pollution.

“You’re talking about systemic dysfunction,” said Matt Liebman, professor emeritus of agronomy and sustainable agriculture at Iowa State University.

2023-10 Farm Bureau KSchneider-00455-Edit-2500

November 1, 2023

“What we’re up against” – North Dakota towns fight Farm Bureau to try to keep water clean

By Keith Schneider

DEVILS LAKE, ND – When Clark Steinhaus first heard about a plan to build a feeding operation for 2,499 hogs near the shoreline of North Dakota’s largest natural lake, he was alarmed. As chair of Pelican Township’s board of supervisors, Steinhaus worried the manure generated by so many hogs could easily contaminate area waterways, including 160,000-acre Devils Lake and its 375 miles of shoreline.

His concerns were not surprising given the fact that each year, US industrial-scale feeding facilities – the standard for American meat and dairy production – generate, store, and spread millions of gallons of untreated liquid feces and urine across farmland. Mammoth dairy, hog, poultry, and beef cattle operations are notorious across Corn Belt states for fouling the air with rank odors and contaminating surface and groundwater with toxic nitrates, phosphorus, and bacteria.

“We got documentation from the pig boys’ engineers that said they’re going to build a 12-foot deep pit under the facility – four-inch concrete, no rebar, only wire mesh. No rubber lining,” said Steinhaus. “They were going to store millions of gallons of manure in that pit. Yeah. Water pollution is a concern here.”

The three-member Pelican Township board unanimously rejected the construction permit application in 2019, deciding it did not meet requirements of the applicable zoning ordinance.

The seemingly straight-forward decision on behalf of a tiny township that is home to only 23 residents came back to haunt Steinhaus, miring the township in litigation and dragging it into a sweeping campaign by the American Farm Bureau Federation to upend local zoning rules that aim to curtail industrial-sized animal agriculture across the United States.

The North Dakota Farm Bureau’s lawsuit against Pelican Township was one of three such lawsuits filed in North Dakota, and among many brought across US farm country as the Farm Bureau levers the courts, legislatures and elected leaders to impede regulation of large-scaled animal agriculture and the foul odors and mammoth waste stream that results.

Five years into its livestock expansion campaign, the Farm Bureau is steadily peeling away important state statutes that make this possible.

“Look at what we are up against,” said Steinhaus. “We have 23 residents in Pelican Township – 23 people live here. We were selling tickets to raffle for cash to pay our lawyers.”

August 25, 2023

Advising farmers on fertilizer, universities add to water pollution woes

By Keith Schneider

WINONA, Minn. – Corn drapes every curve and rise here in Winona County, Minnesota – seemingly endless fields of grain that contribute to the food, fuel and finances of a robust US agricultural economy.

But the bucolic landscape belies a dark and dangerous truth: Much of the groundwater in the porous limestone beneath this area of southeast Minnesota is contaminated with some of the nation’s highest levels of nitrates – harmful pollutants released into the environment by the use of nitrogen chemicals and livestock manure as fertilizer on farmland.

Close to 200 wells in the county have been contaminated with nitrates at levels higher than what is considered safe, according to state officials and in parts of Winona County, half of all households have nitrate-contaminated drinking water. It’s frightening data for area residents because nitrates are linked to a range of health problems, including heart and lung problems and certain cancers. Nitrates are known to be particularly dangerous for babies.

Crop and livestock production accounts for roughly 70% of the state’s nitrate pollution, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, a fact that recently led a coalition of 11 state and national environmental groups to petition federal regulators to investigate.

The groups are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect residents of Winona and seven other southeast Minnesota counties from “imminent and substantial endangerment” caused by nitrate contamination. The agency’s regional office has begun to interview state officials.

The issue is not unique to Minnesota. State and federal data show that since 1990, nitrogen spread on fields in ten major US corn-growing states has increased 26%, with more nitrogen than ever pouring off the land and into US waters.