Tag: factory farms

Nutrient Pollution: The Second Battle of Lake Erie

Published on October 9th, 2024 by - Blog Posts

One of the military clashes between England and the United States was the battle of Lake Erie. On September 10, 1813, nine ships under U.S. Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry bested a nine-ship English fleet in a decisive battle for control of western Lake Erie and surrounding lands. Today, a 352-foot International Peace Memorial on South Bass Island commemorates the longest undefended border in the world, uniting Canada and the U.S. 

For more than three decades now, our nations have engaged in a different kind of struggle – to rescue western Lake Erie from a tsunami of toxic algae. No one is winning except the industrial agriculture interests that profit from lax environmental regulation, as untreated factory farm sewage is allowed to pour into Michigan’s formerly pure waters. We need a fundamentally different approach to nutrient pollution.

When detergents in wastewater caused algae blooms in the 1960s, the U.S. and Canada moved quickly to control the culprit – phosphorus – with dramatic improvements in just a few years. The battle was won, but the war wasn’t over. Beginning in the 1990s, annual algae blooms returned to western Lake Erie, growing in severity until, in 2014, Toledo, Ohio had to shut down its drinking water intake and put the entire city on bottled water for days. Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars spent on cleanup strategies in the past decade have done little to diminish the threat to Lake Erie and its many tributaries, which used to be swimmable and fishable. Today, they run brown and weedy, choked with ag-sourced sewage.

Nutrient pollution includes nitrogen and phosphorus, both products of agriculture and other human activities. It’s tricky to regulate because nutrients are essential to the food cycle, but too much quickly turns toxic for humans and animals alike. Nutrient pollution causes fish kills and dead zones. It contaminates private wells by leaching through soil. Exposure can cause diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, irritation of the skin, eyes, and throat, allergic reactions, or breathing difficulties. Prolonged exposure can cause cancer.

Wastewater plants were responsible for some of the nutrient pollution, but research quickly identified factory farms as the leading source of the algae resurgence.

The International Joint Commission, which deals with issues affecting waterways along the U.S.-Canada border, called for a 40% reduction in phosphorus in western Lake Erie, but every year we miss that goal by miles, despite an agreement by Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario to reach the 40% goal by 2025. They won’t come close. Western Lake Erie’s target phosphorus load was met only once from 2013 through 2024. Some say there has been virtually no reduction. This year’s bloom was detected on June 24, the earliest date ever, reaching 620 square miles, and was still visible as October began.

Clearly, we need more tools in our toolbox. In other parts of the world, holistic approaches to nutrient pollution show promise. The Netherlands, for example, has implemented “nitrogen accounting,” which makes individual sources of nutrient pollution responsible for tracking their outputs. It’s a flexible approach that allows for creativity and customized practices at the local level, as long as nutrient outputs stay below the required levels.

Nutrient pollution has become a global problem that requires innovative, game-changing thinking and cross-border collaborations. We have no time to lose.

 

Toledo’s 2014 Drinking Water Crisis: What Has Changed and What Hasn’t

Published on August 1st, 2024 by - Blog Posts

In the summer of 2014, residents of Toledo, Ohio awoke to the news that they should avoid drinking the water that came out of their tap. On August 2, 2014, government officials warned against drinking, cooking, or brushing teeth with the algae-trainted water supplies.

In total, the “do not drink” advisory was given to over 450,000 customers of the Toledo public drinking water supply, including some in Michigan. Flocking to stores to get bottled water, residents emptied shelves of the replacement water for dozens of miles in all directions.

What happened?

An algae bloom had generated toxins in the immediate vicinity of the city’s drinking water intake, a few miles offshore in Lake Erie.

After a little more than two days, officials lifted the advisory and declared the water safe to drink, and promised swift action to prevent such a crisis from happening again. Most of all, they promised to deal with the phosphorus pollution from agriculture and urban sources in the Lake Erie watershed that fed the algae blooms.

If action means spending, it followed – but not by a large enough margin.

If action means a reduction in phosphorus pollution, especially from agriculture, that mostly did not happen.

And algae blooms remain a serious threat in western Lake Erie. Ten years later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a moderate to above-moderate harmful algal bloom this summer.

“It’s disappointing and frustrating that we’ve seen so little progress in curbing phosphorus pollution in Lake Erie,” says Liz Kirkwood, executive director of FLOW. “Government promises have collided with politics and the public has been ill-served.”

As a Toledo advocate and Executive Director of the Junction Coalition, Alicia Smith observed, “Why is Toledo’s greatest asset—Lake Erie—still jeopardizing public health? Despite having a decade to address water safety, we continue to struggle with ensuring our drinking water is safe and affordable. How does the recurring issue of harmful algal blooms, which occur annually, not constitute a violation of the Clean Water Act? When will the waters of Lake Erie finally become drinkable, swimmable, and fishable for all?”

Michigan is second only to Ohio in the amount of phosphorus contributed to Lake Erie. Along with the Province of Ontario and Ohio, in 2015 Michigan signed a western Lake Erie Agreement that set a goal of work to achieve a recommended 40 percent total load reduction in the amount of total and dissolved reactive phosphorus entering Lake Erie’s Western Basin by the year 2025, with an aspirational interim goal of a 20 percent reduction by 2020. Government officials have admitted the three jurisdictions will fall far short of the 2025 goal.

The biggest challenge to meeting Michigan’s share of the goal is pollution by large factory farms, and Michigan’s director of agriculture readily admits that the agreement isn’t working here. Operators of these farms and the Michigan Farm Bureau have opposed controls on their discharges of phosphorus, while favoring taxpayer subsidies for voluntary experimental techniques to reduce phosphorus. Despite evidence these voluntary techniques will not be successful on the scale needed to clean up western Lake Erie, there is no apparent change in the position of the agriculture sector.

“The question is whether we value safe drinking water or status quo operation of large agricultural pollution sources,” says Liz Kirkwood. “That’s the stark choice.”

Affirmed: EGLE’s authority to issue General Permit with stronger conditions for factory farms

Published on August 1st, 2024 by - Blog Posts, Reports & Media Releases

July 31, 2024: Michigan Supreme Court affirms EGLE’s authority to issue General Permit with stronger conditions for factory farms

Traverse City, Mich.— FLOW applauds the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision yesterday, rejecting the Court of Appeals’ dangerously flawed ruling in Michigan Farm Bureau v. Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. Unsatisfied with permit terms that have allowed their industry to pollute Lake Huron and Lake Erie to such an extent that, at one point, the City of Toledo had to shut down its municipal drinking water intake 2.5 miles from shore, Farm Bureau – the lobbying arm of an insurance agency – and its allies had sued to block slightly firmer permit standards.

The lower court held that EGLE’s 2020 Clean Water Act General Permit for Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) should have been challenged by Farm Bureau as an unpromulgated rule. The General Permit is an environmental compliance document developed by EGLE, whose terms CAFOs agree to abide by under a Certificate of Coverage. Affirming this ruling would have meant that EGLE could never tighten its CAFO General Permit, because in 2006 the Legislature stripped EGLE of its authority to enact new water protection regulations. A bill is pending in the current Legislature to restore that vital governmental function.

Thanks to this protracted litigation, factory farms have enjoyed an additional four years of lax regulation, continuing to dump pollution into Michigan’s ground and surface water.

Now the Michigan Supreme Court has held that EGLE acted within its authority to amend the CAFO General Permit. Stronger permit terms will take effect immediately. Litigating every attempt to reduce factory farm pollution is standard procedure for Farm Bureau and industrial ag, but this time, thanks to Michigan’s spirited defense of our freshwater heritage, they failed.

FLOW has vigorously supported AG Nessel and EGLE in their defense of the 2020 permit, including submitting an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief to the Michigan Supreme Court in partnership with the Environmental Law and Policy Center, the Michigan Environmental Council, the Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan, Freshwater Future, Food and Water Watch, the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, and the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

FLOW looks forward to prompt issuance of a more protective 2025 CAFO General Permit, so that Michiganders may begin to make up some of the ground lost on water quality due to this procedural odyssey. FLOW and its many supporters and allies remain committed to this goal, and we are grateful for the leadership of AG Nessel, Gov. Whitmer, and EGLE in this fight.

Policy Brief: The hidden environmental and economic costs of anaerobic digesters and biogas

Published on July 22nd, 2024 by - Blog Posts, Reports & Media Releases

 

Policy Brief: Impacts of Anaerobic Digesters (PDF)

 

Anaerobic digesters are facilities that decompose organic waste, separating biogas from solids and liquids, called “digestate.” Biogas can be used on-site or processed into purified pipeline-grade biomethane for electricity or transportation. On confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), a biodigester may be a cover on a cesspit. After the methane is captured, CAFO operators dump untreated digestate full of heavy metals and biological hazards like thermotolerant E.coli onto farm fields as “fertilizer.”

In this policy brief from FLOW, we break down the unintended environmental and economic impacts of anaerobic digesters, and the hidden costs of biogas production. We also make recommendations for how the state of Michigan should regulate digesters to protect our groundwater, and ultimately, the Great Lakes.

The Water We Drink, The Land We Live on: A Call to Action Against Confined Animal Feeding Operations

Published on June 11th, 2024 by - Blog Posts

Friends of FLOW,

As a descendant of early Montana homesteaders, I’ve been blessed to spend much of my life close to pristine trout streams and millions of acres of wilderness. I’ve pulled lambs, witnessed calves being born on open range, and found myself way too close to grizzlies and bison. Both the responsibility of an animal whose life is in our hands and the awe of a brush with a truly wild creature offer insight into our humble human place in the universe.

As an environmental lawyer, I’ve also witnessed the insidious creep of industrial agriculture, which disrupts these natural rhythms and threatens the very foundation of our rural communities by replacing careful husbandry with the profitability of volume. Nowhere is this threat more evident than in the rise of the confined animal feeding operation (CAFO), an industrial model of livestock production that undermines the quality of the food we eat every day, while dumping cities’ worth of untreated sewage onto our land and into our water.

“[CAFO] waste contains a noxious cocktail of pathogens, antibiotics, hormones, and excess nutrients, all of which can and do seep into our groundwater, contaminate our rivers and lakes, and pollute the air we breathe.”

— Carrie La Seur, FLOW Legal Director

CAFOs, as you likely know, are large-scale facilities where thousands of animals live foreshortened lives fueled by diets nature never intended. Their cramped, unsanitary conditions contribute to the current avian flu outbreak. CAFOs generate massive amounts of sewage, often stored in open cesspits or spread onto fields as fertilizer in quantities even the poorest soil could never absorb. This waste contains a noxious cocktail of pathogens, antibiotics, hormones, and excess nutrients, all of which can and do seep into our groundwater, contaminate our rivers and lakes, and pollute the air we breathe.

When I started working with For Love of Water in Michigan late in 2023, one request rose above all the other urgent water quality issues on this water-obsessed peninsula: please, people said, help us do something about CAFOs. Michigan has nearly 300 permitted CAFOs, a number that’s doubled in the last 20 years, as the total number of farms plummeted. They’re concentrated in rural areas where residents rely on private wells for drinking water. These communities, full of generational residents who value open spaces and the gifts of nature, are now at increased risk of water contamination, with potentially devastating consequences for public health. We’ve all witnessed outbreaks of waterborne illnesses, elevated levels of nitrates in drinking water (especially dangerous for infants), and even the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

See EGLE, Regulated Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) map and MSU Extension, Small Farm Manure Management Planning. <​​https://egle.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=0fae269e1c45485f876c99391403bd3e>, <https://www.canr.msu.edu/animal-agriculture/uploads/files/Small%20Farm%20Manure%20Management%20Planning.pdf> (visited April 18, 2024).

But the damage doesn’t stop with threats to human health. CAFO waste can also degrade soil quality, contribute to harmful algal blooms, and drive the decline of fish and wildlife populations. The sheer scale of these operations places an immense strain on local infrastructure, from roads and bridges to downstream wastewater treatment plants. Residents on municipal water pay more to cover expensive filtration of CAFO pollution.

And let’s not forget the toll CAFOs take on rural communities – displacing small family farms and concentrating economic power in the hands of a few corporations. Industrial agriculture churns workers through low-paying, dangerous jobs often held by migrants who don’t dare report health and safety violations. Unlike the traditional family farm, these animal factories change the feel of a community. They breed a sinister atmosphere, where complaints are met with threats of violence and penalties for complaining written into state law: Michigan’s Right to Farm Act allows the ag department to bill its investigation costs to anyone who complains more than three times about a CAFO, if the department finds that the CAFO is complying with a set of loosely defined, industry-friendly standards called “Generally Accepted Agricultural Management Practices”, or GAAMPs. The point is clear: don’t complain.

So, what can we do? We won’t stand by and watch as our water is poisoned, our land is degraded, and our communities are hollowed out. We must raise our voices in defense of clean water, healthy food, and vibrant rural communities.

“CAFO waste can also degrade soil quality, contribute to harmful algal blooms, and drive the decline of fish and wildlife populations. The sheer scale of these operations places an immense strain on local infrastructure, from roads and bridges to downstream wastewater treatment plants.”

FLOW, with its deep commitment to protecting Michigan’s waters, is uniquely positioned to lead this charge. I urge all our members and allies to expand your advocacy efforts to include the fight against CAFOs in favor of an agriculture that honors people, land, water, and animals. This means working with legislators to strengthen regulations, supporting community-led initiatives to monitor water quality, and expanding public understanding about the dangers of an unethical, corporatized agriculture.

But we must go further. We must challenge the notion that CAFOs are the only way to produce food. We must support farmers — they’re all around us, please go meet them! — who are raising livestock in a way that respects the land, the animals, and the people who depend on them. We must build a food system that is not only sustainable but also just and equitable.

This is not just an environmental issue. It’s a moral issue. It’s a question of how we want to live, how we want to eat, and what kind of future we want to create for ourselves and our children. It’s a question of whether we will continue down a path of pollution and exploitation, or whether we will chart a new course toward a more sustainable and humane way of life.

I believe that we have the power to choose a different path. I believe that we can build a food system that nourishes both body and soul, a system that honors the land and the people who work it. I believe that we can create a future where clean water flows freely, where rural and urban communities thrive, and where all beings are treated with dignity and respect.

Let us work together to make this vision a reality.

In solidarity,

Carrie La Seur

Find a local farm market near you!

Farm markets can reduce environmental impacts on communities when food systems stay local. Finding a farm market near you can be a great place to start and can make a difference!

Find a market!

Great Lakes Manure Conference: Agriculture Runoff and Lake Erie

Published on May 10th, 2024 by - Blog Posts

On May 1-2, 2024, FLOW policy director Carolan Sonderegger and legal director Carrie La Seur attended the Great Lakes Manure Conference in Toledo, Ohio. The conference was an opportunity to tour the Maumee River, and learn from experts about legal, environmental, and public health issues posed by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). Below, Carolan shares her learnings and reflections from the conference:

On the first day of the Great Lakes Manure Conference in Toledo, attendees joined a bus tour of local CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and a boat tour of the Maumee River, which provided ample room for networking and knowledge exchange. During the boat tour, we were able to see several grain silo facilities alongside the river.

One of the major highlights of the tour was the Glass City River Wall, which happens to be the largest mural in the United States (pictured above). The mural is not just a beautiful sight to behold; it is also an inspiration and a tribute to the local community’s resilience and determination to seek clean water and better nutrition for people worldwide. The mural depicts the historical significance of the indigenous peoples who lived and farmed along Ohio rivers for thousands of years, a testament to their enduring spirit in the face of environmental challenges.

The Maumee River is one of the United States’ largest Areas of Concern (AOC) – areas that have experienced environmental degradation. The river has been a hotspot of industrial and municipal development for almost 200 years. Due to agriculture runoff, unregulated waste disposal, industrial contamination, combined sewer overflows, and disposal of dredged materials, the Maumee River is the largest system emptying contaminants into Lake Erie.

In the Ottawa River, one of several embedded watersheds, high levels of PCBs and other contaminants led to a no-contact advisory for over 25 years, which was finally lifted in 2018. Human activities have resulted in the loss of more than 90% of Northwest Ohio’s wetlands, including the Toussaint Wildlife Area, a historic wetland. The contamination led to a restriction on fish and wildlife consumption until only recently, which was lifted in August of 2022. Many community members were observed fishing for sustenance along the banks, despite the fish consumption advisory recommending no more than one meal per week.

As seen in the picture above, the Maumee River appears to be vastly different from the waters and rivers of Northern Michigan. In contrast to our clear blue Niibii (water), the Maumee River resembled a dark and murky likeness to chocolate milk due to an abundance of suspended sediment. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been collaborating with federal, state, and local partners to carry out remediation and restoration work in the region to tackle the existing beneficial use impairments (BUIs) – which identify significant environmental degradation. Although much work remains to be done, significant progress has been made on contaminated sediment remediation and habitat restoration efforts. Although turbidity is a water quality indicator, it is not an overarching testament to the river’s rehabilitation.

On the second day of the conference, we convened at the University of Toledo’s Lake Erie Center. We were privileged to hear from a diverse group of experts, including Kathy Martin, a civil engineer with over 25 years of experience in CAFOs; Fritz Byer, a Harvard Law graduate with over 35 years of practice; and others from Food and Water Watch, Waterkeeper Alliance, USDA/NRCS, and CAFO neighbors. The conference covered crucial topics, such as CAFO permitting (or lack thereof), manure digesters, CAFO history and economics, and the Nutrients Farm Bill. These discussions provided valuable insights into the current state of environmental conservation and the actions needed to address the issues.

Some speakers described the inconsistency in CAFO regulation from state to state in the Great Lakes basin, which aggravates cross-border cleanup challenges. Others addressed public health threats caused by CAFO waste, including multi-drug-resistant bacteria and avian flu, which can both spread to humans. University of Missouri Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics John Ikerd described the economics of CAFOs. It actually costs less to raise an animal on a traditional, diversified farm than in a CAFO, but CAFOs raise such large numbers of animals that smaller operations can’t compete on price.

Attorneys brought a legal perspective on current challenges to CAFOs, and how quickly the industry pivots to dodge regulation and enforcement. It is clear that we need a broad, national approach to reforming food systems, to restore healthy relationships among humans, animals, land, and water. This is FLOW’s vision.