Tag: Michigan Supreme Court

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.

FLOW joins amicus brief in Michigan Supreme Court CAFO case

Published on December 14th, 2023 by - Blog Posts

By Carrie La Seur, FLOW Legal Director

My lungs remember. While I was an Iowa Environmental Protection Commissioner, I said yes to a chance to visit a relatively small hog confinement run, by the dad of one of my son’s best friends. It was just a few miles from our home in Mount Vernon, population 4,460, so I drove my old Celica out to the barns one frozen morning. I hadn’t been on another farm recently, and it was a small operation, so I didn’t have to “shower in” or put on different clothes, as many larger operations — also known as CAFOs, or Confined Animal Feeding Operations — require for biosecurity. We just walked through two sets of doors and stepped onto the steel grated floor of the hog barn.

If you’ve ever heard a pig squeal, you can imagine the effect of hundreds of pigs squealing, not in unison but total cacophony at the appearance of humans in their white-walled, tightly packed world. The smell hits just as hard, not so much the stink of manure as the nostril assault of pure ammonia from the urine pooled in vaults beneath your feet. My first instinct was not to breathe, then to take shallow, singed breaths, trying not to let the gas deep into my lungs.

We walked the full length of the barn, as the hogs rushed back and forth in their pens, Alan briefing me in steady, Iowa farmer tones on the life cycle of a confinement animal, the feed and medicine, waste handling, and the value of each pig to his bottom line, how carefully he watches them. This kind of small operation is unusual in the world of industrial livestock, where the number of farms has been dropping for decades, while the average size of an operation grows – and the size of its waste stream.

As a result, America’s farm country is adrift on a sea of manure. In Michigan alone, livestock confinements produce sewage equivalent to the state’s entire human population of 10 million, plus nearly another 4 million people. It’s like having Pennsylvania’s untreated sewage shipped to Michigan and spread on the ground and into our lakes, rivers, and streams. 

All this goes to explain why eleven organizations recently filed an amicus brief in litigation pending before the Michigan Supreme Court. Michigan Farm Bureau, a rich and powerful insurance company and lobbying agency masquerading as a grassroots ag group, is blocking the state’s efforts to control widespread water and soil pollution from livestock confinements. Our brief argues that no one is above the law, or the duty to protect Michigan’s waters for all of us.

Download and read the amicus brief (PDF)

FLOW and its many allies, from CAFO neighbors to trout fishers to city dwellers paying to clean up an uncontrolled wastestream delivered to them by rivers, have had enough. For too long, agricultural polluters have had a free pass and no accountability as we dump vast amounts taxpayer money into voluntary water quality measures that work only for a short time, or not at all. We’re looking for creative ways to fight back. Join us.