By: Carrie La Seur,
Legal Director —
Stand aside Silicon Valley, the next big tech disruptor might be a giant manure scooper. Why? Because the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater system on Earth, are becoming a sea of livestock excrement.
Traverse City is pleasantly distant from the factory farms of central and southern Michigan – but even I can smell the B.S. here. We’re talking about 81 million people’s worth of fecal waste flowing through rivers, lakes, and streams, into the Great Lakes Basin every year. And that’s only on the US side.
FLOW wanted a visual representation of this sewage avalanche, so we asked Iowa water quality scientist and blogger extraordinaire Chris Jones to produce a map of Great Lakes livestock waste in terms of human cities, like he did for Iowa a few years back. Iowa’s “real population”, he calls it.
Map provided by Chris Jones, a research engineer (IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering) at the University of Iowa. First published on the author’s blog. -promoted by Laura Belin
Surprise, surprise: Michigan takes the crown for the biggest pooper in the watershed, thanks to the livestock industry. And what’s the fallout from this fecal flood? Toxic algae blooms, dead rivers, and beaches that look like they belong in a porta-potty. This isn’t just an environmental issue, folks, it’s a business and public health $h*tshow. There are whole states worth of untreated sewage draining to the Lakes we all supposedly care so much about.
Think about it: tourism takes a hit, property values plummet, and clean-up costs skyrocket. Who’s left holding the bag? Taxpayers, that’s who. Meanwhile, Big Ag laughs all the way to the bank, suing the state any time it tries to enforce the Clean Water Act.
So what’s the solution? Well, for starters, we need to strict regulations on these factory farms. They have to pay for the environmental damage they’re causing. Let’s invest in some serious clean-up technology. And here’s a thought: we could eat just a little less meat and dairy. I hear it makes you live longer and healthier. We could ask where our animal products come from, and support small scale local farmers who give a crap about Michigan’s water.
It’s not rocket science, people. It’s basic economics. You pollute, you pay. It’s time to hold Big Ag accountable and clean up this damn mess.
While we have Gov. Whitmer and a majority in the legislative bodies. it is really important to do something about this RIGHT AWAY. I don’t know why this isn’t a big issue and why it has taken so long to get it done.
Also how did the Enbridge permission to build a new tunnel get by all the legal procedures? Who decided the licensing of that? I thought Gove Whitmer had signed a paper saying the company couldn’t do a new tunner.
This is a wonderful visual that clearly shows what we are dealing with.