In a uncommon rebuke to the economic farm sector, the Michigan Supreme Courtroom final week dominated that state environmental regulators have full authority to require large livestock and poultry operations to enhance their dealing with of billions of kilos of manure that contributes to critical contamination of state waters.
The 5-2 resolution issued Wednesday is among the most important environmental safety measures in Michigan in years. It comes after 4 years of battles between state officers and operators of poultry and hog feeding operations and huge dairies over regulatory efforts to cut back agriculture-related water air pollution. Farm-related nitrates and phosphorus from livestock and poultry operations have fouled Lake Erie and different state waters for many years.
“Within the context of manufacturing unit farms taking on rural areas there may be, lastly, recognition that regulatory our bodies have authority for managing nutrient and animal waste air pollution,” stated Liz Kirkwood, govt director of Traverse Metropolis-based For Love of Water, a water regulation and coverage middle that intervened in assist of the state. “It’s large.”
The courtroom’s resolution acknowledges that the Michigan Division of Atmosphere, Nice Lakes, and Power (EGLE) not solely has the ability but in addition has the duty beneath state and federal regulation to problem permits aimed toward cleansing up Michigan’s water, conserving it freed from harmful pollution, stated Rob Michaels, managing legal professional of the Chicago-based Environmental Legislation and Coverage Heart, one other of the eight environmental organizations that filed a quick in assist of the state.
Farm Bureau set again
The ruling is a uncommon defeat for industrial agriculture pursuits, significantly the Michigan Farm Bureau, which is supported by the foremost state associations for milk, pork and poultry producers. The bureau didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The Supreme Courtroom ruling stems from a allow issued by EGLE in March 2020 directing the state’s largest meat, milk and egg producers to enhance practices for managing manure and different wastes produced by 291 concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
Michigan ranks sixth nationally in dairy manufacturing with 440,000 cows on 900 farms. Michigan additionally 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 stable manure yearly, in keeping with EGLE. Operators should not required to deal with their livestock wastes earlier than they unfold the mammoth tide of feces and urine on fields.
The intent of the brand new allow was to compel producers to undertake adjustments in storage and spreading practices that may go a bit additional than earlier guidelines for conserving untreated manure from reaching state waters. The allow included a discount of the restrict on the quantity of phosphorus which may be utilized to land with a view to halt dangerous algal blooms that seem each summer time in Lake Erie and different state lakes. It required farms to develop 35-foot-wide vegetated obstacles and never unfold manure inside 100 ft of any floor water. And it restricted the spreading of wastes throughout winter.
On Might 27, 2020, two months to the day after the allow was issued, the Michigan Farm Bureau, six different farm associations, and 165 CAFO operators filed a proper petition with EGLE contesting the brand new allow.
The teams asserted the brand new provisions had been “pricey and cumbersome,” had a “tenuous relation to water high quality,” are of “minimal environmental profit,” would have “a big hostile influence on meals manufacturing,” and are illegal as a result of EGLE doesn’t have the authority to problem them.
The Farm Bureau’s Might 27 petition stated that EGLE “has imposed these substantial prices on Michigan’s largest household farms throughout a time when our nation’s well being and financial system have been ravaged by COVID-19 and our dependence on such farms to offer an ample, secure, and wholesome food-supply system is even larger than ever.”
Days later, EGLE stayed the brand new provisions from going into impact. The state Farm Bureau introduced its arguments to 2 extra state courts earlier than the case made its technique to the state Supreme Courtroom in January.
Outdated guidelines not working
For this and different causes, the three earlier CAFO permits written by Michigan’s regulators had no impact on the state’s largest supply of polluting nitrates and phosphorus. Monitoring stations present that concentrations of dissolved reactive phosphorus, the type of the mineral on which poisonous cyanobacteria thrive, are elevated in watersheds the place CAFOs are situated.
There’s a motive for that. The variety of CAFOs in Michigan is rising. There are 291 at this time, in keeping with state figures. That’s 257 greater than Michigan permitted in 2005.
They’re bigger and produce extra waste. In 2020, as an illustration, the 14 CAFOs in Lenawee and Hillsdale counties in southern Michigan — 11 dairies and three hog operations — unfold 221.4 million gallons of liquid manure and almost 100,00 tons of stable manure on 14,650 acres of farmland, in keeping with the state. That’s a large enhance from 2015, when the 2 counties’ CAFOs unfold 170 million gallons and virtually 93,000 tons on roughly the identical quantity of farmland.
The identical development of accelerating portions of manure is going on all through Michigan and within the different Nice Lakes and Corn Belt states, all of that are contending with nitrate contamination and dangerous algal blooms. The USDA spends $8.2 million a yr on a analysis group — the Conservation Results Evaluation Undertaking (CEAP) — to judge how properly the greater than $5 billion a yr the company spends on conservation is performing. The analysis crew is excited about soil erosion, whether or not farms are embracing extra ecologically delicate cultivation practices, and the way a lot nitrogen and phosphorus drain from farm fields.
In March 2022, CEAP launched its newest nationwide evaluation. It discovered that environmentally delicate approaches to producing the nation’s meals had been being embraced by just a few extra farmers and that ecological injury was diminishing — with one necessary exception. The quantity of phosphorus — significantly dissolved reactive phosphorus — draining into streams was rising. The CEAP researchers discovered that phosphorus purposes elevated to 18.6 kilos per acre on common in 2016 from 16.2 kilos in 2006. A 15% enhance.
Among the many highest will increase in phosphorus purposes occurred in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and the 4 different states of the higher Midwest. “The geographic separation of livestock from cropland drove a nutrient imbalance between the 2,” stated the report’s authors, “lowering alternatives for manure vitamins for use productively, and creating incentives for overapplication of manure vitamins as a waste disposal resolution.”
In November 2021, the Environmental Legislation and Coverage Heart and different nonprofit state and regional environmental organizations formally intervened within the contested case listening to. Their authorized briefs countered the Farm Bureau’s arguments and made the case that the brand new allow shouldn’t be almost enough to fulfill water high quality requirements and the necessities of state regulation. The nonprofits known as for the brand new allow to be considerably strengthened, together with banning waste utility within the winter and requiring sampling and testing of all noticed discharges to floor water.
In June 2022, Dana Nessel, Michigan’s legal professional basic, additionally submitted a quick within the case that basically argued that EGLE was properly inside its obligations and the regulation in issuing the allow.
“Underneath the age-old public belief doctrine, in addition to up to date federal and state regulation,” Nessel stated, “the Michigan Division of Atmosphere, Nice Lakes, and Power is sure to guard Michigan’s water from dangerous air pollution.”
A model of this text first appeared on The New Lede on Aug. 1, 2024. See Circle of Blue’s challenge on dangerous algal blooms and agricultural air pollution in Michigan.
