Michigan’s new guidelines to guard water from manure attacked by lawmakers

This story was initially printed by Circle of Blue.

FREMONT, Michigan — Anticipating a surge of funding for constructing manure biodigesters, which seize methane for electrical energy and transportation fuels from tens of millions of tons of farm animal waste, Michigan’s environmental company final 12 months drafted extra rigorous working guidelines to guard state waters from a brand new tide of farm-based air pollution.

The motion by the Division of Atmosphere, Nice Lakes, and Power gained highly effective authorized justification in late July when the Michigan Supreme Court docket determined that EGLE has full authority to “take all mandatory steps” to make sure that manure produced by Michigan’s industrial-scale livestock and poultry feeding operations don’t pollute state waters.

Nevertheless, what seemed to be a pair of breakthroughs in compelling industrial agriculture to extra responsibly handle animal wastes which have polluted Michigan’s floor and groundwater for many years could transform lower than anticipated. Stronger regulatory measures might succumb to political stress from farm and power pursuits and their allies in Lansing.

Within the state Home, a bipartisan group of representatives proposed two statutes in June – HB 5789 and HB 5790 – that may basically exempt manure digester wastes – or digestate – from the company’s new oversight. As well as, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration is supporting a 3rd measure within the state Senate to extend monetary help for renewable fuels, together with methane from manure, with out totally understanding the implications to water high quality posed by digestate.

“On the one hand the Senate is proposing provisions to construct extra biodigesters,” mentioned Christy McGillivray, the Michigan Sierra Membership’s political and legislative director. “On the opposite, the Home is proposing to undermine EGLE’s authority to control digestate. It is not sensible.”

The governor’s workplace and the workplaces of state legislators didn’t reply to queries from Circle of Blue. In a press release issued in June, Rep. Graham Filler, a Republican and the lead creator of the Home payments, known as digesters “a helpful renewable power supply.” He added: “By adopting new, commonsense laws, we will help these amenities, improve our environmental efforts, and promote financial development in Michigan.”

A recent path to environmental safety

EGLE employees members concerned in writing the brand new digestate laws, probably the most stringent exterior of California, knew the company would discover itself caught in a political and financial whirlwind. The rationale: In August 2022, the federal authorities enacted the Inflation Discount Act, which included greater than $140 billion in direct funds and tax incentives for renewable fuels and cleaner electrical era.

The intent is to assist scale back greenhouse fuel emissions 40% under 2005 ranges by the tip of the last decade. However the impact might make agricultural air pollution worse. Included within the legislation have been provisions to supply extra ethanol from corn, probably the most closely fertilized and polluting crop within the U.S., and methane from slowly cooking manure in biodigesters.

The brand new federal coverage attracted equal measures of help and opposition. Defenders assert that digesters convert wastes from livestock and poultry into renewable gas that replaces fossil fuels. The conversion additionally affords the massive livestock and poultry manufacturing amenities, so-called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), a brand new income from promoting the fuel and from an assortment of credit and tax breaks.

Critics cite research in California and Wisconsin, for instance, that discovered that the added income for methane is changing milk as a significant revenue heart for giant dairies. It’s prompting farms to extend the variety of cows they feed, thus rising the dimensions of dairy CAFOs and the quantity of manure they produce.

Beneath Whitmer, Michigan has largely sided with industrial firms, amongst them Chevron and South Jersey Industries, in providing incentives for digester growth. In 2008, simply seven farm-based biodigesters operated in Michigan, based on the U.S. Environmental Safety Company. Final 12 months, 13 extra manure biodigesters have been underneath building in Michigan, greater than any state besides California, based on Argonne Nationwide Laboratory. At the least 10 extra are in numerous proposal phases, based on analysis by Cheryl Ruble, a doctor from Montague and a distinguished opponent of manure digesters.

Digestate is poisonous

Right here lies the first downside with digesters in Michigan, critics mentioned. Digestate has completely different chemical properties from uncooked manure. Cooking manure within the digester’s oxygen-deprived (anaerobic) tank modifications the chemical properties of nitrogen and phosphorus, the precept pollution in manure, making each components extra cell within the surroundings.

Second, the identical quantity of manure that goes into an anaerobic biodigester additionally comes out as digestate that have to be disposed of, primarily by spreading it on farmland. Michigan, one of many nation’s largest producers of milk and meat, generates loads of digester feedstock – 4 billion gallons of liquid manure and 60 million tons of stable manure yearly, based on EGLE. 

And third, lots of the new farm-based digesters suggest to combine natural wastes from meals processors, slaughterhouses and different producers into the manure, which provides to the complexity and dangers of disposing digestate on land.

“Coming from the attitude of rural communities, people have already got their watersheds inundated by these wastes,” mentioned Sarah D’Onofrio, a rural sociologist on the College of Tennessee who research biodigesters in Wisconsin. “Digesters make the poop extra water-soluble.  These fields are already so concentrated in vitamins. It solely will increase the chance for runoff.”

Lowering the air pollution risk requires industrial meat and milk producers to considerably scale back how a lot digestate they’re allowed to unfold on fields. “Making use of the identical quantity as uncooked manure might end in extra nitrogen, resulting in leaching into groundwater or runoff into floor water,” Ruble mentioned. 

Conscious of the danger, EGLE staffers went to work on permits to restrict the risk from digester air pollution. Three have been issued this 12 months underneath the state’s groundwater safety legislation. They set up extra stringent working practices than the company requires for older farm-based digesters and for spreading untreated manure from giant livestock and poultry farms.

The brand new circumstances embody recurrently sampling manure for concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus, ammonia and different pollution, and monitoring groundwater for his or her presence. They require operators to maintain cautious data of operation together with month-to-month and annual experiences on the amount of digestate discharged by biodigesters and the exact areas of the place digestate was unfold.

Operators have every day and annual limits on how a lot digestate they’re allowed to discharge based mostly on sampling soil. And these limits require operators to inform the state if different natural waste streams, like meals waste, are added to the manure to be digested. The intent, mentioned EGLE employees members, is to stop the sort of nutrient contamination that animal agriculture has already triggered in Lake Erie, Saginaw Bay, Lake Macatawa, tons of of miles of streams, and 1000’s of groundwater wells throughout Michigan.

“The legislation requires us to guard groundwater as a supply of consuming water for tens of millions of residents within the state,” mentioned Christine Alexander, the supervisor of permits for EGLE’s Water Assets Division. “If there are different pollution within the digestate, in sure elevated focus, that may be problematic for our groundwater.”

Legislature objects

But inside weeks of issuing the primary of the brand new permits final spring, EGLE got here underneath assault. Rep. Filler and 5 colleagues proposed a two-bill package deal that may classify spreading digestate on land as a “helpful use byproduct,” outlined by state legislation as a fertilizer or soil conditioner. The change would permit digester operators to keep away from the brand new guidelines and unfold the waste on farmland with scant oversight. An evaluation by the Environmental Legislation and Coverage Heart, a authorized group in Chicago, discovered the payments “violate each Michigan and federal legislation, together with the Michigan Supreme Court docket opinion.”

“There’s no third-party verification of what’s within the waste. On high of that the Michigan Division of Agriculture doesn’t observe the place it goes,” mentioned McGillivray of the Sierra Membership. “The state is aware of this can be a downside. Including digestate to the helpful reuse program is a horrible concept.”

Critics are also involved a few proposal within the state Senate that may develop the marketplace for methane produced by biodigesters. SB 275, proposed by state Sen. Sam Singh, a Democrat, and 13 co-sponsors, is meant to ascertain a system for issuing credit to encourage substitute of fossil fuels with “low-carbon” renewable fuels, together with methane.

The credit purpose to reinforce Whitmer’s program, established final 12 months, to produce 100% of Michigan’s power from cleaner sources by 2040. The Michigan proposal relies on the same program developed by California in 2011 that established a carbon tax credit score buying and selling system, which makes methane manufacturing in biodigesters a profitable income for farmers and digester builders. Final 12 months, the tax credit have been value about $60 per ton of carbon faraway from the ambiance, based on analysis by Aaron Smith, an agricultural and useful resource economist on the College of California at Davis.

However critics say that neither the Legislature nor Whitmer are contemplating the mixed impact of the Home and Senate payments — weakening oversight of a polluting trade — on Michigan’s water high quality. “What I’d suggest is that SB 275 permit credit for renewable pure fuel produced from wastewater therapy vegetation and landfills. They’re extremely regulated,” Ruble mentioned. “However should you monetize manure, they’re going to make extra manure. CAFOs will develop.”

Case research in Fremont, Michigan

In Fremont, a Newaygo County farm city surrounded by huge CAFOs, the durability of one in all EGLE’s first draft biodigester permits is being examined by a coalition of state and regional environmental teams. EGLE issued the draft allow earlier this 12 months to Generate Fremont Digester, which owns a biodigester for farm and meals wastes that was constructed 12 years in the past within the metropolis’s industrial park, and shut down in January.

The digester’s working historical past is dismal. In 2017, underneath the administration of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, Generate Fremont was awarded a allow to handle digestate underneath the weak state guidelines that utilized to spreading uncooked manure on farms. The permitted practices triggered an uproar in Newaygo County as residents complained of horrible odors from spreading and storing the digestate.

EGLE investigated and located quite a few violations. The state additionally evaluated the relative dangers of the stew of contaminants in manure and meals wastes being added to the digester. After the corporate utilized for a brand new allow, EGLE responded in 2023 with working circumstances for storing, spreading and monitoring which are a lot stricter than any ever imposed on a Michigan biodigester dealing with manure.

“Everyone knows what manure smells like when it’s being unfold,” mentioned Kathy Morrison, a fruit farmer who lives exterior Fremont. “However this digestate? I can’t even describe how dangerous it was. It was like sticking your head in a full porta-potty.”

Initially, Invoice Caesar, the corporate’s president, threatened to shut the power completely. “Not solely are the proposed modifications to our allow prohibitively costly,” he advised EGLE, “these laws are additionally operationally inconceivable for us to adjust to.”

The corporate reconsidered, although, and EGLE has requested for feedback on its draft allow. The environmental coalition, led by For Love of Water (FLOW), a Traverse Metropolis-based environmental legislation and coverage group, has urged EGLE to carry a listening to to permit the general public a possibility to strengthen the draft allow.

The group recognized a number of allow provisions they mentioned must be strengthened. They embody requiring Generate Fremont to contemplate safer options for disposing of digestate apart from spreading it on fields. Quite a few options can be found and in use throughout the nation, together with the Sedron Applied sciences Varcor system.

The teams mentioned that one other main weak spot is Generate Fremont’s disregard for offering the knowledge and adhering to the circumstances that the allow requires.

“Biodigester buildout with federal authorities and state subsidies seems more likely to be large, so any environmental impacts will even be large,” mentioned Carrie La Seur, FLOW’s authorized director. “This isn’t your grandma’s digester. They’re industrial scale, to match different industrial ag installations which have reworked farm nation and devastated soil and water high quality. Regulation of commercial digesters is in its infancy. What permits might be required? What impacts might be evaluated? There are a lot of questions, and we wish to be sure that they get answered.”

EGLE agreed to a public listening to scheduled for Nov. 20.