Factory Farms – Air Pollution

  • This dairy is known as a "Confined Animal Feeding Operation" or CAFO. It will soon hold 1,500 dairy cows. The animals are kept indoors and are milked three times a day. (Photo by Mark Brush)

The way milk is produced has changed. A lot of
dairy farms are much bigger and more efficient. They’re
often called factory farms. Mark Brush reports, neighbors
of these farms say they’re paying a high price for the cheap
dairy products on your store shelves:

Transcript

The way milk is produced has changed. A lot of
dairy farms are much bigger and more efficient. They’re
often called factory farms. Mark Brush reports, neighbors
of these farms say they’re paying a high price for the cheap
dairy products on your store shelves:



More than 50 cows trudge single file into this big, new building. There’s a bright
white tile floor and lots of light. The animals are herded into individual metal stalls. The
gates close over their heads, kind of like how the bar comes over you’re head when
you get on a rollercoaster. At the other end of the cow, workers insert its udders into
suction cups – and the milking starts:


“They’re milked three times a day – then they go back to the free-stall barn, so we’re
currently milking 1,000 cows.”


That’s Mark van de Heijning. He runs this dairy along with his family. They moved
here from Belgium. And they started milking their cows last year. They just built
another facility – and soon they’ll have 1,500 cows. van de
Heijning says back home in Belgium they had a small dairy farm, but wanted to
expand:


“But in Belgium the land is expensive and there was a quota system so its expensive
to expand there, and there are already a lot of people so that’s why we moved over here.”


It’s a fairly common story. Farmers from Belgium and the Netherlands move here to
build huge livestock operations – operations that would be too costly to run in
Europe.


van de Heijning says they produce more than 8,000
gallons of milk per day. But that’s not all they produce. The cows also make more
that 10,000 gallons of manure a day. And it’s the manure that concerns people most
living around this dairy in northwest Ohio.



The manure is held in huge lagoons out back and eventually it’s spread onto
nearby farm fields. It smells. On some days the smell is intense. Some of the
people who live around these fields say the new mega-dairy has made life pretty
unpleasant:


“I just live a quarter of a mile east of them and wind the wind blows it’s bad.”


“Regular cow manure, when they used to clean the barn – it stunk. But it was a
different… this is sometimes a really vile… like bleach or medicine in it.”


“It just sometimes takes your breath away. One day I tried to work in the garden and
within probably 10 or 15 minutes I was so nauseated I thought I was going to
throw up.”


Dub Heilman, Judy Emmitt, and Jane Phillips have lived in this rural community all of
their lives. None of them had experienced the sharp smells until the dairy began
operating last year. With the operation expanding, Judy Emmitt says she fears the
problems will only get worse:

“I mean we’re all getting older and we’ve already had health issues – how’s
this going to affect us? It’s scary – I mean sometimes it’s a scary feeling – what’s this
going to do to us?”



Exactly what the foul air does to people’s health is debated. The van de Heijnings
think it’s much ado about nothing. But health experts are concerned about a couple
of chemicals generated by the stored manure: hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. Two
studies have found that people living near these mega farms report more
headaches, respiratory problems, nausea, burning eyes, and depression.


The US Environmental Protection Agency regulates hydrogen sulfide and requires reports for ammonia releases from industries,but not for farms. The EPA says it’s looking into the problem with a new, two year
study. But the WAY the study was set up has angered a lot of people. The agency struck a deal with more than 2,000 livestock producers. These
producers represent around 14,000 individual farms. All of them will get
immunity from prosecution for breaking air pollution laws. Each of the producers
paid a small fine, and in exchange, the EPA will study air emissions on 24
of the farms.


The study just started. And it will be three and half years before the EPA makes any
decisions. Jon Scholl is with the EPA. He says right now, if neighbors have any
problems, unless they can prove imminent danger, they shouldn’t look to the EPA
for help. They should call their state agency:


“In terms of anything concerns that they would want to seek redress for at this
current time, EPA certainly encourages residents impacted by those operations to work with their respective state agencies.”


The neighbors we talked to say they’ve tried contacting the state agency responsible
for overseeing these mega-farms. But they were told there’s nothing the agency
could do.


Jane Phillips says the EPA study is just a delay tactic:


“The science is already there. There’s no reason for this study. And I think, you
know, no matter what the science says somebody is gonna dispute it and there’s going to have to be another study, and it’s just
gonna go on and on and on.”


“Farm Bureau will dispute it and they’ll just keep the whole mess goin’ and I don’t
think it’ll end.”



The van de Heijning’s dairy operation is one of the livestock farms that was granted
immunity by the EPA. Mark van de Heinjing says he’s doing what he can to cut
down on the odors and air pollution. Instead of spraying the fields with manure,
they’ve been injecting it into the soil. And next year, he says, they’ll build a new
manure treatment lagoon. But with five hundred more cows scheduled to arrive at
the dairy soon, his neighbors don’t expect the air around their homes to improve in
the coming years. And they don’t hold out much hope that the government will help
either.


For the Environment, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Factory Farms – Water Pollution

  • Hog manure being injected into the ground and tilled under. The manure fertilizes the crops, but if too much is applied it can foul up waterways. (Photo by Mark Brush)

Transcript

(sound of giant fans)


About a thousand cows are in this building, eating, lolling around, and waiting for the next round of milking.


There’s a sharp smell of manure hanging in the air. Big fans are blowing to keep the cows cool, and to keep the air circulated.


Stephan Vander Hoff runs this dairy along with his siblings. He says these big farms are good for consumers:


“We’ve got something here and we’ve been able to do it in such a way that we’re still producing at the same cost that we were fifteen years ago. It costs more now for a gallon of gas than a gallon of milk. And so, that’s something to be proud of.”


Vander Hoff’s dairy produces enough milk to fill seven tanker trucks everyday. They also produce a lot of waste. The cows in this building are penned in by metal gates. They can’t go outside. So the manure and urine that would normally pile up is washed away by water.


Tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater are sent to big lagoons outside. Eventually, the liquefied manure is spread onto nearby farm fields. It’s a challenge for these farmers to deal with these large pools of liquid manure. The farther they have to haul it, the more expensive it is for them. Almost all of them put the manure onto farm fields.


It’s good for the crops if it’s done right, but if too much manure is put on the land, it can wash into streams and creeks. In fact, this dairy has been cited by the state of Michigan for letting their manure get into nearby waterways.


(sound of roadway)


Lynn Henning keeps a close eye on Vander Hoff’s dairy.


(car door opening and closing)


She steps from her car with a digital camera, and a device that measures water quality.


(sound of crickets and walking through the brush)


She weaves her way down to the edge of this creek.


“This is the area where we got E. coli at 7.5 million.”


High E. coli levels mean the water might be polluted with dangerous pathogens. Lynn Henning is testing the creek today because she saw farmers spreading liquid manure on the fields yesterday. Henning is a farmer turned environmental activist. She works for the Sierra Club and drives all over the state taking water samples and pictures near big livestock farms.


Henning says she got involved because more of these large animal farms expanded into her community. She says when the farmers spread the liquid manure, it can make life in the country pretty difficult:


“The odor is horrendous when they’re applying –we have fly infestations–we have hydrogen sulfide in the air that nobody knows is there because you can’t always smell it. We have to live in fear that every glass of water that we drink is going to be contaminated at some point.”


Water contamination from manure is a big concern. The liquid manure can contain nasty pathogens and bacteria.


Joan Rose is a microbiologist at Michigan State University.


“If animal wastes are not treated properly and we have large concentrations of animal waste going onto land and then via rainfall or other runoff events entering into our water – there can be outbreaks associated with this practice.”


Rose tested water in this area and found high levels of cryptosporidium that likely came from cattle. Cryptosporidium is the same bug that killed people in Milwaukee back in 1993. Rose says livestock farmers need to think more about keeping these pathogens out of the water. But she says they don’t get much support from the state and researchers on how best to do that.


For now, the farmers have to come up with their own solutions.


(sound of treatment plant)


Three years ago, the state of Michigan sued Stephen Vander Hoff’s dairy for multiple waste violations. The Vander Hoff’s settled the case with the state and agreed to build a one million dollar treatment system. But Vander Hoff isn’t convinced that his dairy was at fault, and thinks that people’s concerns over his dairy are overblown:


“If we had an issue or had done something wrong the first people that want to correct it is us. We live in this area. So why would we do anything to harm it?”


Vander Hoff is upbeat about the new treatment system. He says it will save the dairy money in the long run.


The Sierra Club’s Lynn Henning says she’s skeptical of the new treatment plant. She’ll continue to take water samples and put pressure on these farms to handle their manure better. In the end, she doesn’t think these big farms have a place in agriculture. She’d rather see farms go back to the old style of dairying, where the cows are allowed to graze, and the number of animals isn’t so concentrated.


But farm researchers say because consumers demand cheap prices, these large farms are here to stay and there will be more of them. Because of this, the experts say we can expect more conflicts in rural America.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Too Much Manure?

  • Hog manure being injected into the ground and tilled under. The manure fertilizes the crops, but if too much is applied it can foul up waterways. (photo by Mark Brush)

Today, we continue our series on pollution in the heartland.
Dairy farms are getting bigger. Many keep thousands of cows in buildings the size of several football fields. These big dairy operations can make a lot of milk. That translates into cheaper prices at the grocery store.
But some worry these large farms are polluting the land around them. In the fourth story of our week-long series, the GLRC’s Mark Brush visits a big Midwestern dairy farm:

Transcript

Today, we continue our series on pollution in the heartland. Dairy farms are getting bigger.
Many keep thousands of cows in buildings the size of several football fields. These big dairy
operations can make a lot of milk. That translates into cheaper prices at the grocery store. But
some worry these large farms are polluting the land around them. In the fourth story of our week-long series, the GLRC’s Mark Brush visits a big Midwestern dairy farm:


(sound of giant fans)


About a thousand cows are in this building, eating, lolling around, and waiting for the next round
of milking.


There’s a sharp smell of manure hanging in the air. Big fans are blowing to keep the cows cool,
and to keep the air circulated.


Stephan Vander Hoff runs this dairy along with his siblings. He says these big farms are good for
consumers:


“We’ve got something here and we’ve been able to do it in such a way that we’re still producing
at the same cost that we were fifteen years ago. It costs more now for a gallon of gas than a
gallon of milk. And so, that’s something to be proud of.”


Vander Hoff’s dairy produces enough milk to fill seven tanker trucks everyday. They also
produce a lot of waste. The cows in this building are penned in by metal gates. They can’t go
outside. So the manure and urine that would normally pile up is washed away by water.


Tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater are sent to big lagoons outside. Eventually, the
liquefied manure is spread onto nearby farm fields. It’s a challenge for these farmers to deal with
these large pools of liquid manure. The farther they have to haul it, the more expensive it is for
them. Almost all of them put the manure onto farm fields.


It’s good for the crops if it’s done right, but if too much manure is put on the land, it can wash into streams and creeks. In fact, this
dairy has been cited by the state of Michigan for letting their manure get into nearby waterways.


(sound of roadway)


Lynn Henning keeps a close eye on Vander Hoff’s dairy.


(car door opening and closing)


She steps from her car with a digital camera, and a device that measures water quality.


(sound of crickets and walking through the brush)


She weaves her way down to the edge of this creek.


“This is the area where we got E. coli at 7.5 million.”


High E. coli levels mean the water might be polluted with dangerous pathogens. Lynn Henning is
testing the creek today because she saw farmers spreading liquid manure on the fields yesterday.
Henning is a farmer turned environmental activist. She works for the Sierra Club and drives all
over the state taking water samples and pictures near big livestock farms.


Henning says she got involved because more of these large animal farms expanded into her
community. She says when the farmers spread the liquid manure, it can make life in the country
pretty difficult:


“The odor is horrendous when they’re applying –we have fly infestations–we have hydrogen
sulfide in the air that nobody knows is there because you can’t always smell it. We have to live
in fear that every glass of water that we drink is going to be contaminated at some point.”


Water contamination from manure is a big concern. The liquid manure can contain nasty
pathogens and bacteria.


Joan Rose is a microbiologist at Michigan State University.


“If animal wastes are not treated properly and we have large concentrations of animal waste
going onto land and then via rainfall or other runoff events entering into our water – there can
be outbreaks associated with this practice.”


Rose tested water in this area and found high levels of cryptosporidium that likely came from
cattle. Cryptosporidium is the same bug that killed people in Milwaukee back in 1993. Rose
says livestock farmers need to think more about keeping these pathogens out of the water. But
she says they don’t get much support from the state and researchers on how best to do that.


For now, the farmers have to come up with their own solutions.


(sound of treatment plant)


Three years ago, the state of Michigan sued Stephen Vander Hoff’s dairy for multiple waste
violations. The Vander Hoff’s settled the case with the state and agreed to build a one million
dollar treatment system. But Vander Hoff isn’t convinced that his dairy was at fault, and thinks
that people’s concerns over his dairy are overblown:


“If we had an issue or had done something wrong the first people that want to correct it is us. We
live in this area. So why would we do anything to harm it?”


Vander Hoff is upbeat about the new treatment system. He says it will save the dairy money in
the long run.


The Sierra Club’s Lynn Henning says she’s skeptical of the new treatment plant. She’ll continue
to take water samples and put pressure on these farms to handle their manure better. In the end,
she doesn’t think these big farms have a place in agriculture. She’d rather see farms go back to
the old style of dairying, where the cows are allowed to graze, and the number of animals isn’t
so concentrated.


But farm researchers say because consumers demand cheap prices, these large farms are here to
stay and there will be more of them. Because of this, the experts say we can expect more
conflicts in rural America.


For the GLRC, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

New Bill Seeks to Ban Gl Drilling

  • There is currently a ban on oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes, but it's only temporary. (Photo courtesy of the USGS)

Members of Congress from eight Great Lakes states have introduced legislation to permanently ban oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes. They say the lakes are vulnerable to environmental damage if a temporary ban is allowed to expire. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton
reports:

Transcript

Members of Congress from eight Great Lakes states have introduced
legislation to permanently ban oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes.
They say the Lakes are vulnerable to environmental damage if a temporary ban
is allowed to expire. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton
reports:


The temporary ban on Great Lakes drilling is due to expire in 2007.


Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak says oil leaks from drilling pollute the
Lakes, and people could be injured or even killed by releases of toxic
hydrogen sulfide from gas drilling.


Four Great Lakes states have their own drilling bans. But Stupak says the issue is too important to take the risk that new state legislatures might lift the ban.


“We think it should be federal policy. The federal government has acted once or twice for at least these temporary bans that we have in place right now, so why don’t we just make it part of our
energy policy and permanently ban oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes?”


Stupak says a federal ban might also convince Canada to consider follow
suit. He says there are about eighty oil spills a year in the Lakes from
Canadian oil rigs.


Energy companies maintain the practice is safe both for the environment and people’s health.


For the GLRC, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Related Links

Voters Love the Lakes

The Michigan Legislature voted recently to ban new oil and gas drilling under the Great Lakes. Until the ban was enacted, Michigan had been the only state considering to allow such drilling. As the nation heads into a new round of federal, state, and local elections, Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Cameron Davis says that the region’s drilling debate provides some invaluable lessons for candidates:

Transcript

The Michigan legislature voted recently to ban new oil and gas drilling under the Great Lakes. Until now, it had been the major holdout on such a ban. As the nation heads into a new round of federal, state, and local elections, Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Cameron Davis says that the region’s drilling debate provides some invaluable lessons for candidates.

The first lesson to our future leaders is to beware of one element of news “spin”- that if you repeat something long enough it will become true. In pressing their case, oil and gas interests said that drilling would not result in oil bubbling up to pollute Great Lakes water. As a result, they repeated, drilling was quote -“safe.” They failed to listen, however, to citizens troubled by something different: oil and toxic hydrogen sulfide leaks on land that could put human health and fragile coasts at risk. Given the small amount of oil and gas below the lakes, citizens said drilling wasn’t worth it. So, we get to lesson number one: Our future leaders should define public safety and environmental health broadly, not so narrowly that they gloss over legitimate concerns.

Lesson number 2: the debate was as much about the need for states to be credible leaders in natural resource protection as it was about drilling itself. The Lake Michigan Federation looked at 30 active wells in Michigan and found that eight of them had in fact contaminated water supplies. According to the same research, state oversight continues to fail in the clean up of any of those sites. In the drilling debate, citizens believed that without responsive agency action, the only way to prevent similar damage from shoreline drilling was to prohibit the practice in the first place. Congress responded to citizens’ concerns over the summer by suspending new drilling for two years. Candidates can take away from this that if states don’t want Congress stepping on their toes, they need to do a credible job themselves of protecting the Great Lakes.

Last, pro-drilling interests argued during the debate that other serious challenges besides drilling deserved more attention. While concerned citizens believed that a drilling ban was the best way to prevent new shoreline damage, advocates also agree that a number of other important threats need to be addressed. The third moral of the story is that people’s interest in protecting the Great Lakes environment from drilling is the beginning, not the end.

It’s time to move onto other pressing threats such as harmful water diversions in an increasingly thirsty world. We need to prevent future invasions of foreign pest species like the zebra mussel that throw the multi-billion dollar Great Lakes fishery out of whack. With women of childbearing age and other sensitive populations unable to eat certain fish because of contamination, it’s time to eliminate cancer-causing and other pollution once and for all. And, it’s time to restore fish and wildlife habitat, including the region’s precious wetlands, forests, and sand dunes.

Voters love the Great Lakes. Because of that, whoever commits first in upcoming elections to protect them, wins.

Community Wins Suit Against Egg Farm

An Ohio jury has awarded neighbors of a large factory farm $19.7 million in damages. People living near Buckeye Egg Farm in central Ohio have complained for years of fly infestations and odors. The outcome is seen as a victory by those living next to large-scale farm operations throughout the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston has the story:

Transcript

An Ohio jury has awarded neighbors of a large factory farm 19.7 million dollars in damages. People living near Buckeye Egg Farm in Central Ohio have complained for years of fly infestations and odors. The outcome of the lawsuit may or may not affect similar cases in other states. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports.


(Natural sound of locusts, wind, dog barking in the distance)

Freda Douthitt’s house sits at the end of a gravel lane. The driveway is surrounded by trees and wild flowers. She’s always liked it here because it’s secluded … she’s a couple miles from a rural road. She likes to sit on the multi-tiered back patio that overlooks a small pond. That’s where she grades composition papers from her Freshman English class at Ohio University.

(sound of flies)


But she has also had to swat at flies for the past ten years. Douthitt collects flies in a container that is nearly the size of a gallon milk jug. She estimates this one has about 2-3 inches worth of decomposing flies and maggots collected since August 22.


“It smells out here. That’s the flytrap. That keeps some of them from getting in the house. Today there’s a few flies out here. There are days when that wall would be just polka dotted with them.


Douthitt has frozen the containers of flies and collected them over the years. She took them to court with her to prove the problems she deals with living near a factory farm.
That’s what helped her win a 1.2 million dollar share of a settlement with Buckeye Egg Farm. It’s one of the world’s largest egg-laying producers. Douthitt’s house is three-quarters of a mile from one of the company’s egg-laying plants. The flies come from the vast amounts of manure produced by millions of chickens housed at the company’s barns. The manure gets spread on farm fields that surround Douthitt’s house after harvest season in the fall. Since then … she has watched as run-off from Buckeye Egg properties killed tens-of-thousands of fish in a nearby creek. She has even seen the creek water turn purple.


She says she never expected to win in court against the company when she began the legal battle 9 years ago.


“I never thought about suing. Until one of the neighbors I’d been working hard with trying to get the EPA to do something … trying to get the county health department interested … um, we were both frustrated at that point. She called up one evening and said we’re ready to call a lawyer, are you? And I said, yeah, I’ll meet with you.
As the years went by I became pretty frustrated, and wondered what would make a difference.”


Douthitt and 20 of her neighbors won a 19.7 million dollar lawsuit against Buckeye Egg.
This win has other people in Great Lakes states hopeful they too can win in court against large factory farms.


Julie Janson of Olivia, Minnesota knows Douthitt’s story all too well. Janson has been fighting hog factory farm owner Valadco for 6 years. Her house sits sandwiched between two of the company’s hog barns. Janson and her husband filed a lawsuit this spring against the company. They are asking for close to 200-thousand dollars because Janson says her family of eight gets sick from manure odors.


Janson says she took her 11-year-old daughter to a specialist in California to prove she has brain damage from smelling hydrogen sulfide.


Decomposing manure creates hydrogen sulfide gas and ammonia that smells like rotten eggs.


“Sometimes it’s enough to gag a maggot. The stink is putrid. And, it penetrates through your house, through the windows and doors. Every little crack in your home.”


Janson says her family has spent one hundred thousand dollars to fight Valadco.
She had to close her daycare center, which she ran from her home, partly because of the stench. Her husband is supporting the family with his truck-driving job that brings in nearly 38-thousand dollars a year.


She says a win over Buckeye Egg farm in Ohio is a victory that can help her cause.


“There’s finally been some justice served. Some of these people have been fighting for over ten years. And … to me … it just says no matter how long and painful it is, you need to fight for justice because if us citizens don’t fight it’s never gonna happen.”


Both Janson and Douthitt say it’s not the money that will make them happy.
Douthitt says she will probably never see the money that she is owed.
But … she says the county judge may force the company to clean up its farms and the surrounding communities.


“How can they have that many animals and that much manure and let it just pour out and not treat it? They let it just pour out onto the land.”


Buckeye egg farm officials have said they may appeal the verdict. The company says it has already spent millions of dollars to try and clean up its facilities. Earlier this year, Buckeye Egg settled a multi-million dollar lawsuit with Ohio’s attorney general’s office. The state sued the company for dumping dead chickens in a field and polluting creeks by spilling contaminated water. The state has since filed seven sets of contempt charges against Buckeye Egg for not correcting the problems. It’s still undecided whether Buckeye Egg will file for bankruptcy following the verdict.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Natalie Walston.

The Fate of Slant Drilling

Far below the bottom of the Great Lakes, valuable pockets of oil and
gas sit waiting to be tapped. But laws prohibit offshore drilling. So
for the last twenty years, oil companies have been using another method
to get to the deposits; it’s called directional or slant-drilling. Up
until this point, there hasn’t been much opposition. But now a number
of bills are pending that could change oil and gas development beneath
the lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson reports: