Animal Feeding Operations Need Regulation to Halt Algae Blooms

The Great Lakes, which support the multibillion-dollar blue economy so critical to the boating industry, continue to be plagued with massive algae blooms, and confined animal feeding operations (CAFO) are now clearly in the headlights as prime drivers of pollution.

Cyanobacterial blooms have made headlines for their frequency in Lake Erie but now occur regularly in all five Great Lakes. Indeed, Lake Erie provides the sharpest example of summer algae blooms, but we now see blooms in lakes and waterways across the nation.

The major driver of this annual “slime time” is finally being called out as never before: It’s the growing number of essentially unregulated CAFOs in the eight Great Lakes states, and there’s a need for action.

“The data is indisputable,” says Michelle Burke, president of the Ohio Marine Trades Association. “Since the mid-1990s, hundreds of CAFOs have been built in Ohio, and studies document this coincides with our massive algae bloom outbreaks in Lake Erie and other Ohio waterways. Real regulatory action is overdue.”

There was a promising response 11 years ago. Ohio, Michigan and Ontario signed an agreement to reduce Western Lake Erie dissolved reactive phosphorous loading, which triggers blooms, by 40% by 2025. In 2014, the city of Toledo famously ordered its more than 400,000 water customers not to drink or even touch their treated water from Lake Erie due to the presence of the algal toxin microcystin.

Experts generally agree there is no chance the 40% goal will be met by next year. Even the highly respected former director of Ohio Sea Grant and the Stone Laboratory, Dr. Jeff Reutter, says progress to curb algae-breeding phosphorus flowing into the lake has “not even been 1% yet.”

While the Buckeye State’s farming community, through a program dubbed “H2Ohio,” has reportedly produced significant improvements in farming practices to prevent phosphorus-laden fertilizer from running off into streams that feed lakes, CAFO’s are another story. Ohio has 295 known CAFOs. Most are not registered and are unregulated. Of those, only 22 have a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit in Ohio, which by federal law is supposed to include all CAFO operations. Ohio only registers large and medium CAFOs, so small operations are an estimate at best.

CAFOs are a continuous source of manure and wastewater known to release nitrogen and phosphorous, sediments, pathogens and other pollutants into the environment. The manure never stops coming, of course. It’s liquified and spread on nearby farmland as fertilizer. When it rains, the liquified manure runs into streams that flow into lakes and rivers.

Any comprehensive information about CAFO operations is hard to get. That’s because in 2017 the EPA signed a settlement agreement with CAFO industry groups that favored and limited the number and amount of livestock information they’re required to provide. In response, the Natural Resource Defense Council and others responded with criticism of the overall lack of data and needed regulations on CAFOs.

To put it in greater perspective, CAFOs densely house thousands of animals — hogs, cows, sheep, chickens, beef cattle and more — in confined areas. They then store the animal manure in open lagoons and apply it to nearby fields. Nitrates from manure can poison drinking water sources and contribute to epic dead zones in sensitive aquatic habitats, such as those detected in central Lake Erie.

Manure from CAFOs contains more than 150 pathogens that have the potential to contaminate water supplies, while fumes and particulate matter reportedly can elevate rates of asthma, lung disease and bronchitis among people living nearby. Confining large numbers of animals in close proximity requires routine antibiotic regimens, too, and this in turn exacerbates the crisis of antibiotic resistance.

The eight Great Lakes states have nearly 5,000 CAFOs, most without National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits:

• Ohio: 295 CAFOs, 22 permits

• Illinois: 455 CAFOs, 10 permits

• Indiana: 886 CAFOs, 0 permits

• New York: 488 CAFOs, 0 permits

• Minnesota: 1,565 CAFOs, 1,182 permits

• Michigan: 292 CAFOs, 275 permits

• Pennsylvania: 429 CAFOs, 429 permits

• Wisconsin: 337 CAFOs, 337 permits

Algae blooms can lead to major negative impacts on those who make their livelihood selling boats to customers who want good fishing, boating, tourism and quality of life. It’s time to reverse this trend.