Rural communities can learn how to push back on data center construction from resistance to factory farms

The fight about construction of data centers continues across the country, and communities pushing back
on such construction could have a lot to learn about how to resist from the roll out of factory farms almost 40 years ago, Raj Patel and Jim Goodman write for Barn Raiser (republished by Next City). The push for factory farms looked similar to the fight about data centers now, and they write that those similarities might help rural residents resist data center construction more effectively. 

"By the time neighbors organized [against concentrated animal feeding operations], right-to-farm laws and state preemption had severed the ground from under them," the reporters write. And "while CAFOs crept into rural America, data centers are arriving as a land rush. This speed is both terrifying and an advantage." Terrifying because 67% of the 1,500 proposed data centers are in rural areas; an advantage because "CAFO country" has been here before, and the lessons they learned can help other rural places now.

Patel and Goodman have recommendations about what issues rural residents should focus on in hearings with their local elected leaders: water, power, money and democracy. They write that asking questions about those things will provide them with the most salient information. It's a lesson they say came too late for farmers. 

"Everything CAFO country learned, it learned too late, after the wells were ruined, after the smell lowered adjacent property values and health outcomes, after the statutes were written. Data centers are arriving early enough that the questions can still be asked in time."

Iowa family of farmers is working to create a midwestern 'blueprint;' they've swapped out pigs for mushrooms

The Faaborg family is working to build a farming blueprint for the Midwest.
(1100 Farm photo)

The Faaborg family made the bulk of their living from running a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, for hogs on the family's Iowa farm. While the undertaking was profitable, over time it left owners Rand and Tammy wanting to leave industrial farming, but the couple was unsure how they could make their farm's ends meet without pigs," reports Cara Buckley of The New York Times. "But this summer, with help from a nonprofit group and a leap of faith. . . . The Faaborgs have traded hogs for mushrooms in an effort to restore balance to the land, and their lives."

But Rand and Tammy aren't the ones leading the charge to change the family farm's product portfolio -- their second son, Tanner, is too. "He hopes to make his family’s farm a blueprint in the Midwest, to show how people can leave industrial farming, grow environmentally friendly and profitable food, and, in turn, help rebuild hollowed-out communities," Buckley writes. 'I want to make rural America a place where people want to live and grow up in,' Tanner Faaborg said. Absent significant changes, he said, the heartland will end up becoming one big manufacturing plant.'"

The switch to mushrooms was one idea the Transfarmation Project shared with Tanner. "The initiative is run by the farm-animal welfare charity Mercy for Animals that helps people transition out of industrial animal agriculture and into growing specialty crops," Buckley explains. "Tanner Faaborg seized on mushrooms, intrigued by their potential to heal ailments and serve as a superfood."

It took time for Tanner to convince his parents and his older brother, Tyler, to commit to leaving the CAFO behind. The Transfarmation Project helped him make the case. Buckley reports, "Tyler Whitley, the director of the Transfarmation Project, describes himself as a 'farmer social worker.' His group talks to farmers, learn about their equipment and buildings and whether it’s tied to debt, explores what plant-based alternatives might work, and matches them with resources."

To get started, the Faaborgs received a $15,000 grant from the Transfarmation Project for "a pilot project cultivating reishi, lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms," Buckley writes, "It provided another $200,000 toward redesigning one of the Faaborgs’ hog barns. . . The last of their hogs shipped out in the fall of 2022. Mushrooms for medicinal tinctures and a coffee blend are now being grown in an outbuilding, and a hog barn [will] grow specialty mushrooms. Elsewhere on the land, hundreds of native trees have been planted and a pollinator-friendly field has been sown."

The Faaborg homestead now produces mushrooms "under the name 1100 Farm, a nod to the number of hogs each barn once held," Buckley reports. "If all goes well, the profits from mushrooms could exceed what the farm was generating from hogs during the best of times, without the backbreaking work and sounds and smells from the hog barns and waste pit."

Court axes regulatory exception for mid-sized factory farms; hundreds of them will need environmental assessments

A beef-cattle feedlot (Photo via Northern Ag Network)

A federal court has thrown out an environmental examption for some concentrated animal feeding operations. "Medium-sized CAFOs receiving Department of Agriculture loans will be required to have an environmental assessment after a federal court vacated part of a 2016 Farm Service Agency rule," reports Todd Neeley of Progressive Farmer. "The court's ruling is likely to affect hundreds of CAFOs across the country. . . . FSA adopted a rule in 2016 that exempted from environmental review livestock facilities that confine up to 2,500 pigs, 1,000 beef cattle, 700 dairy cows, 125,000 chickens or 55,000 turkeys."

FSA's 2016 exemption sped up USDA loan approvals, which one individual called an "onerous impediment to obtaining financing for operations that will often include young or beginning farmers," Needley reports. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the District Court for the District of Columbia said the FSA had violated the National Environmental Policy Act. "USDA admitted the FSA failed to provide notice and comment before creating the exemption," Neeley notes. "During the five years that the case has been pending, the agency failed to offer mechanisms for community feedback or evidence that medium-sized CAFOs lack environmental impact."

Poor environmental outcomes and insufficient evidence supporting the exemption have made factory farms controversial. "CAFOs have been a point of contention between the livestock industry and environmental activists since they began to proliferate in the 1990s, overtaking small, pasture-feeding operations as the dominant form of animal agriculture in the U.S.," reports Madison McVan of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. "One large CAFO can easily produce more than one million tons of manure per year — more than the yearly waste of a large city." 

An exact count of how many CAFOs will be affected is not available, but the animal-welfare groups that filed the lawsuit found through the Freedom of Information Act that "The FSA made 130 direct loans of more than $100,000 or guaranteed loans of more than $300,000 each to animal facilities in Indiana alone from August 2016 to August 2018," Neeley reports. "The FSA did a review of its loan decisions for 2010 and 2011, finding there were more than 650 loans issued to broiler chicken medium-sized CAFOs alone."

"The ruling makes no mention of the economic impact, including shortages and price increases that might result from the newly added environmental hurdles," reports Dan Flynn of the Food Safety Network. However, the judge's opinion noted, "Although FSA admitted error in September 2019, to date, it appears that FSA has taken no action to correct its error . . . More importantly, however, there is nothing in the record to confirm FSA's insistence that it will be able to substantiate the challenged (exemption) on remand."

Professor: Rural America's assets have been stripped away

Mark Edelman

A 2021 paper called "Hollowed out Heartland, USA" details how financial and political elites have bought assets of rural America, from banks and newspapers to hospitals and homes. That has contributed heavily to rural decline, held rural America back from meaningful advancement, and helped usher in the increasing popularity of authoritarian populist politicians, says the paper's author, Hunter College anthropology professor Marc Edelman. For The Daily Yonder, he sat down with Olivia Weeks to discuss his case.

The siphoning of rural wealth and assets to urban shareholders has "intensified long standing American ideas about self-reliance and hard work," Edelman told Weeks. "It fueled resentment of cosmopolitan urbanites, who don’t work with their hands, don’t have 'real' skills, and somehow seem to make money, nonetheless. It also vitiated any working-class consciousness that might have been there when people worked in factories and belonged to unions."

Edelman refers to many rural communities (and low-income neighborhoods in large cities) as "sacrifice zones," which he says means places "where capital came in, extracted wealth, and then left people worse off than they were before. The more dramatic examples include communities where uranium tailings or other toxic waste surround abandoned mines, where fracking for gas contaminated drinking water, the 'cancer alley' around the refineries and chemical plants of Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, or the CAFOs — concentrated animal feeding operations – where ponds of hog or cattle manure cause horrendous rural air-ollution and health problems."

The consequences of such asset siphoning can trigger massive problems in small towns, Edelman says: "When communities go into decline, their tax bases suffer. Since public schools and so many services depend on local tax revenues, it becomes difficult to provide education, healthcare, elder care, recreation, and so on. The downward spiral affects people economically, emotionally, and politically. All the social and medical pathologies that people associate with inner cities – drugs, gun violence, domestic violence, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, depression, and suicide — are rampant in rural communities. Well-off urbanites rarely have any idea of how difficult things are in some rural areas and small towns." Read their in-depth interview here.

Quick hits: Billionaires buy up farmland; USDA wants feedback on rural renewable-energy pilot program...

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

The new jobs-and-stimulus package dedicates $20 million for efforts to preserve tribal languages. Read more here.

A pilot project in rural Maine aims to use paramedics to improve health-care access. Read more here.

The Agriculture Department wants feedback on the creation of a rural renewable-energy pilot program. Read more here.

An Illinois billionaire has quietly bought about 24,000 acres of farmland in the state since 2015, saying it's a good investment. Farmland purchases by hedge funds and the wealthy have surged in recent years, and economists say it's a good investment because of its stability. But wealthy investors paying top dollar for farmland contributes to the shortage of land available for farmers to purchase. Read more here.

The Hospital (St, Martin's, $28.99), a new book by journalist Brian Alexander, examines the state of rural health care by focusing on a small hospital in northwest Ohio. Read more here.

University of Tennessee agricultural economists Harwood D. Schaffer and Daryll E. Ray have dedicated their "Policy Pennings" columns over the past month to a look back at crop export trends over the past 60 years, and what they can teach us now. Read more here.

A legal scholar who was raised in rural America discusses academia's blind spot towards rural areas. Read more here.

if you're looking for a story that delves deeply into coal ash and how it impacts people nearby, this is one of the best we've ever seen. Read it here.

An op-ed says the USDA shouldn't be funding rural jails. Read more here.

A study examines the impact of solar farms on rural property values, and notes that such projects increasingly compete with rural residential developers and concentrated animal feeding operation farmers for rural land. Read more here. 

Health-care providers and housing experts explore the intersection of rural housing quality and health. Read more here.

Patchwork government oversight makes it difficult to investigate, assess the impact of CAFO pollution

Factory farms produce prodigious amounts of animal waste that, when improperly managed, can contribute to air and water pollution, but inadequate or confusing government oversight makes it difficult to estimate the impact of concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, on the environment and rural communities. 

"For decades, scientists have studied the effects that livestock farms with large animal concentrations in Iowa and other states have on regional water quality, as increasing amounts of waste flow into rivers and groundwater. Now activists and some lawmakers say emergency measures are needed to stop toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie, dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay, and threats to drinking water in rural communities. In some states, lawmakers worry about the future of smaller family farms," Alex Brown reports for Stateline. "Since last year, legislators in at least four states—Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota and Oregon—have proposed moratoriums on new or expanding farms that have more than a certain amount of livestock. None of the proposed bans is expected to become law this year, but the lawmakers say they aim to build momentum."

Efforts to regulate CAFOs face strong opposition from the livestock industry, "which notes that Americans rely on the operations for meat, dairy and eggs," Brown reports.

"CAFOs have been a point of contention between the livestock industry and environmental activists since they began to proliferate in the 1990s, overtaking small, pasture-feeding operations as the dominant form of animal agriculture in the U.S.," Madison McVan reports for the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. "As the number of livestock producers has declined, the number of animals — hogs, cattle and poultry — has skyrocketed over the past several decades, in part due to rapid consolidation in the industry."

But in feeding that many animals, well, what goes in must come out. "One large CAFO can easily produce more than one million tons of manure per year — more than the yearly waste of a large city. ... The animal waste — usually stored in a lagoon or large tank before being spread as fertilizer in crop fields — contains nitrogen, phosphorus and sometimes growth hormones, antibiotics or pathogens such as E. coli. Rainwater can cause lagoons to spill over or wash the manure out of fields and into waterways," McVan reports. "But the full extent of the damage is hard to estimate because the federal government doesn’t keep track of where CAFOs are located. Instead, it’s up to states, researchers and activists to build their own databases." The task is even more difficult because each state has different rules for issuing CAFO permits, in addition to mandatory federal rules. 

In general, any animal feeding operation that discharges waste into federal waterways must get a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency or an EPA-designated state agency, McVan reports. CAFOs that get a permit are added to a database with basic information. The databases, which are considered public records and can be obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, allow agencies to quickly pinpoint the source of a pollution event, schedule inspections, and track problem areas.

"The federal government doesn’t require permits for facilities that claim they pose no risk to water quality, however, meaning thousands of CAFOs aren’t included in these databases. When the EPA tried to expand its reach to cover unpermitted facilities, judges ruled the agency cannot require all CAFOs to apply for a permit, effectively barring the federal government from creating a complete register," McVan reports. "Even before lawsuits blocked the EPA from collecting more data on CAFOs, the agency wasn’t adequately studying the environmental impact of their waste, according to the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan organization that audits federal agencies. The work of cataloguing these facilities and their environmental impact is left to states, academic researchers and activists, whose combined work has created a patchwork of maps and databases that shed light on the prevalence of CAFOs in the US."

Unlikely alliance of Farm Bureau, environmental groups, Farmers Union aims to reduce agriculture's carbon footprint

"The American Farm Bureau Federation, the country's largest and most powerful agricultural lobbying group, has long pushed against climate legislation and worked closely with the fossil-fuel industry to defeat it," Georgina Gustin reports for Inside Climate News. "But on Tuesday, the Farm Bureau announced it had joined an unlikely alliance of food, forest, farming and environment groups that intends to work with Congress and the incoming Biden administration to reduce the food system's role in climate change and reward farmers when they lower their greenhouse-gas emissions."

The Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance was founded in February by four groups than now co-chair it: Farm Bureau, the National Council of Farm Cooperatives, the National Farmers Union (in some ways a liberal Farm Bureau) and the Environmental Defense Fund. The group now includes the Food Industry Association, the National Alliance of Forest Owners, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, and the Nature Conservancy. The Russell Group, a Washington lobbying firm, is coordinating. The groups' leaders of the groups acknowledge they won't always agree, but told Gustin that they believe they can find common ground.

In the Tuesday announcement, the group unveiled 40 policy proposals on its wish list that could be carried out through legislation, executive order, agency-level policy, and/or voluntary cooperation from farmers and agribusinesses. "The group's recommendations range across six broad categories, including soil health, food waste and agriculture research, Gustin reports. "They include a proposal to give tax credits to farmers who can prove that they've stashed carbon in their soils and a USDA-led 'carbon bank' that would set a minimum amount that farmers would be paid for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions."

All that doesn't address larger issues such as "overuse of synthetic fertilizers and the continued expansion of large-scale animal feeding operations and their excess manure," Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told Gustin. "Voluntary, incentive-based approaches are important, but as long as this industrial system of production is in place, it will be difficult to get deeper traction at the speed with which is needed to meet the climate crisis." Click here for the group's full list of policy proposals.

Agribusinesses got 1.5% of Paycheck Protection Program's forgivable loans; among them, dairy was the top sector

The 10 agribusiness sectors that got the most PPP funding. (Part of a Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting chart; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the complete and interactive version.)

"A very small percentage of businesses in the agriculture industry received Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, loans, which were intended to help keep people employed as the economy convulsed during the coronavirus pandemic," Samuel Trilling and Pramod Acharya report for the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. "Of the agricultural companies that did receive loans, dairies received the most."

But even though the dairy sector won out among agribusinesses with the PPP, agribusinesses received only 1.5% of PPP funds. About half of the program's loans went to four industries: construction (13%); health care and social assistance (12.7%); professional, scientific, and technical services (12.7%); and manufacturing (10.4%), Trilling and Acharya report after analyzing federal data released in July.

Iowa passes its third 'ag-gag' law, focused on trespassing

On Friday, Iowa state legislators passed a bill that would penalize undercover animal-rights activists who expose conditions on factory farms, buried in an agriculture bill that mostly addressed pandemic-related concerns. On Wednesday, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed it.

The law, sought by the Iowa Pork Producers Association and sponsored by State. Sen. Ken Rozenboom (a factory farm owner), is the third try for a so-called "ag-gag" law. "The first version was overturned on First Amendment grounds in January 2019, and the second was put on hold while a constitutional challenge moves through the courts," Alleen Brown reports for The Intercept.

The law establishes a new crime, "food operation trespass," that would penalize anyone who enters without permission a place where meat is processed or sold, or any place where a "food animal" is kept. "A first-time trespasser would now face up to two years of incarceration and a fine of up to $6,250," Brown reports. "If they entered a farm without authorization a second time, they could be charged with a felony carrying up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $7,500."

At least two dozen other states have introduced similar bills; in a handful of states, the laws have stuck, and in Idaho, Kentucky, Utah and Wyoming they've been overturned by courts, Brown reports.

Investigative reporting shows lax enforcement of air-quality laws near cattle feedlots in the Texas Panhandle

"In the Texas Panhandle, which produces a fifth of the U.S. beef supply, communities are being choked by fecal dust from nearby feedlots. The state’s regulatory agency isn’t doing anything about it—and it’s about to get a whole lot worse," Christopher Collins reports for the Texas Observer in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

In Hereford, Texas, a panhandle town of about 15,000, the odor is sometimes unbearable—and the smell isn't all. The wind frequently picks up tiny specks of dried manure from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and coats homes and businesses with it. The shust (a locally used portmanteau of "shit" and "dust") can sometimes limit visibility on the roads so much that drivers have to turn their headlights on, Collins reports.

Nearby residents say the shust causes problems with breathing, especially in small children, and many have complained to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. "From 2008 to 2017, at least 100 complaints about fecal dust and odor from feedlots have been registered with the agency, according to data obtained through an open records request. The comments reveal a problem potentially far graver than the smell," Collins reports. A four-month investigation found that "the agency performs only perfunctory investigations of the complaints: From 2014 to November 2019, TCEQ took no enforcement action against large beef feedlots in the Panhandle. The agency levied no fines and issued no warnings, its own records show."

Multiple studies have correlated the presence of CAFOs with health problems in children. "A 2009 study published by Oxford University Press found that doubling livestock production is correlated with a 7.4 percent increase in infant mortality due to respiratory disease. Another study, published in 2006, found that children living near CAFOs were at greater risk for asthma," Collins reports. "Despite this, the Texas Department of State Health Services does no monitoring or testing to determine whether living near feedlots or other CAFOs in the Panhandle compromises human health. TCEQ operates a network of air quality monitors around the state, but the agency hasn’t placed one in Hereford or other small towns where fecal dust pollution is most pronounced."

Quick hits: Podcast talks about HIV in rural America; coal company that hired laid off Blackjewel miners lays off some

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

The coal company that hired some laid off Blackjewel coal miners has now laid off some of them. Read more here.

Most Americans say they want more oversight of large-scale livestock operations, according to a new poll. Read more here.

A new podcast discusses HIV's threat to rural America. Read more here.

Oil and gas sites release enormous amounts of methane, which contributes to climate change, but it's hard for people to see the phenomenon because the gas is invisible. A crew from The New York Times used an infrared video camera to make methane leaks visible, revealing a troubling amount of pollution. Read more here.

New albums from rural Kentucky artists shed light on the soul of rural America, says Paste Magazine. Read more here.

Because we're not all doom and gloom here at The Rural Blog, here's some fun stuff: a church in southeastern Kentucky created a fake ad for the Amazon Echo: Eastern Kentucky Edition. Does it play on rural stereotypes? Yes. Is it hilarious? Also yes. And, this blogger with Harlan County roots can confirm that a few parts hit pretty close to home. Watch the video here.

Plan to cover hog-manure lagoons could spur biogas development, especially in North Carolina

A plan to cover hog-manure lagoons could generate new energy opportunities while reducing greenhouse gases, Greg Barnes reports for North Carolina Health News.

Smithfield, the world's largest hog producer, unveiled the plan last October, saying that it would install lagoon covers and anaerobic digesters on 90 percent of its hog-finishing farms in North Carolina, Missouri and Utah within the next 10 years. The covers will capture 85,000 tons of methane each year to convert it into biogas, Barnes reports.

"Smithfield spokeswoman Lisa Martin said the pork producer and Dominion Energy will pay for the infrastructure, including piping, transportation, gas cleaning and equipment to inject the gas into pipelines," Barnes reports. "Farmers will pay for the digesters and lagoon covers if they choose to participate, Martin said."

In North Carolina alone, the move could help bring 19,000 jobs per year through 2030, according to a 2016 report by the nonprofit American Jobs Project. Duke University has said it wants to use hog-sourced biofuel instead of natural gas to fuel its steam plants, Barnes reports.

North Carolina is the third-richest biogas resource state in the nation, "but some neighbors to big hog farms who have lived with odors and coped with the consequences of hog waste disposal for years say harvesting energy at these farms is not enough to decrease their environmental health impacts," Barnes reports. They want government and industry to ensure that changes made at concentrated animal feeding operations to produce bioenergy "also reduce risks of air, soil and water pollution."

Federal judge strikes down Iowa 'ag-gag' law, one of many

Status of state "ag-gag" laws

A federal judge in Iowa struck down a state law that banned undercover investigations at factory farms and other agriculture operations, saying it violated the First Amendment.

The law was passed in 2012 just after several such investigations by animal-rights organizations brought unflattering attention to some of Iowa's large-scale farms, recording workers throwing pigs against the floor or burning hens' beaks off without painkillers. Because many undercover investigators gained access to facilities by getting jobs there, the law made it illegal to obtain access to an agricultural production facility "by false pretenses," Matthew Schwartz reports for NPR.

Such statutes, commonly called ag-gag laws, have been considered or attempted by legislatures in at least 25 states, and passed in 11 states. After Utah and Wyoming, Iowa is the third state where federal courts have struck them down, Emily Moon reports for Pacific Standard.

Californians complain about 'dead skunk' smell of pot farms

Mike Wondolowski sometimes wears a respirator when
outdoors to escape the smell. (NYT photo by Jim Wilson)

With recreational marijuana now legal, cannabis is a booming agriculture sector in California. But many who live near such operations often complain that the farms could attract crime, damage the land, and use up scarce water resources. And now, a new complaint: the smell.

"As a result of the stench, residents in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, are suing to ban cannabis operations from their neighborhoods. Mendocino County, farther north, recently created zones banning cannabis cultivation — the sheriff’s deputy there says the stink is the No. 1 complaint," Thomas Fuller reports for The New York Times.

One Sonoma resident, Mike Wondolowski, told Fuller: "If someone is saying, 'Is it really that bad?' I’ll go find a bunch of skunks and every evening I’ll put them outside your window . . . It’s just brutal."

Many cannabis farmers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on odor-control systems originally designed for garbage dumps. Cannabis executives say the plant is no different than other agricultural sectors that generate smelly waste, such as dairy farms or concentrated animal feeding operations, Fuller reports.

But neighbors' objections to the smell are only one of the problems plaguing the marijuana industry in California. "After nearly one year of recreational sales in California, much of the cannabis industry remains underground. Stung by taxes and voluminous paperwork, only around 5 percent of marijuana farmers in the state have licenses, according to Hezekiah Allen, the executive director of the California Growers Association, a marijuana advocacy group," Fuller reports. "Sales of legal cannabis are expected to exceed $3 billion this year, only slightly higher than medical marijuana sales from last year. Tax revenues have been lower than expected, and only about one-fifth of California cities allow sales of recreational cannabis. The dream of a fully regulated market seems years off."

With 43 million in U.S. on private wells, 1/5 of which are polluted, rural residents wonder about lax regulation

Worries about increasingly contaminated well water have begun to emerge as an election-year issue, Jack Healy reports for The New York Times. "Rural communities call it their own, private Flint—a diffuse, creeping water crisis tied to industrial farms and slack regulations that for years has tainted thousands of residential wells across the Midwest and beyond," Healy writes. "President Trump’s actions to loosen clean water rules have intensified a battle over regulations and environmental protections unfolding on the most intensely local level: in people’s own kitchen faucets."

Much of the reported contamination comes from large-scale farms and concentrated animal feeding operations, which can taint nearby wells with nitrates from fertilizer or E. coli bacteria. Environmental groups complain that Republicans running Midwestern states have weakened pollution rules and cut funding for environmental enforcement and inspections, Healy reports.

About 43 million Americans get their water from private wells, and one in five of those wells are contaminated, according to sampling by the U.S. Geological Survey. And once those wells are drilled, there are few water-quality rules to regulate them, so there's no easy redress for those with polluted water, Healy reports. Homeowners say they have to install expensive filtration systems, dig deeper wells, ignore the problem, or move.

"In Wisconsin, a state report recently found that as many as 42,000 of the state’s 676,000 private wells, or 6 percent, were likely to exceed the federal health standards for nitrates, which can come from fertilizer use and manure spreading," Healy reports. "Nitrates have been linked to a dangerous blood condition in babies and may increase cancer risks in adults."

Hurricane Florence threatens rural towns still ravaged by 2016 storm; may also spread toxic coal ash from pits

Map shows coal ash sites and projected rainfall from Florence.
(InsideClimate News map; click on the image to enlarge it.)

As Hurricane Florence barrels toward the Carolinas and Virginia, rural residents worry that it could be just as damaging as Hurricane Matthew two years ago, which produced "catastrophic levels of flooding throughout low-lying eastern North Carolina and causing billions of dollars in damages," Patrick Rucker reports for Reuters. Rural, low-income towns were among the hardest hit and are most at risk from Florence.

The downtown district in Fair Bluff, for example, has been a "virtual ghost town" since Matthew. About 1,000 people had lived there, but the town's part-time administrator estimates more than a quarter have left and not returned. Reconstruction efforts are still underway, but  "Residents and business owners have often found it challenging to navigate state and federal bureaucracies in search of recovery and repair funds," Rucker reports.

North Carolina may be more vulnerable to high flooding because state lawmakers passed a law in 2012 making it illegal for policymakers and developers to make decisions based on a report that predicted rising sea levels. "A panel of scientists on the state Coastal Resources Commission issued a dire warning in March 2010, estimating that the sea levels along the state’s coast would rise 39 inches over the next century," Jenavieve Hatch reports for HuffPost. Conservative lawmakers and business interest groups feared the report would hurt lucrative real estate development on the state’s coast and sought to undermine it. A lobbying group committed to economic development on the coast accused the panel of 'pulling data out of their hip pocket'."

Two other major sources of concern: what will happen if Florence floods out hog-manure pits and toxic coal-ash pits. Both could spill hazardous contaminants into groundwater and waterways. "The Environmental Protection Agency is assessing the vulnerability of at least 40 toxic-waste sites that could be damaged," Stuart Leavenworth reports for McClatchy. "But that review does not include dozens of inland Superfund sites that potentially could be flooded by the storm’s fluctuating path."

The review includes 29 sites in Virginia, six in North Carolina and five in South Carolina. But there are 35 Superfund sites in North Carolina and 31 in South Carolina, many of which could flood, Leavenworth reports.

Hurricane Florence could make North Carolina pig-manure pools a health hazard, as previous hurricanes have

Neighbors already complain about the stink of hog farms in North Carolina, but when Hurricane Florence hits the state tomorrow or Friday, thousands of open pig-manure pools could become a public-health hazard. North Carolina is a top hog-farming state, with about 9 million pigs on 2,300 farms producing about 10 billion pounds of wet animal waste a year, Zoe Schlanger reports for Quartz.

Previous hurricanes give has reason for concern: "2016’s Hurricane Matthew inundated 14 hog-manure lagoons. In the days leading up to the hurricane’s landfall, some farmers pumped waste out of their lagoons and hauled it away in an effort to limit the damage," Schlanger reports. "Hurricane Floyd in 1999 did much worse, flooding dozens of hog lagoons and causing six lagoons’ containment walls to fail. The waste that escaped eventually wound up in estuaries, and was blamed for algae blooms and fish kills." Floodwaters that include hog feces "make for a toxic soup, and raise fears about the potential for bacteria from the pig feces to contaminate North Carolina’s groundwater."

Andy Curliss, the CEO of the North Carolina Pork Council, told Bloomberg that manure lagoons can take 25 inches of rain without failing. Florence is expected to bring up to 40 inches of rain to some parts of North Carolina, Schlanger reports.

EPA to end special focus on pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations, oil and gas production sites

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to stop focusing on enforcing pollution rules for certain industries such as concentrated animal feeding operations and the oil and gas industry, and instead prioritize broader compliance with environmental problems like air pollution. Because the new plan includes expanded opportunities for industries to self-report, some fear it signals weakening enforcement, Mike Soraghan reports for Energy & Environment News.

"This initiative historically focused on one industrial sector, implying that the EPA considers all problems in this sector — large or small — to be a priority," EPA enforcement chief Susan Bodine wrote in a letter this week to the agency's regional administrators. Under the new approach, "an animal feeding operation that contributes to water quality impairment or an oil and gas facility that contributes to non-attainment with air quality standards or that creates exposures to air toxics would be a priority because of those impacts, not because of the industry sector."

Instead of focusing on enforcing rules on certain industries to meet agency goals, the EPA plans to work more with states and tribes to give them options for how to best comply with those goals, Soraghan reports. Those goals are:

• Keeping industrial pollutants out of the nation's waters
• Preventing animal waste from contaminating surface and ground water
• Keeping raw sewage and contaminated stormwater out of our nation's waters
• Reducing air pollution from the largest sources
• Reducing risks of accidental releases at industrial and chemical facilities
• Cutting hazardous air pollutants
• Ensuring energy extraction activities comply with environmental laws
• Reducing toxic air emissions from hazardous waste facilities

Bodine said two of those goals, "Reducing air pollution from the largest sources" and "Keeping raw sewage and contaminated stormwater out of our nation's waters," will end after the coming fiscal year because they are both nearly complete, Soraghan reports.

"The move comes amid other efforts at the agency to present a friendlier face to industries, including oil and gas," Soraghan reports. "For example, Bodine is expanding to the oil field a program that waives or reduces penalties for companies that self-report air emissions violations. Farmers and rural voters were a key constituency for Trump in his 2016 election bid. Oil companies have become key backers since he took office and began promoting an 'energy dominance' agenda. Both groups complained bitterly about regulatory overreach by the Obama administration."

USDA kills animal welfare rules for organic meat

"New rules, decades in the making, that would have required organic meat and egg producers to abide by stricter animal welfare standards were withdrawn by the federal government on Monday, frustrating organic farmers and animal welfare groups but leaving some traditional egg and livestock farm groups rejoicing," David Pitt reports for The Associated Press.

The rules would have ensured improved living conditions for animals whose meat would be labeled organic. Livestock would have to have enough space to lie down and move around a little, chickens could not have their beaks removed and cattle could not have their tails cut off. All organically raised animals would be required to have proper ventilation and access to fresh air and direct sunlight.

The rules were published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture two days before President Obama left office in January 2017; the Trump administration repeatedly delayed implementing the rule before this week's announcement. USDA Marketing and Regulatory Program Undersecretary Greg Ibach said the rules would exceed the department's statutory authority, and that the organic industry's continued growth shows that consumers are fine with current rules.

Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in a statement that the rule would have increased the paperwork burden and driven up the cost of production for farmers and ranchers.

Organic dairy farmer Francis Thicke blamed industry lobbyists for the decision, and told Pitt some organic farmers are working on creating their own label, the Real Organic Project, which they hope to pilot on farms this summer and eventually roll out nationwide. The label would guarantee improved living standards for organically raised animals.

Court gives EPA until May 1 to require livestock producers to report waste emissions

In a victory for the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal appeals court ruled that the agency has until May 1 to begin requiring livestock farmers to report animal-waste emissions. The mandate was scheduled to take effect Jan. 22, but the EPA filed a motion on Jan. 19 arguing that farmers weren't ready to meet its requirements.

"The delay follows a court decision in April that the EPA must force farms to report air pollution for animal waste emissions. The decision invalidated a previous policy under then-President George W. Bush that exempted most farms from such reporting requirements," Miranda Green reports for The Hill. Most facilities are required to report emissions to federal, state and local authorities, "but the EPA, under Bush, decided that it could not do anything to reduce or mitigate emissions from animal waste and that requiring reporting would not be useful."

Measuring emissions can be tricky, especially for large-scale feedlots. The EPA promised to start keeping tabs on feedlot emissions 11 years ago, but hasn't been able to do so effectively because it hasn't settled on a consistent method of measuring data. It's difficult to get meaningful data if feedlots aren't measuring their emissions the same way.