Environmental Issues: Water

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All Documents in Water Tagged livestock farms

Facts about Pollution from Livestock Farms
Overview

Facts and figures about pollution from factory farms, which produce staggering amounts of animal wastes that pollute the environment and do serious harm to humans, fish and ecosystems.

Pollution from Giant Livestock Farms Threatens Public Health
Waste lagoons and manure sprayfields -- two widespread and environmentally hazardous technologies -- are poorly regulated.
News

Factory farms -- giant livestock farms that house thousands of cows, chickens or pigs -- produce staggering amounts of animal wastes. These wastes are often stored and used in ways that expose people to dangerous bacteria, toxic gases and other hazardous substances, and punish the natural environment.

Clean Water at Risk: An Assessment of Bush Administration Water Protection Rollbacks
Report

An October 2002 NRDC report -- issued on the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Clean Water Act -- that assesses the impact this landmark environmental law has had on the safety and environmental health of the nation’s waterways and documents the Bush administration's sustained attack on clean water protections.

Cesspools of Shame
How Factory Farm Lagoons and Sprayfields Threaten Environmental and Public Health
Report

This July 2001 report from NRDC and the Clean Water Network documents how animal waste from factory farms threatens human health and our nation's rivers. Most factory farms store animal waste in open lagoons as large as several football fields. Lagoons routinely burst, sending millions of gallons of manure into waterways and spreading microbes that can cause gastroenteritis, fevers, kidney failure, and death.

America's Animal Factories
How States Fail to Prevent Pollution from Livestock Waste
Report

A report examining the environmental and health consequences of pollution from industrial livestock farms in 30 states, as well as the widely varying efforts to curtail it.

For additional policy documents, see the NRDC Document Bank.
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