Issues: Water

COLORADO

• The State of Colorado currently issues no permits of any kind to feedlot operations.
  
  
• Colorado's environmental agency has only one part-time employee assigned to oversee its feedlots.
  
  
• Colorado has regulations on the books intended to prevent water pollution at feedlots, but it has no enforcement capacity. For all practical purposes, feedlot operations are not regulated.
  
  
• Colorado voters have just adopted an initiative on large-scale hog operations, but these regulations have yet to be implemented.

Historically, Colorado has been a home to many open-air cattle feedlots, which Colorado citizens have not perceived as a pollution problem. Beef cattle is an entrenched industry that has largely escaped regulation in this western state proud of its frontier individualism. Only in the past five to ten years has eastern Colorado become a magnet for large-scale hog operations due to its sparse population, feed-corn production, and lax regulation. The recent influx of massive hog operations, some raising hundreds of thousands of pigs, has roused vocal political opposition among small family farmers and ranchers in eastern Colorado who fear giant hog factories will pollute this environmentally vulnerable region.

The most important source of water in large parts of eastern Colorado, both for irrigation and drinking, is groundwater. Many families living in rural eastern Colorado depend solely upon their own wells for drinking water. Many hog operations lie directly over the same groundwater aquifer tapped by these wells. One such aquifer, Ogallala Aquifer, is one of the nation's largest, and supplies water to seven states in the West and Midwest. The threat of hog operations contaminating ground water, the "life blood" of rural Colorado, brought independent farmers and ranchers together with environmentalists to adopt a ballot initiative, "Amendment 14," to strengthen Colorado's laws and protect the quality of life.¹

On November 3, 1998 Coloradans voted to adopt Amendment 14 to regulate the state's increasing numbers of large hog factories. Before this new law was passed large-scale hog operations were not required to receive permits of any kind and were virtually unregulated. Backers of Amendment 14 crafted the law to address current problems of contaminated wells and soil associated with certain large-scale hog operations and to prevent more severe problems in the future.

National Farms, one of the nation's largest pork producers, first located in Weld County in 1990. Now, an increasing number of the state's hogs are being raised on factory farms, and the number of small hog farmers is declining. In the past two years, hog production jumped by 25 percent, while the number of hog producers plummeted by 35 percent.²

Pollution Problems

Most of the state's hog farms are located in eastern Colorado, directly over the Ogallala Aquifer,³ which is one of the most important sources of water for Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota, Texas and New Mexico. The Ogallala Aquifer is the primary source of drinking water and all other water needs for farmers, ranchers and communities in the Eastern Plains. Farmers in the region fear that once their groundwater is contaminated, it would be difficult and prohibitively expensive to clean up.

In southeastern Colorado, members of the Rush Creek Users Association in Kiowa County discovered that three wells at a large-scale hog farm owned by pork producer Newsham Hybrid were contaminated. They also found high concentrations of nitrates, a form of nitrogen, 12 feet under the surface of a field. Although, it would take further analysis to determine the exact source of this pollution, this field had been sprayed with hog waste as fertilizer⁴ and hog waste is a rich source of nitrogen. Drinking water contaminated with nitrates has been linked to "blue-baby syndrome" in infants -- an impaired ability to carry oxygen in the bloodstream -- and miscarriages in women.⁵

Colorado's feedlot water issues, however, could extend far beyond contamination problems. Water availability is of particular concern in semi-arid Colorado. CAFOs in the state use a tremendous amount of water, mostly extracted from aquifers, for flushing animal waste out of pig houses and watering the animals.

Regulatory Climate

The amendment adopted this fall sets, for the first time in Colorado, a statewide permitting system for large hog operations.⁶ Prior to the adoption of the amendment, operations were not required to get any state permits. Until the new permitting system is implemented and enforced, the exact number of large-scale hog operations and lagoons will remain a mystery.

For years, Colorado had feedlot regulations on the books designed to assure compliance with the Clean Water Act, but the state has never had the staff or funds to enforce them beyond the occasional response to a complaint. Colorado has had only one employee working on regulation of feedlots, who works between half time and full-time on the issue at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.⁷ The new law, among other benefits, will give the state a permitting system with fees that it can use to fund enforcement of its regulations.

The requirements of Amendment 14 include covering waste lagoons to limit gas emissions and water quality and soil testing for fields where animal waste is applied.⁸ Large hog operations, those holding in the range of 2,500 hogs and above, would have to obtain permits under the Clean Water Act, therefore regulating them like industrial polluters -- known as "point source" polluters under the Act. Permit information would be available to the public. This initiative is supported by family farmers and ranchers, the Rocky Mountain Farmer's Union and several Colorado environmental groups.

Currently, a citizen worried about pollution of drinking water from feedlots has few options. The state also has no air quality standards governing feedlots.⁹

The challenge for Colorado now is to ensure that the new regulations are implemented properly and are enforced. The Water Quality Control Commission and the Air Quality Control Commission will create the guidelines for the state to follow. These commissions are part of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Local Control

Colorado law gives counties the authority to establish some regulatory controls on factory farms. Only one third of Colorado's counties have used this authority.¹⁰ And in eastern Colorado, where hog farms are concentrated, only one-half have used this authority.¹¹

In many Colorado counties, there has been no permitting, no monitoring of water or soil and no setbacks required between hog farms and residences.

Dean Jarrett, an independent cow and calf producer in eastern Colorado's Yuma County, found out just how powerless he was in 1996 when the county commission gave an out-of-state pork producer permission to raise 400,000 sows and piglets over the hill from his family homestead. At the time, Yuma County had no regulations governing hog operations.

Earlier this year, Jarrett, who is a member of the local planning commission, helped push through a county requirement that makes new hog factory farms obtain a development permit providing information on the size of the operation and the waste management methods used. He says the county still does not require hog operations to install monitoring wells to check for any pollution of groundwater from hog waste. Jarrett says his greatest concern is pollution of the groundwater from hog farmers applying more manure to the land than it can safely absorb.¹²

Primary interviewees for this chapter:

Sandra Eid
Sierra Club, Rocky Mountain Chapter
1410 Grant Street, Suite B205
Denver, CO 80203
Phone: 303-861-8819
Fax: 303-861-2436

Scott Ingvoldstad
Environmental Defense Fund
14-5 Arapahoe
Boulder, CO 80303
Phone: 303-440-4901
Fax: 303-440-8052
e-mail: scotti@edf.org

Notes

1. Amendment 14, "Regulation of Commercial Hog Facilities," amending Part 5 of Article 8 of Title 25, Colorado Revised Statutes (Section 25-8-501.1) (passed November 4, 1998).

2. Dave Carter, President, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, Editorial, Ft. Lupton Press (June 27, 1998), p. 21.

3. U.S. Geological Survey Map, Principal Aquifers, National Atlas Series, compiled by James A. Miller (1998).

4. Soil and water testing results for 1997 provided by Newsham Hybrids to The Rush Creek Water Users Association (August 14, 1998).

5. Centers for Disease Control, "Spontaneous Abortions Possibly Related to Ingestion of Nitrate_Contaminated Well Water_LaGrange County, Indiana, 1991-1994," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol. 45, No. 26 (July 5, 1996).

6. Amendment 14, "Regulation of Commercial Hog Facilities," amending Part 5 of Article 8 of Title 25, Colorado Revised Statutes (Section 25-8-501.1) (passed November 4, 1998).

7. Personal communication between Rebecca Knuffke and Darold Lang, Specialist, Department of Public Health and Environment, Colorado Water Quality Division (October 6, 1998).

8. Amendment 14, "Regulation of Commercial Hog Facilities," amending Part 5 of Article 8 of Title 25, Colorado Revised Statutes (Section 25-8-501.1) (passed November 4, 1998).

9. Colorado Confined Animal Feeding Operations Control Regulations, 15 CF 8, 8-92.

10. Personal communication between Scott Ingvoldstad, Environmental Defense Fund, Colorado and Darold Lang, Specialist, Department of Public Health and Environment, Colorado Water Quality Division (September 1998).

11. Personal communication between Rebecca Knuffke and Darold Lang, Specialist, Department of Public Health and Environment, Colorado Water Quality Division (October 6, 1998).

12. Personal communication between Rebecca Knuffke and Dean Jarrett, Commissioner, Yuma County Planning Commission (November 23, 1998).