NRDC: America's Animal Factories

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

Chapter 14

MISSOURI

Swine factory farms have been the biggest culprit in polluting 150 miles of Missouri's streams, killing hundreds of thousands of fish.
Eighteen of Missouri's 19 largest factory farms have been charged with violating water quality standards or permit requirements.
Over a four-year period, according to state regulators, 63 percent of mega-hog farms handling wet manure had illegally discharged animal waste.

In the early 1990s, Missouri legislators and regulators approved special incentives to encourage the growth of animal factories, such as Murphy Family Farms and Continental Grain Company (CGC), viewing them as a promising avenue to "economic development." In 1993, the state assembly passed exemptions to Missouri's corporate farm law which opened the door to multinational corporations such as Premium Standard Farms (PSF).¹In recent years, the state has seen a tremendous growth in the number of contract operators for Tyson Foods Inc., Cargill, Farmland, MFA Inc. and other companies.² Meanwhile, more than 50 percent of the state's independent family hog producers have left the business in the last five years.³

Eighteen of the state's nineteen largest animal factories currently face enforcement action for ongoing permit and/or water quality violations. Six of the state's largest animal factories have no permits.⁴ All three of the state's largest swine operators now face pending enforcement action by the state's attorney general, who has filed notices of intent to sue PSF and Murphy for continuing violations of the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act.⁵ Simmons Industries, one of the state's largest poultry processors, has had numerous water quality compliance violations for more than a decade.⁶ A Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act citizen lawsuit filed against PSF by Citizens Legal Environmental Action Network (CLEAN), a coalition of Missouri families, is winding its way through federal court. Continental Grain faces odor nuisance litigation from an additional eighty families.⁷ PSF was recently sued by migrant workers alleging mistreatment at its pork slaughterhouse.⁸

Pollution Problems

Between 1983 and 1997, animal waste pollution caused 94 fish kills in 199 miles of Missouri's streams. Large-scale swine feedlots have been the biggest culprit, with 61 fish kills totaling over 534,000 fish, affecting 150 miles of Missouri streams.⁹ For example, in 1995, five swine waste spills in northern Missouri by PSF killed at least 180,000 fish in Blackbird, Mussel Fork and Spring Creeks.¹⁰ One spill in 1995 by Continental Grain killed over 88,000 fish.¹¹ In 1996, animal waste killed 55,000 fish in 35 miles of streams.¹² Sixty-three percent of all CAFOs handling wet manure inspected between 1990 and 1994 by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) had illegally discharged animal waste.¹³

Most major watersheds that southwestern Missouri's big poultry facilities drain into are classified by the state as "impaired" waters,¹⁴ meaning their pollution level now interferes with fishing and other uses identified by the state. The Elk River, which is the region's principal watershed, is so polluted that it no longer supports historic levels of fishing, swimming, and boating.¹⁵

In August 1998, environmental groups posted warning signs after measuring high levels of disease-causing pathogens, including the bacteria E. Coli and Salmonella, at Cave Springs Branch. The small stream flows into Honey Creek, a tributary to Grand Lake of the Cherokees at Grove, Oklahoma. The Missouri Department of Health also found high levels, including fecal coliform levels more than twice the safety standard. These organisms can cause vomiting, diarrhea, swimmer's ear, gastroenteritis and infection of any open skin lesions. The state health department declined to issue a health advisory.¹⁶

Sierra Club program director Ken Midkiff said state health officials' decision not to issue a health warning "has nothing to do with protecting public health and everything to do with protecting a major industry in this area."¹⁷ According to Midkiff, Simmons Industries' giant poultry processing plant on the banks of the stream releases millions of gallons of waste water into the Branch each week, accounting for 80 percent of the waters in this small stream.

In northern Missouri, Spring Creek has suffered three spills of swine waste in the last 29 months resulting in fish kills.¹⁸

Neighbors claim that PSF has been responsible for over 50 documented spills and accidents over five years, many into the same streams.¹⁹ DNR investigators have documented dead pigs, pig fetuses, veterinary waste and trash floating in PSF lagoons. PSF employees have given information to state investigators about the company's policy of cleaning up spills and then reporting the incident to state regulators. PSF had at least 20 spills in 15 months between March 1997 and July 1998. The spills totaled over a quarter million gallons of liquefied feces and urine.²⁰

Manure spills have only been one source of pollution from animal factories. Another problem occurs when manure is sprayed onto fields in excessive amounts. In 1997, Missouri Rural Crisis Center members uncovered an industry-wide pattern of over-applying manure on fields, which resulted in degraded water quality near hog factories. The University of Missouri-College of Agriculture had supplied the DNR with faulty recommended manure application rates for permits, allowing twice as much animal waste to be spread on fields as DNR intended.²¹

The Passing of Elk River's Fish

Hobart Bartley, 66, remembers when the biggest problem he had fishing on the Elk River in Missouri's Ozarks was deciding whether he would make it home with his heavy load of fish or would have to give some away to neighbors. At the age of five, Bartley remembers a river so crystal-clear that he and his father would drink from it when they wanted a break from catching the native bass and catfish that teemed in the river. "Now you might be drinking 9,800 parts per million of streptococci bacteria and be in the hospital tomorrow," he says ruefully.

Today the native bass and native catfish are gone, reports Bartley, who still lives walking distance from the river on the 160 acres his great grandfather homesteaded in 1880. The fish population has dwindled to about one-tenth its size in the 1950s. The bullfrogs and the soft-shelled turtles have disappeared. The only fish Bartley catches these days are non-native white bass and channel catfish stocked in an artificial lake downstream. Those varieties, he says, are less vulnerable to pollution. Yet even among these hardier varieties, Bartley's catches often have sores covering their bodies. Others he cuts open to find deformed, enlarged livers.

Bartley, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture poultry inspector, blames pollution from the massive Tyson Foods poultry plant near the banks of the Elk about 6 miles east of his home. The plant slaughters some 1.5 million chickens a week -- about 15 times as many as were slaughtered at the plant that stood there in the 1950s. According to Bartley, who is active in an informal group of Elk River environmentalists, Tyson frequently discharges untreated sewage from its manure lagoons through an open pipe directly into the Elk. The phosphorus pollution from the plant's chicken manure and its cleaning agents wear away the protective coating on the fish, according to Bartley, producing the sores he finds on the fish.

"You look across the lagoons [where Tyson stores its chicken manure] and see 30 acres of nothing but pure poison," says Bartley. "It stinks to high heaven." Bartley has thought of moving. But his ties to his homestead go way back. Instead he devotes his time to monitoring the unsafe pollution levels from two local poultry plants and pushing for stricter government controls. "I've decided I'm not going to let these people run me off with all their filth. I'm going to give them as hard a time as I can," he says.

Regulatory Climate

In the early 1990s, the DNR accepted "Letters of Approval" instead of operating permits to set out conditions for water pollution prevention at swine CAFOs, a practice that kept public input to a minimum.²² In 1993, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked the DNR to stop accepting "Letters of Approval" for the state's largest swine CAFOs.

The EPA's action followed a 1991 court ruling in a citizens' suit (Carr v. Alta Verda Industries) that found that Letters of Approval violated the Clean Water Act.²³ Under Letters of Approval, the public was neither notified of applications for new animal factories nor given a chance to comment on whether they should be approved.

"Folks didn't know they had a hog factory going in next door 'till they saw the bulldozers moving dirt," said Scott Dye, agriculture coordinator for the Missouri Sierra Club.

Starting in 1993, EPA required that individual Clean Water Act permits be issued to large CAFOs in place of Letters of Approval.²⁴ These federally designed permits require public notice, and they allow for public comment in the permitting process, allow citizens to see the specific conditions under each permit, and allow citizen enforcement actions. The Missouri DNR required only the very largest CAFOs -- those with at least 17,500 hogs or 7,000 animal units -- to apply for these individual federal NPDES permits.²⁵ (See Glossary.)

Public outrage over the huge fish kills of 1995, coupled with frustration over the lack of a formal avenue for citizens to influence any but the largest swine animal factories, provided the impetus for passage of state legislation to broaden permitting authority in 1996. The legislation provides citizens a few protections from newly proposed factory farms. In the case of new CAFOs (farms over 1,000 animal units), the legislation requires general permits, some modest buffer zones to protect residences from factory farms, an inadequate bonding indemnity fund to clean up manure lagoons, and manure management plans based on a nitrogen standard.²⁶

Poultry operations are not required under the legislation to have permits if they use a dry litter system. Large-scale wet manure poultry operations are required to obtain general permits. Because the poultry permits are one-size-fits-all general permits, citizens cannot comment on individual problems associated with a particular operation.²⁷

"The DNR is required to inspect large-scale CAFOs quarterly, but due to staffing and funding shortfalls inspections do not always occur that frequently," said Ken Midkiff, director of the Missouri Sierra Club. "Missouri does only limited water quality monitoring. Factory farms monitor their own operations," said Midkiff. The state only has ten full-time equivalent staff to conduct inspections.

More than 1,000 citizens have received state training to monitor water quality and have formed "Stream Teams" to do their own monitoring. These volunteers have compiled long-term water quality records through their efforts, collecting data on ammonia, nitrogen, and phosphorus in streams adjacent to CAFOs.²⁸

Local Control

All agricultural activity has had a long-standing exemption from zoning controls.²⁹ "Though they generate industrial-sized pollution problems, CAFOs have been considered `agriculture'," says Sierra Club activist Ken Midkiff. Tiny Lincoln Township was sued by Premium Standard Farms for $7.9 million for trying to regulate the swine giant through zoning.³⁰ PSF charged the zoning regulations were an unconstitutional "takings" of private property. While PSF got no money, the State Supreme Court struck down the zoning ordinance.³¹ Several Missouri counties have health ordinances regulating CAFOs. One county was recently sued by a swine CAFO seeking to overturn the ordinance. The Missouri Pork Producers Association is helping to finance the lawsuit.³²

Primary interviewee for this chapter:

Scott Dye
Missouri Sierra Club
914 North College Avenue, Suite 1
Columbia, MO 65201
Phone: 573-815-9250
Fax: 573-442-7051
e-mail: scott.dye@sierraclub.org

Notes

1. Ted Williams, "Assembly Line Swine," Audubon Magazine (March/April 1998), p. 32.
2. Department of Natural Resources, Official Public Notices, Construction and Operating Permit Applications, reviewed by Scott Dye, Citizens Legal Environmental Action Network, on bimonthly basis between 1994 and 1998.
3. Personal communication between Scott Dye, Citizens Legal Environmental Action Network and Ron Plain, Agricultural Economist, University of Missouri, College of Agriculture (April 1998).
4. Rudi Keller, "Biggest Feedlots on Wrong Side of Law," Columbia Daily Tribune (July 11, 1998).
5. Fred Koenig, "Hog Operations Share Pollution Problems Too," St. Joseph News-Press (January 10, 1998); Missouri Attorney General Jeremiah W. Nixon, correspondence to Murphy Family Farms, Inc. (July 28, 1998).
6. Steve McReynolds, "Full Operations Planned at Southwest City Plant," Joplin Globe (March 31, 1998).
7. Ted Williams, "Assembly Line Swine," Audubon Magazine (March/April 1998), p. 26.
8. Mary Sanchez, "KC firm Accused of Abusing Workers at Plant," Kansas City Star (July 16, 1998).
9. Missouri Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, Water Pollution in Missouri: A Fact Sheet Series, Animal Waste Pollution (1998).
10. Ted Williams, "Assembly Line Swine," Audubon Magazine (March/April 1998), p. 28.
11. Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Quality Press Release, "DNR Takes Action on Mega Farm Hog Waste Releases" (October 20, 1995).
12. Missouri Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, Water Pollution in Missouri: A Fact Sheet Series, Animal Waste Pollution (1998).
13. Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Press Release, DNR Takes Action on Mega Farm Hog Waste Releases, Division of Environmental Quality (October 20, 1995).
14. State of Missouri, 1998 Section 303(d) Impaired Waters List.
15. State of Missouri, 1998 Section 303(d) Impaired Waters List.
16. "Groups Issue Health Warning," Neosho Daily News (August 21, 1998).
17. "Groups Post Signs Near Plant," The Joplin Globe (August 21, 1998).
18. "PSF Reports 2 Spills, One Killing Fish," Kirksville Daily Express (May 19, 1997); Michael Mansur, "Hog Farm Spill Worries Environmentalists," Kansas City Star (January 4, 1998).
19. "CLEAN Environmental Suit is Going to Trial," High Plains Journal (February 16, 1998).
20. Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Inspection Reports and Spill Investigation Reports of Premium Standard Farms (March 1997_July 1998).
21. Tom Walsh, "Hog Farms Spread Too Much Waste," Columbia Daily Tribune (February 9, 1997).
22. Ted Williams, "Assembly Line Swine," Audubon Magazine (March/April 1998), p. 32.
23. Carr v. Alta Verde Industries, Inc., 931 F2d 1055 (5th Cir. 1991).
24. Missouri Department of Natural Resources, internal memorandum, Permit Requirements For Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (August 22, 1994).
25. Mo. Code Regs. tit. 10, sec. 20-6.
26. Missouri House Bill No. 1207 (1996).
27. Missouri House Bill No. 1207 (1996).
28. Personal communication between Sharon Clifford, Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring Program, Water Pollution Control Program, Department of Natural Resources, and Scott Dye, Citizens Legal Environmental Action Network (July 20, 1998).
29. Ted Williams, "Assembly Line Swine," Audubon Magazine (March/April 1998), p. 32.
30. Ted Williams, "Assembly Line Swine," Audubon Magazine (March/April 1998), p. 32.
31. Ted Williams, "Assembly Line Swine," Audubon Magazine (March/April 1998), p. 32.
32. Jane Schooler, "Missouri Pork Producers Financially Supporting Winigan Farmers' Lawsuit," Brookfield Daily News-Bulletin (March 11, 1998).