Double standard for sewage regulation

By Larry Stone and Bob Watson

 Inconsistent rules for waste from cities and industries, compared with regulations for industrial agriculture, jeopardize water quality and punish our residents.

State laws and regulations require municipal and industrial wastewater plants to collect and treat their sewage, and to obtain permits to discharge effluent. We closely monitor these “point source” polluters.

Technology used by industrial agriculture creates the same potential problems as municipal/industrial wastewater treatment. Unfortunately, industrial agriculture has adopted only part of the technology - collection and storage - without including treatment and regulated disposal.

This industrialization of animal waste converts what would have been beneficial manure, broken down by soil, sun and microorganisms, into toxic sewage. When manure is collected and stored for months without treatment, it becomes a noxious soup, producing the poison gases hydrogen sulfide and ammonia.

Yet if several hundred or thousand hogs, cattle, chickens, or turkeys are confined, their excrement - amounting to the waste from a small city - is considered to be agricultural and therefore exempt from most regulation. It's legal to allow that “agricultural” sewage to ferment for months, venting toxic gases into the atmosphere. Neighbors breathe those emissions, and their health often suffers. Eventually, the untreated sewage is spread on the land, where it becomes “non-point pollution” that often enters our rivers, tile lines, and groundwater.

Iowa sets strict discharge permits for municipal/industrial wastewater facilities, and the Department of Natural Resources is considering further restrictions: so-called anti-degradation regulations. These rules would make today's permits a baseline, with no increase in discharge allowed. Yet the state has no studies to show that the proposed rules would significantly improve water quality.

One alternative to meet new municipal/industrial anti-degradation regulations, the DNR suggests, is to apply treated wastewater onto the land, instead of discharging it to a stream. But current DNR rules for municipal/ industrial systems make that option more expensive than discharging into a stream.

Contrast this proposed extra regulation and expense for treated municipal/industrial waste with what happens to the untreated, air-polluting waste from industrial livestock confinements. Both the liquids and solids from confinement waste - which is more polluting than raw human sewage - are simply spread on cropland. The waste can seep into Iowa's 880,000 miles of field tiles, run into streams and enter groundwater through sinkholes or losing streams.

Many of the microorganisms in the soil have been lost to erosion and agricultural chemicals, so there is minimal biological breakdown of the waste. Antibiotics and hormones used by industrial livestock producers also can enter our water without treatment.

If we hope to protect Iowa's waters, we cannot ignore the agricultural component, which accounts for perhaps 90 percent of water pollution. It's hard to argue against cleaner water. But is it fair to impose a new regulatory and financial burden on cities and urban industries, while industrial agriculture continues to spread untreated sewage onto the land?

The agricultural community should pay its share of the sewage treatment. Livestock producers who use industrial confinements should meet the same wastewater standards as cities and other industries. Require them to build a treatment facility, just as we do Iowa communities. If producers of livestock “sewage” can't accept this regulation, they should adopt sustainable agriculture methods that return manure to the land as fertilizer, rather than convert it to toxic waste.

Whatever the source, sewage pollutes our waters, kills aquatic organisms, affects the health of our residents and impacts the quality of life. Those who produce sewage - whether cities, or industries, or industrial confinements - should follow the same environmental rules.

Bob Watson is a wastewater industry professional, activist and business owner from Decorah; Larry Stone is a professional photographer and author from Elkader.