Problem is unregulated wastewater technology

By Bob Watson

It's not just one bad egg. There are fundamental problems across industrial confinement agriculture.

In the last year, Iowa and Minnesota have seen an ominous increase in foaming in pits beneath hog confinements - like a potentially toxic bubble bath, it rises right through floor slats - exacerbating the already serious problem of dead pigs and flash fires caused by hydrogen-sulfide and methane.

“I wish we had the answer,” said Angela Rieck-Hinz of Iowa State University, writing in August on the Iowa Manure Management Action Group website, “but at this point ... we still have no answers as to what is causing the foaming or how best to control or manage the foam. If you have information regarding foaming pits you would like to share, please contact me. In the meantime, I urge caution when pumping from manure pits. Be aware of safety concerns regarding manure gases, pit fires and explosions. Not all pit fires and explosions have happened in barns with foaming pits.”

The crux of the problem is that confinement advocates have inappropriately transferred wastewater technology from the highly regulated sector of municipal and industrial wastewater to the unregulated - in terms of wastewater - sector of industrial agriculture. The concern about poison and explosive gasses is not new, and not only in those confinements with the foaming problem. It is simply a consequence of using wastewater technology to raise animals.

In the wastewater industry, we learned long ago - after workers became ill or died - that we could not put normal work spaces in proximity to areas where fecal waste is decomposing. The constant production of the poison and explosive gasses - hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and methane - was finally taken into account in designing wastewater facilities and technology that would protect both the workers and the surrounding public. Those protections have been codified in the regulations that control municipal/industrial wastewater technology and design. But industrial agriculture remains exempt.

There may be many causes for the upswing in foaming problems in confinements, including damage to buildings and equipment through the corrosive nature of hydrogen-sulfide, genetically modified crops being fed to animals and different insecticides and herbicides applied to fields as pests and weeds become resistant to chemicals used in the past. Perhaps we will find solutions to somewhat mitigate this new foaming problem.

But the bottom line is that as long as you use wastewater technology to store waste in pits below where animals are being raised, you always will have disease and death affecting both people and animals caused by these poisonous and explosive gasses.

The state Legislature, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and corporate industrial agricultural officials steadfastly deny that confinements are a form of wastewater technology. A DNR construction permit requires this type of building, resulting in these problems.

As a society, we should question what this industrial model of agriculture is doing to us, the animals and the environment. We have turned most of our hog producers into virtual serfs, with corporations financing and owning the buildings, the pigs and the feed, and even controlling when the producers market the pigs.

Corporations externalize their environmental costs onto the producers and the public by having the producers own the polluting waste and the dead animals. We also expect producers to deal with the unsolvable problems that confinement buildings create.

Confinement technology used to raise animals is a failed model on many levels. It is time to put animals back on the land.

Bob Watson of Decorah is an environmental activist who makes his living in the wastewater industry. Comments: boband

linda@civandinc.net