From Great Lakes Wiki

Contents 1 Farming in the Red Cedar watershed: Threat or hype? 1.1 Red Cedar CAFOs 1.2 University improvements 1.3 Other Red Cedar farm issues 1.4 Does size matter? 1.5 Pesticide issues 1.6 Agriculture can help watershed 1.7 Related Links

Farming in the Red Cedar watershed: Threat or hype?

By Katie Coleman

Approximately 158,000 tons of animal manure are produced each year in Ingham and Livingston counties. That’s almost four times as much sewage as that produced by the people who live in the two counties encompass most of the land drained by the Red Cedar River.

Whether that kind of load threatens the river or other waterways is hotly disputed.

Large farms known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations - CAFOs - draw most of the attention over animal waste and water quality. But some experts say that environmental impact is more about management than size.

“Contrary to popular opinion, big is not always bad,” said Wayne Whitman, the environmental manager of the Right to Farm Program in Michigan. “Sometimes, environmental performance is better with larger farms when you think about per-capita waste,” Whitman said. “There’s also an opportunity for better management because they typically have more resources, like more storage facilities and more land to distribute it on.”

But Anne Woiwode, the executive director of Michigan’s chapter of the Sierra Club, disagrees. She says large farms aren’t being required to have more resources, despite more stringent regulations put into place in 2003. “Theoretically, they should have more resources … but they’re not actually doing it,” she said. “Bigger can be a serious problem all by itself.”

Red Cedar CAFOs

The Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, lists 171 CAFOs in Michigan.Two are in the Red Cedar Watershed: Michigan State University’s combined farms in East Lansing and Kubiak Farms near Williamston.

MSU’s farms came under fire in December of 2005, when the local chapter of the Sierra Club complained to the DEQ about a possible manure discharge. Club officials said they saw animal waste-water runoff at two points near the corner of Bennett and Beaumont Roads, where MSU’s beef-cattle research facility is located, just across the street from one of the university’s water wells.

Sierra Club officials said samples they took from the discharge points tested positive for E. coli, a bacteria associated with human and animal waste. Like many Michigan rivers, the Red Cedar has had problems with elevated levels of the bacteria to the point where health departments issue restrictions on swimming.

The Sierra Club said its samples measured more than 5 million units per 100 milliliters. The Michigan water quality standard for total body contact recreation is a maximum of 300 units per 100 milliliters.

“E. coli can persist six months in the soil,” Woiwode said. “It is found in ground water on occasion in particularly contaminated areas. Since our water treatment facilities work well, it’s probably not a health issue, but it is a health concern.”

The DEQ didn’t charge that the contaminated water had reached the drinking water well, but it asserted that it had reached a drain leading to Herron Creek, which flows into the Red Cedar River.

Megan McMahon, a DEQ environmental quality analyst who inspected the site the next day, could not verify that contaminated water had reached any waterways.

Woiwode said the state couldn’t dispute the contamination. “The question was whether the tile that it was running into actually ran into the surface water of the United States,” she said. “And that’s where it becomes a Clean Water Act violation.”

MSU said its drainage tile is not connected to any lakes, rivers, streams or other waterways.

While the DEQ was unable to verify that, McMahon saw the potential for other problems at the research station, prompting a request that the university get a permit to operate a CAFO. Such permits came into existence in 2003; this is the first time the university has had to apply for one.

“Admittedly, we needed to make some improvements,” said MSU land management director Chuck Reid.

University improvements

And since December 2005, the university has spent more than $1 million on improvements, including covering the beef-cattle research site and building a nine-month manure storage repository near the dairy farm.

The university also committed to not spreading manure on the land during the winter. That’s a legal practice in Michigan, but other states have banned it because of potential – but controversial – runoff problems associated with snow melting too quickly.

In addition, the university is mapping the drainage tiles in its fields to better plan for potential contamination of storm drains. Storm drains can be like creeks and streams that lead to the river.

Some drains near MSU’s beef-cattle research site flow into the Red Cedar River in much the same way the Red Cedar flows into the Grand River, said Ingham County Drain Commissioner Pat Lindemann.

Just two days after the Sierra Club complained to the DEQ, Lindemann issued MSU a “cease and desist” order, claiming that the discharge from university farms had entered Sycamore Creek, a storm drain under his authority. Lindemann’s claim was different from that of the Sierra Club, but it was the same type of problem.

Though the cease and desist order is still in effect, Lindemann said the university is on the mend.

“Once they figured it out, they started to comply, and they’re continuing to comply,” he said. “It’s just that you can’t just click your fingers and make the fix happen overnight. The availability of cash and the actual time it takes to do it are factors. But in the interim, they’ve stopped putting schmutz into the river.

“That’s the bottom line. No more manure goes in. Whatever they have to do – stockpile it, flush it down the toilet, but it’s not going in the drain. We consider the drains the waterways of the state.”

It’s unclear if any MSU manure has ever reached the river – from either claim initiated by the Sierra Club or the one by the drain commissioner. “We don’t believe we’re discharging now, and we never established if we were in the past,” Reid said. “But this definitely brought more attention to the issue, and we want to be good environmental stewards.”

Other Red Cedar farm issues

The other Red Cedar watershed CAFO, Kubiak Farms in Williamston, was first cited for manure runoff in 2002. But farm operators have since cleaned up their act, according to DEQ documents.

McMahon last visited the facility about a year ago. “The minimum requirement for inspections is every five years, but we try to get out there more often than that,” she said. “We haven’t had any other complaints about them.”

Once Kubiak stopped discharging, they also had to obtain a permit, which must include a “comprehensive nutrient management plan.”That’s the meat of the state permitting process. Farmers must explain what they plan to do with the manure their animals produce. Most livestock farms also grow crops so they can use the manure as natural fertilizer. But in the winter, it can be too cold to spread manure on fields. That means some farmers need enough storage to keep six months worth of their animal manure.

In 2002, Kubiak housed more than 1,200 animals that produced more than 31,000 tons of manure annually, according to the farm’s permit application. Michigan State’s combined farms have about 4,400 animals, mostly poultry and swine. Because of their size and other factors, both have had to create a waste management plan.

But while Michigan requires large farms to create these detailed plans – which include daily record keeping and yearly revamps – small- and medium-sized farms are not held to the same standards. Some say that puts unfair burden on CAFO owners.

“Pollution is pollution,” Lindemann said. “What does it matter whether they’re a CAFO or how big the operation is?”

Does size matter?

According to McMahon, large CAFOs are probably feared because of “concerns over sheer volume,” but she agrees with both Lindemann and Whitman that size is not the issue.

“Small, medium, large … they’re all going to have different kinds of risks,” McMahon said. “Larger farms require more lagoon storage, and they have to have adequate land base. Smaller and medium farms sometimes don’t have those same resources, so they face a different challenge.”

But Woiwode said size matters.

“This is not an effort to say [smaller farms] shouldn’t keep their cows out of the streams or assure that there are set backs,” she said. “The problem is that the sheer quantity is so overwhelming that it has the potential to be a disaster.”

According to Whitman, whose job it is to respond to complaints made about farms under the Right to Farm regulations, there are approximately 50,000 farms in Michigan – everything from a 4,000-acre crop farm in the UP to a 10-acre wood lot for producing maple syrup. Only 40 percent have livestock, and only about 1 in 20 of the livestock farms have received complaints about manure.

“We haven’t surveyed the 90 percent of farms that no one’s complaining about,” Whitman said.

But the DEQ is the primary responder to water quality complaints, and it doesn’t track complaints based on whether they were about agricultural issues.

Pesticide issues

Manure isn’t the only problem posed by farms. Pesticides are also a concern. But as complicated as it is to prove pollution from manure, it’s even harder to prove contamination from pesticides.

Like in most Michigan rivers, the state doesn’t test the Red Cedar for pesticides.

“We don’t do a lot of testing with pesticides because it’s so expensive,” McMahon said. “But it comes down to what impacts, if any, are we seeing? While we’re not monitoring the chemicals directly, we’re not seeing any indications of an impact.”

Toxicity is indicated by the health of in-stream organisms, like fish and other “critters,” said Mark Stephens, an education program coordinator for MSU’s fisheries and wildlife department.

A recent look for insects as part of this report found the larva of Caddis, Alder, Dobson, Stone, and May flies in the rapids by MSU’s Administration building. All are indicators of good water quality. Crayfish and giant water bugs, indicators of “good, but not excellent” water quality, have also been found there, Stephens said.

The Sierra Club can’t afford to test for pesticides either. But Woiwode said looking at the health of in-stream organisms is not enough.

"If we basically stress a system or stress an animal or any component of the ecosystem and only look if it’s beginning to fall off or die out as our indicator, we’ve clearly failed,” she said. “I think they’re probably right in that if there are no overt instances of bugs or organisms dying off, you’re not having any acute or overwhelming problems with pesticides. But it’s a little harder to know if there are low levels causing any kind of longer-term effects.”

Woiwode said “bioaccumulation” – the increase in a toxin’s potency as it moves up the food chain – may not be seen until it is in a human. Over time, it is possible these toxins may cause health problems, though it is difficult to track where people accumulate toxins throughout their lives.

Chronic or immediate, health problems associated with water contamination from agricultural practices are not monitored enough, Woiwode said.

“The law is not strong enough,” she said. “It’s like the traffic cop stopping somebody from speeding. People will speed if given the opportunity. If it makes you money, it’s attractive not to follow the rules.”

Agriculture can help watershed

In the Red Cedar watershed, with just two CAFOs and about three-fourths of its agricultural land used for crop production, some officials said the waterways are relatively absent of harms from agricultural practices. But the potential is there.

“I think livestock operations are potentially a very large problem in this watershed, and it’s one of those things that has to be watched as new operations come in,” Woiwode said. “There are more facilities being built in Michigan. Kubiak and MSU are the only ones right now, but there will be more. If we want to have agriculture, we have to have it clean, and we have to figure out how to do that.”

And agriculture can also be beneficial to the watershed.

“Those are some of the rare areas left where ground isn’t covered with pavement,” McMahon said. “We need to have open areas not covered with parking lots, housing, etc. so water can get back into [the watershed]. It’s all of our jobs to make sure that water is as clean as possible.”

Related Links

Red Cedar River (Michigan)
Red Cedar Storm
Red Cedar Floods
Red Cedar Wetlands
Red_Cedar_Sewers
Red Cedar Groundwater
Red Cedar Pharmaceuticals