Blame For Water Pollution From Factory Farming example essay topic

Water is one of our most important sources of life. However it seems that humans have not realized how important it is. Factory farming affects rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. The reason for water pollution is that packed manure lagoons drive animal waste into waterways. Farm animals' manure contains nitrogen and phosphorus that pollute our water. In December 1999, the Izaak League of Nation did a report with the help of the Clean Water Network.

This report surveys water pollution caused by factory farms in ten states during 1999, and the violations catalogued in this report demonstrate that the pollution control "technologies" used in factory farms are not working and threaten the environment, specially our waterways. North Carolina was in 1999 the second producer of hog in the United States. Some of the major problems that water pollution in Eastern North Carolina had experience are excessive nutrients in coastal river and estuaries; algal blooms; eutrophication; massive fish kills and outbreaks of the toxic algae Pfiesteria Piscicida. (Frey, Fredregil, Hooper 4) There are some egg-producing farms that have been linked for a long period of time with water pollution. One of these companies is Buckeye Egg Far in Ohio. "Ohio is the number one egg-producing state in the country, largely because of the Buckeye Egg Farm- one of the world's largest scale factory farms in Ohio.

There are 125 large scale factory farms in Ohio. Buckeye Egg Farm has been the most visible large-scale operation in Ohio due to a long history of pollution problems. Buckeye Egg houses over 10 million chickens in central and northwestern Ohio. The Ohio Attorney General Filed suit against Buckeye Egg in December 1999 as a result of what the Attorney General calls, .".. a laundry list of past and continuing violations of Ohio's solid water statures, water pollution control statutes, safe drinking water statutes, air pollution control statutes, and nuisance statutes". (frey, Fredregil, Hooper 11) The inadequate environmental record of different's polluter companies reveals that animal waste harms Missouri's environment. The people who should be blame for water pollution from factory farming are the industrialized-sized factory farms. When this large companies started to grow, more than a half of the state's independent family hog farmers began to leave the business.

The large factory farms have been charged with violation water quality standards. Dead pigs, pig fetuses, and veterinary waste have been found floating in lagoons. (Frey, Fredregil, Hooper 6) The rate of growth of factory farming is rapidly increasing in some states of the United States. For instance, the number of hogs in Oklahoma has increased so dramatically that sooner hogs are going to exceed the number of people in the state. (Frey, Fredregil, Hooper 9) In Iowa, more than 1.7 million fish were killed by more than 80 feedlot-related spills. Some of the sources of the spills were misapplication of manure onto fields and overflowing manure lagoons.

(Fred, Fredregil, Hooper 12) "on July 9, an unknown number of fish died after hog manure from Pork Chop Ridge polluted 2.5 miles of the red river in Woodford County (Frey, Fredregil, Hooper 14). Illinois has also contributed to water pollution although it has experienced fewer factory farm pollutions problems. This improvement is due to an increased regulation of the industry and better watch-dogging by local citizens groups. (Frey, Fredregil, Hooper) Mismanagement in manure storage technology is the result of water pollution. If the waste storage system is done inappropriately at industrialized-sized factory farms, it leads to patterns facilities that pollute over and over again. There is something that could be done to prevent this from happening.

"EPA and states must require factory farms to conduct water quality monitoring to catch pollution problems before it's too late - waiting until a lagoon overflows or fish die is not a responsible monitoring system" (Frey, Fredregil, Hooper).