When unenforceable lax regulations exist, there is no way that sheets of paper (called a Manure Management Plan or MMP) created to meet those regulations can protect Iowa’s water quality as the Farm Bureau implies (Nov. 20, 2008 “Beef up Water Protection”) As one example, the DNR routinely approves MMPs based on applying more than 70,000 gallons of liquid manure from a hog lagoon to one acre (even if there would be run-off) for a soybean crop when zero gallons would be adequate. Such MMPs deliver only about ten percent of the nitrogen in the manure as actual crop fertilizer. No one checks the possible water pollution.
MMPs are false security masking the ever increasing accumulation of excess manure nutrients flowing somewhere in our environment.
Large Iowa hog and chicken sites have needed MMPs since 1995 although the state never even reviewed them until after 2000. Large cattle sites never needed MMPs until this year. Only now have the MMPs been required to include soil tests and manure nutrient tests as part of the paperwork, indicating the bare minimum standards, which have been law for over a dozen years. Best management practices have been ignored. Instead of aiming for the least inputs to create the highest yields with the least pollution, Iowa’s MMPs have been based on the maximum allowable manure applications regardless of the pollution caused.
A bystander can not gauge the strength of manure nutrients nor the rate of manure application. Police never enter a field to test actual applications. The producer’s paper trail-which can be changed at any time and is not accessible to the public-is the only existing means of enforcement, if even that is being done.
The Iowa Legislature negated citizens’ right to file nuisance suits for most livestock issues and removed county zoning controls of livestock production. Both could be reversed with little cost to the taxpayer while greatly increasing those able to prevent pollution.
The DNR is experimenting with trying to limit manure applications to a soybean crop, but has not yet addressed the early fall manure applications which scientists have shown leach away in good part before becoming crop fertilizer. When does the accumulated manure in an area exceed its natural carrying capacity?
The DNR should be supporting less manure per acre if it is serious about cleaning up Iowa’s water. Instead, the DNR continues to allow ever more hog sites in Hardin County, where the south fork of the Iowa River already has one of the highest nitrate readings found anywhere in the United States from its over one million hogs crowded into the county.
Liz Gilbert, Iowa Farmers Union member