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Sat 16 Aug, 2003 02:19 am
Think of the money to be made in all branches of government! We'd cure our budget problems in no time with just a small capital investment for construction of these manuer collection pits.
What I don't understand is why environmentalists are demanding an accounting of where the manuer comes from and how much of it is spread. Only reason I can think of is organic farming and the control of all the chemicals fed to cattle finding their way into the environment. Anyone else able to come up with reasons why environmentalists would want such an accounting?
Manure haulers look toward self-regulation
UPDATED: 8/15/03 10:49 AM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LA SALLE - The people who haul nature's fertilizer are working on a plan to avoid government regulation by coming up with their own training and certification program.
Michelle Stewart co-owns a manure-spreading business in La Salle. She says haulers want to avoid the licensing and state certification required in other states, including Minnesota and Iowa.
Stewart is one of about two dozen commercial manure haulers in Illinois. They pump manure from pits under livestock barns and take it to be spread on farmers' fields.
Environmental groups are pushing for an accounting of that manure and how much is spread.
Haulers will meet in (Prairie du Sac,) Wisconsin next week to learn techniques for handling a spill and how to calibrate the amount to spread. They say self-regulation could get them cheaper insurance premiums and will show they care about the environment.
Copyright 2003, Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material cannot be published, broadcast, rewritten, or distributed.
We have a major problem with this in northeastern Connecticut. It is spread on fields in the spring and almost always pollutes any nearby stream. I can see the need for some kind of regulation. The problem is almost always the liquid form, not the solid form.
Amazing that they apply that much of the stuff to any one field to make that much of a polution problem. I know that here in the Bay Area we've had problems with waterway polution in the Petaluma area but that is from dairy farms where there are hundreds of cows on land near creeks.
I wonder if there have been any studies to see if the hormones and antibiotics fed to cattle are indeed accumulating in the soil and being recirculated in the crops grown on those fields.
It is a dairy farm problem in northeastern Connecticut. It is applied both to hay fields,pasture and to corn fields and I assume that anything that goes into the cow ends up in the manure.
Maybe they are trying to apply the joint and several liability concept to manure, as they already do to toxic wastes. That is, if you pay to have, say, waste oil disposed of, and your contractor uses a disposal site that happens to be contaminated with PCBs, you, the hauler, and the site operator can each be held financially responsible for any fines and damage judgements. In practice, the company with the strongest assets ends up paying, regardless of what an ordinary person would call fault.
It's really not a problem with the amount of manure produced by a small number of animals. Here in iowa we have "factory farms" where thousands of hogs are raised in confinement. The amount and concentration of waste produced is enormous and is stored in huge wastewater lagoons or Harvestore tanks. When this stuff is land applied it must be done carefully so as not to run off into surface waters. The waste is very high in ammonia that is toxic to aquatic life.
That would be difficult in Connecticut because with a few exceptions most of it is consumed on the farm that produces it.
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