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Manure becomes pollutant as its volume grows unmanageable

Posted by: Maven on March 2, 2010 at 7:20 am

From the Washington Post:

“Nearly 40 years after the first Earth Day, this is irony: The United States has reduced the manmade pollutants that left its waterways dead, discolored and occasionally flammable. But now, it has managed to smother the same waters with the most natural stuff in the world.

Animal manure, a byproduct as old as agriculture, has become an unlikely modern pollution problem, scientists and environmentalists say. The country simply has more dung than it can handle: Crowded together at a new breed of megafarms, livestock produce three times as much waste as people, more than can be recycled as fertilizer for nearby fields.

That excess manure gives off air pollutants, and it is the country’s fastest-growing large source of methane, a greenhouse gas.

And it washes down with the rain, helping to cause the 230 oxygen-deprived “dead zones” that have proliferated along the U.S. coast. In the Chesapeake Bay, about one-fourth of the pollution that leads to dead zones can be traced to the back ends of cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys. … “

Continue reading this story from the Washington Post by clicking here.

March 2, 2010 · Filed Under Water Quality

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One Response to “Manure becomes pollutant as its volume grows unmanageable”

  1. The week that was, 2/28-3/6/2010 | Chance of Rain on March 7th, 2010 10:58 am

    [...] becomes pollutant as its volume becomes unmanageable,” Washington Post, March 1, 2010, via Aquafornia Political Ecologies of Cattle Ranching in Northern Mexico by Eric P. Perramond. Click on the cover [...]

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