In Eugene, Oregon, the state is suing a horse boarding farm for contaminating a nearby reservoir with its massive and ever-growing pile of horse manure, Oregon Live reported.
According to the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Lakeview Stables is "highly likely" to be sending contaminants including E. coli and nitrates into the Fern Ridge Reservoir (also known as Fern Ridge Lake) one mile away. The lake is commonly used for fishing, waterskiing, swimming, paddleboarding, windsurfing, sailing, and birdwatching.
State officials said that the manure pile was "hundreds of thousands of cubic feet total in size." Although farmers are allowed to store and compost manure on-site, the state said that Lakeview Stables has not taken any of the steps legally required to prevent that manure from damaging water quality, such as installing an impermeable underlayer or surrounding the manure with a tarp.
Instead, the massive horse manure pile, which officials said has been accumulating for at least the past seven years, is free to run off into the nearby lake any time it rains.
The state started investigating the farm in 2016. It ordered the owner, Carolyn Thom, to deal with the manure problem twice and fined her three times — now, it is asking a judge to step in and legally compel her to comply.
Dealing with animal manure is a problem that is not limited to Lakeview Farms (though they do sound like particularly egregious offenders). It is common across the animal farming industry and is one of several reasons that eating more plant-based foods is a good thing for the environment.
Animal manure, as the state of Oregon pointed out, contains contaminants such as E. coli and nitrates that affect the water quality of nearby lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. It also accumulates at an astounding rate — per Oregon Live, a single 1,000-pound horse produces 50 pounds of manure a day, or 9 tons per year.
In some places, the state wouldn't even be taking as much of an interest in dealing with this problem. In North Carolina, residents are complaining about massive waste piles at large-scale poultry operations, and they are calling on the state to regulate these huge environmental liabilities.
Similarly, in Oklahoma, lawmakers recently advanced a bill to remove liability from polluting poultry farms, giving them essentially a "license to pollute."
The good news, such as it is, concerning animal manure is that some scientists are looking into ways to turn it into electricity. At Dickinson's College Farm in Pennsylvania, researchers have been working on a process to break cow manure down inside a system called an anaerobic digester, which could be used to produce clean, renewable power.
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