Activists in areas with heavy livestock farming are fighting nitrate pollution

This story was a collaboration between the Daily Yonder, which covers rural America, and Modern Farmer, a nonprofit organization that advocates for justice and resiliency in the food system.

Washington state's Lower Yakima Valley has been home to large-scale livestock farming for decades, but when a dairy farm tried to relocate to the Yakama Indian Reservation in 2008, the community balked at the proposal.

“The dairies were very bad neighbors back then,” said Jean Mendoza, a resident of the Yakama Reservation. The community wanted to avoid the problems it had heard about in Sunnyside, a small town about 50 miles east of the Yakama Reservation. “There was one [Sunnyside] “A family that had built an outdoor swimming pool for their grandchildren and one of the dairies came and built a manure lagoon right next to the swimming pool,” she said. The smell of the lagoon made it impossible to enjoy her backyard.

The lagoons, huge pits filled with animal waste mixed with water, were one of the reasons Mendoza began organizing against the establishment of concentrated animal feeding grounds (CAFOs) near her home. She later became executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Toppenish Creek, which advocates for better oversight of industrial agriculture.

The discharge from these lagoons into groundwater caused nitrate levels to skyrocket in drinking water in small towns in the lower Yakima Valley, where many residents get their water from private wells. Serious health effects such as cancer and blue baby syndrome – a life-threatening condition that causes low oxygen levels in the blood of infants – can occur when nitrate levels exceed 10 milligrams per liter, the limit set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Maximum value for pollutants. .

Despite the health risks, regulating this pollution is not easy. Loopholes in drinking water laws and the influence of the agricultural lobby in Congress have prevented substantive policy reform to address the problem, according to food safety experts.

“This lobby has consistently pushed for and received policies that favor large and higher technology and the consolidation – and therefore corporate control – of agriculture,” said Amy van Saun, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Food Safety. A 2024 report from the Union for Concerned Scientists showed that major agribusinesses and other food interest groups spent $523 million lobbying for farm bills between 2019 and 2023 – more than oil and gas and defense lobbies in these times.

Agriculture has become one of the most consolidated sectors of the country's economy. Across the board, farms have been consolidated into a few large companies that control most food sectors.

The dairy industry is no stranger to this: Between 2002 and 2019, the number of licensed dairy herds in the U.S. fell by half, but milk production increased, according to USDA data. This suggests that small farms are disappearing and that concentrated animal feedlots run by large corporations such as Land o' Lakes and Dairy Farmers of America are emerging.

As the number of animals stuffed on farms increases, the amount of waste also increases. And that waste is stored in manure lagoons that are built to spill, according to Adam Voskuil, an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates.

“Regardless of whether a manure lagoon is lined with soil, clay or concrete, there is an acceptable amount of discharges directly into groundwater, into the aquifer,” Voskuil said.

As dairy operations have become more consolidated in the lower Yakima Valley, it has become more difficult for grassroots organizers like Mendoza to advocate for drinking water regulation. “It moves decision-making from the ground level to the corporate ladder and makes it harder for the neighbors, makes it harder for the friends of Toppenish Creek.” [to demand change]” she said.

While Mendoza's organization successfully prevented the dairy from being moved to the Yakama Reservation in 2008, it faced significant difficulties due to seepage from other manure lagoons. In June 2024, the EPA sued three area dairies for failing to comply with a 2013 legal agreement requiring them to reduce nitrate leaks and protect nearby residents' drinking water.

However, effective regulation is difficult to implement because water pollution is technically legal under two major laws: the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The Clean Water Act is the primary tool for protecting the surface waters of the United States. While its purpose is to prohibit the discharge of pollutants, the EPA's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System issues permits that allow exceptions to this rule. Most activities related to agriculture, livestock, and forestry can be exempt from the Clean Water Act if the operator obtains a pollution permit.

The law directly regulates “point sources” of pollution, that is, when there is a clear source of waste disposal, such as from a pipe, a well, or even a manure lagoon from a concentrated animal feeding operation.

However, for “nonpoint sources of pollution,” the law relies on voluntary efforts to control pollutants from various sources that accumulate through runoff. A major cause of these nonpoint sources is nitrogen fertilizer runoff onto cropland.

This voluntary approach means the EPA and states have no authority to require landowners to reduce runoff, according to a report from the Environmental Integrity Project. This leaves the work to advocacy groups.

“It seems like it has fallen to organizations that advocate for the environment, clean water and agriculture to raise awareness and make sure people are protected,” said Leigh Currie, the chief legal officer of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy .

The problem with the well

In Morrow and Umatilla counties in eastern Oregon, more than 400 homes have nitrate levels above 10 milligrams per liter, the maximum level considered safe by the EPA. All of these homes rely on well water, one of the least regulated sources of drinking water in the country.

The counties' pollution is caused by food processing companies at the Port of Morrow. The companies produce nitrate-rich wastewater and dump it into open-air irrigation ditches that irrigate the region's farmland. These farms overdose the water and the excess ends up in the groundwater, which many local residents rely on for drinking water.

In the 30 years that the state of Oregon has known about this problem, very little has been done about it. According to Nella Mae Parks, a farmer and organizer with the nonprofit Oregon Rural Action, that's because no one wants to “take responsibility for the problem.”

“The state doesn’t want it, that [Port of Morrow] doesn’t want it, and the county doesn’t want it because it’s going to be really expensive,” she said in a 2023 interview with the Daily Yonder.

The Clean Drinking Water Act regulates “navigable waters,” which does not include groundwater. This leaves groundwater regulation to the Safe Drinking Water Act, which guarantees protections for communities connected to public drinking water systems.

However, the law does not provide protection for private wells that serve fewer than 25 people. About 15% of the U.S. population relies on well water, and the vast majority of them live in rural areas.

This means the well owner must cover the costs of monitoring and treating their water if they discover it is contaminated. Many people cannot afford these costs. A nitrate test costs between $35 and $60, and water treatment requires a reverse osmosis system, which is a filtration device that forces water through a membrane that removes nitrate. Depending on the system, the price can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

Some counties pay for these tests and filters, but this is not the case in all affected communities.

For example, rural well owners in Wisconsin—the dairy capital of the United States—often choose not to test their wells for nitrates. “Because if the nitrate levels are found to be high, remediation, remediation or building a new well may not be financially feasible for them,” said Voskuil of Midwest Environmental Advocates.

The State Well Compensation Grant Program only provides financial assistance to well owners whose water has nitrate levels of at least 40 parts per million. That's four times the amount the EPA says is safe to drink.

Stronger regulation is needed

Food safety experts say solving America's nitrate pollution problem will require greater regulation of the biggest players in the agricultural industry.

“This industry has been able to externalize so many of its costs that it is an artificially cheap product for the consumer,” said van Saun of the Center for Food Safety.

The federal government provides subsidies to farmers to protect them from fluctuating income from year to year. But data from the nonpartisan Environmental Working Group shows that between 1995 and 2021, 78% of subsidies were paid to the largest 10% of farms. This means small and medium-sized farmers received the fewest benefits, making it harder to stay afloat.

Some bills have been proposed to address the pressures of large-scale agriculture, but no significant progress has been made on the issue. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker's Farm System Reform Act of 2023 proposed a moratorium on CAFOs, expanded country of origin labeling, and increased competition and transparency in livestock, poultry and meat markets. The bill was first introduced in 2019 and reintroduced in 2021 and 2023, but failed in committee all three times.

Most of the current reform comes from more local initiatives, such as community organizing in the lower Yakima Valley that led to the lawsuit against three dairy farms in 2024.

While these local efforts are important, van Saun said they must be done in combination with federal regulations to effectively address drinking water contamination. “It is the people who are worst off in rural areas, and particularly communities of color in rural areas, who are paying the highest price.” [pollution]said van Saun.