Keith Boozer has operated a 75,000-hen poultry farm in Monroe, Ga., for 20 years and is proud of his record in complying with state and federal environmental rules.
Photo by the Atlanta Journal ConstitutionA report blasting Georgia’s environmental oversight of large livestock farms has raised concerns about potential contamination of Georgia waterways with chemicals from manure.
For years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been signing off on Georgia’s inspection of farms with large numbers of cows, pigs or chickens. The farms generate huge amounts of manure that can pollute nearby streams and lakes with levels of nitrogen and phosphorus dangerous to fish and humans alike.
The report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General found nearly three-fourths of state inspections of 48 large farms known as “concentrated animal feeding operations” were faulty or incomplete.
Poor oversight by the state Environmental Protection Division and Georgia Department of Agriculture has left the “significant risk that Georgia’s CAFO program is failing to protect water quality,” the report concluded.
Most of these operations store manure in liquid form in lagoons or spray it on fields as fertilizer, and without careful management the waste can end up polluting Georgia’s rivers and reservoirs. In the 1990s, studies traced contaminated ground water in North Carolina to lagoons created by huge hog farms and the state became an example for tougher regulation.