Author: Keith Schneider

AMES, IOWA – Because crop farmers can apply as much commercial fertilizer as they like to farmland, and livestock farmers spread over one billion tons of raw livestock feces and urine, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified nutrient discharges from U.S. agriculture as “the single greatest challenge to our nation’s water quality.” The E.P.A.’s effort in stemming the pollution, though, has been listless for decades. And the farm sector categorically rejects accountability and responsibility …

For two years I’ve investigated and reported on the biggest water pollution scandal in the United States — the mammoth unregulated discharge of phosphorus and nitrates from commercial fertilizer and manure into the nation’s surface and groundwater. Agriculture is the source of the worst water pollution in the country’s history. More than coal mining and combustion. More than chemical or steel manufacturing. More than oil refining. More than sewage treatment. More than hard rock mining. …

DEVILS LAKE, ND – When Clark Steinhaus first heard about a plan to build a feeding operation for 2,499 hogs near the shoreline of North Dakota’s largest natural lake, he was alarmed. As chair of Pelican Township’s board of supervisors, Steinhaus worried the manure generated by so many hogs could easily contaminate area waterways, including 160,000-acre Devils Lake and its 375 miles of shoreline. His concerns were not surprising given the fact that each year, …

BERNE, MINN. — On a hot afternoon in mid-July, Brian Bennerotte, who was raised on a farm in the hill country south of Minneapolis in the 1960s and 1970s, made a pilgrimage of sorts to County Road B in Dodge County in his home state. Running straight as a gun barrel east and west, the gravel and dirt road crosses what was once rolling prairie before being steadily converted into crop and livestock farms in …