ModeShift - Part 3

Mercedes Lilienthal’s Epic Rally – Writer, Driver, Navigator, Wife

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 29, 2024January 30, 20240

The Alcan 5000 is a peculiar sort of motorized competition undertaken in the dead of winter from Washington State to Anchorage, Alaska with stops through Canada’s northern territories and the Arctic Circle. If it’s not as familiar as the Iditarod, the classic Alaskan sled dog race, that’s because the Alcan 5000 does not measure speed even though it also crosses immense distances over some of the planet’s most rugged territory. Rather, the Alcan 5000, which …

Austin Frerick’s “Barons” Uncovers A Second Systemic Farm Scandal – Antitrust Waivers

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 21, 2024January 21, 20241

Two years of investigation into the causes and myriad health and environmental consequences of America’s dangerous industrialized farm practices finally enabled me to develop the one-line elevator explanation of what’s really going on. Essentially, U.S. agriculture is a rogue industrial enterprise financed with hundreds of billions of public dollars and operating without constraint within the laws it contorted for its own benefit. The consequence is that agriculture is the worst water polluter in the nation’s …

Toxic Terrain’s Dogged Reporting

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 14, 2024January 16, 20242

The essential purpose of project investigative journalism is to engage readers with new information about a subject of relevance and importance. In doing so, journalists seek to prompt changes in policy and behavior that benefit the public interest. As Upton Sinclair once said of his dogged journalism about the filth and danger of Chicago slaughterhouses: “The source and fountain-head of genuine reform in this matter is an enlightened public opinion.” Those who’ve followed my work …

Ron Gianola’s Masterful Show at Dennos Museum

by Keith SchneiderDecember 30, 2023January 22, 20240

HONOR, MI — The one unmistakable element in Ron Gianola’s arresting “Passages” paintings is his command in brush, knife, and single pigment colors to produce abstract images endowed with energy and motion. The Passages collection, which Gianola started about a decade ago, has a readily available narrative expressed by freedom from constraint and realized through free form rhythm. The paintings are a visual declaration, much like Gianola’s other artistic expression as a jazz drummer. The …

“We Can’t Sit Back”– Amid Polluted Water and Climbing Cancer Rates, Iowa Health Officials Eye Farm Chemicals

by Keith SchneiderDecember 18, 2023December 18, 20230

With one eye fixed on Iowa’s startlingly high cancer rate and the other wary of a political pushback, public health leaders are embracing a novel strategy for preventing malignancies in the nation’s largest farm state. In a departure from other state cancer prevention programs, which rarely address environmental risk factors for cancer other than radon, a known cause of lung cancer, Iowa is working to better understand and make the case for limiting exposure to …

Only In Iowa; Barrels of Waste Buried On Farm Go Untested

by Keith SchneiderDecember 11, 2023January 7, 20240

The Iowa Capitol Dispatch, one of the fine non-profit online news organizations at the center of the country, posted an article last week by Jared Strong that caught my attention. Following more than a year of administrative pondering the Iowa Department of Natural Resources on November 30 fined a prominent cattle farm in Stockton $5,000 for illegally burying barrels of chemical waste on its land. Why, you ask, would such a modest fine issued by …

Will Energy From Manure Help or Harm Water Quality in Michigan?

by Keith SchneiderDecember 7, 2023December 8, 20230

HARTFORD, MI – Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s plan to generate all of Michigan’s energy from renewable sources by 2040 is meant to limit climate change gases. It also has consequences for improving or damaging the state’s waters. Replacing polluting fossil fuel plants with cleaner energy sources would limit oil pipeline spills, curtail mercury contamination, and halt discharges from coal-fired power plants. But those benefits could be easily overwhelmed by the development of a new renewable energy …

Manure Biodigesters Raising a Stink

by Keith SchneiderDecember 1, 2023December 8, 20230

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 …

EPA Orders Minnesota to Protect Residents From Toxic Farm Nutrients

by Keith SchneiderNovember 11, 2023November 12, 20230

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. …

“What We’re Up Against” – Pelican Township and Other North Dakota Towns Fight Farm Bureau to Keep Water Clean

by Keith SchneiderNovember 1, 2023November 2, 20230

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, …