How can we protect our water supply from animal agriculture?

Question

I'm doing a report for school and I need some sites that tell me how we can help prevent the contamination of our water by animal agriculture.

I already found websites that provide information on the waste of water on animal raising for food. I can't find what we can do to change that. Any help appreciated, but I need sources like web sites. Thanks.

Answer 1

Fence livestock from water bodies, flank the water with forested buffers, dispose of manure properly, drill (rather than dig) wells.

Answer 2

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOS) are the biggest polluters.

Answer 3

ngwa.org

Answer 4

Animal agriculture is no worse for our water supply than wildlife unless they are severely confined.  And sure no worse than the Buffalo were.  If this is an assignment your instructor is way off base.  Better check him out and don't beleive everything he says.

Answer 5

quit pooping in the water

Answer 6

there are so many restrictions on farmers/producers that 'contaminating' public water supply is practically a non-issue

go to www.usda.gov read about all theprograms out there governing how farmers/producers must handle waste. Not to say we all follow those rules, but the majority do.

Answer 7

Look up the CAFO and AFO rules on the USDA website. You'll find pages and pages and pages of rules and reguations costing billions of dollars. www.usda.gov and search CAFO or AFO. Ironically, cow p**p is now far more regulated than human sewage. Cow manure is now a hazardous material while raw human sewage is not. Humans are far more apt to catch a serious disease from human p**p than from cow p**p.

Answer 8

Dairies in our area have gone to a vacuuming system...they have a giant vacuum that vacuums up the p**p and then disposes of the waste into a digester.  The digester in return makes fuel to run the dairy.  The solids are then inert and are used for fertilizers on the fields....

The urine from the animals goes into a plastic lined pond that is treated to also make this product inert and it is mixed with the inert solids to make liquid fertilizer.

This system requires that the entire surfaces the cows are on be cement.  Bedding is put into mounds so they have places to sleep off the cement....they usually don't soil their bedding...

As far as creeks, rivers, and lakes go....farmers & ranchers have made accesses to the water supply with cement ramps...and fencing  & the manure from the animals (within reason) is a good food supply for the fish....

It is the wildlife, deer, elk, beavers, etc that we have no control over.   In concentrated herds the deer & elk contribute to a great deal of damage to creeks & streams thru the erosion because they eat the tree seedlings surrounding the creek banks that would have grown up to protect the creek banks from erosion.  Beavers contribute to a great deal of erosion and destruction of habitat by damning up streams and creeks with the trees they have cut down to make their dams.

But then these types of erosion and pollution is considered to be natural and therefore is deemed ok even though the damage is sometimes worse than any herd of cows or horses could have ever done.  

Grazing cattle & sheep benefits the rangelands, timber & deserts by keeping down the underbrush (fire hazards), by grazing off the old grasses (which allows new grass to grow better), by aerating and churning up the soils so they don't become "soil bound" (hardness of soil).  Soil that is soil bound does not grow native grasses properly nor does it take in moisture like it could if the soil wasn't so hard and non-absorbent by rain & snow.

I know that organizations like PETA & the Sierra Club do their level best to present "what is wrong" instead of being objective and contributing to solutions that feed people.  I don't buy into the "all or nothing" mentality.  There is good, in-between, and bad in everything that is done on this planet.  As far as I am concerned I would lend more credit to these types of people when they quit wiping their asses with toilet paper that is made from trees, wearing leather shoes that are made from animals hides, stop driving anything that uses fuel, and don't live in houses built from lumber or any other type of material that is taken from the earth.  In other words, practice what you preach.