Why Our Rivers Are Turning Into Sewers

NY Times -  America’s factory farms generate nearly a trillion pounds of manure every year, and way too much of it ends up in rivers, lakes and estuaries. Animal waste is a major reason half of America’s water bodies are too dirty for fishing or swimming. It’s the most persistent driver of destructive algal blooms in beloved waterways such as Lake Erie and the Chesapeake Bay, which both just fell far short of their 2025 water quality targets.

It’s a dirty, smelly, sickening mess, and the cause is quite simple. Unlike factories, most factory farms aren’t legally responsible for their pollution. Unlike human poop, animal poop isn’t legally required to be treated before it is released into the environment. America’s concentrated animal feeding operations, the industrial livestock farms known as C.A.F.O.s, produce twice as much waste as America’s toilets, but nobody is tracking where or how it gets flushed.