LANSING – The farms contributing to nutrient loads in Lake Erie also benefit from substantial federal subsidies, the Less=More Coalition said in a report released Thursday.
The group found that subsidies to confined animal feeding operations outpaced fines for pollution violations, though pollutant levels in the western Lake Erie Basin increased.
“While agricultural runoff has been identified as a major contributor to the growth of Lake Erie algae blooms, no one has connected the dots between the problem and federal subsidies before,” Gail Philbin, director of the Michigan Sierra Club, a member of the coalition, said in a statement. “This report is a portrait of a watershed inundated by waste and taxpayer money to fix it, but with nothing much to show for it after many years.”
The report, Follow the Manure: Factory Farms and the Lake Erie Algae Crisis, showed there are 48 CAFOs in the watershed receiving federal farm subsidies. Of those, 30 had federal Clean Water Act violations, but only nine were fined for violations.
The region received $16.88 million in overall subsidies since 2008, but it also registered 230 water violations in that period, the report said.
Fines for violations totaled $1.14 million since 2000, the report said.
But the maps in the report did show that, when broken down by watersheds and counties within the region, fewer subsidies flowed to the areas that showed more water violations.
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