By Craig Volland, Kansas Chapter Agriculture Chair
Sierra Magazine recently warned that dangerous nitrates may be lurking In your drinking water. This is certainly true if you live or recreate in rural Kansas.
Rural citizens are getting fed up with this situation. Residents of Larned, a town of 3,675 in Pawnee County, are outraged that a large cattle feedlot operator plans to build a new facility southeast of town that will confine 88,000 head. The entire population of Pawnee County is just over 6,100.
This same company owns the three existing feedlots near the town, totaling 72,000 head. One of these feedlots has been monitoring their groundwater since 2001 and found nitrate levels as much as seven times the human health standard of 10 parts per million. Another has been monitoring since 2012, and also found nitrate levels well above the health standard.
After decades of allowing massive animal factories (CAFOs) to set up shop in our state, the quality of our groundwater has deteriorated. Primary causes of the contamination are the use of chemical fertilizers used for growing animal feed, wastewater basin seepage, and over-application of wastewater to nearby fields.
The rise of factory farming has brought drastic changes in the scale of animal and dairy production. Forty years ago, the typical American dairy was a family farm with 40 to 120 head. Just in the past year, a Kansas dairy sought a permit for expansion to more than 100,000 head of cows. Kansas also has hog CAFOs with more than 200,000 head and two cattle feedlots confining more than 130,000 head.
Particularly vulnerable to groundwater pollution is the Great Bend Prairie Aquifer east of Larned, south of Great Bend, north of Pratt and west of Wichita. This region of the state lies over ancient sand dunes with sensitive groundwater. The soil is very permeable to nitrogen containing liquids that are applied to fields. Since the groundwater in this area is relatively shallow compared to that further west in the High Plains Aquifer, it doesn’t take long for pollution to reach it.
KDHE did require the Pawnee County feedlots to make some improvements to the numerous wastewater runoff containment basins surrounding the lot, and nitrate levels improved. But about 8 years ago the levels started going back up. At present the nitrate levels at one of the sites are 3 to 5 times the health standard and 3 to 4 times the standard at the other site. It’s likely that some of the pollution comes from applying wastewater to the highly permeable fields nearby and upgradient.
In addition to feedlot surface runoff from rainfall, huge mounds of solid manure are produced in these feedlots. A loophole in the rules allows this material to be “exported” to other entities for application to crops. In the case of the two feedlots above, a total of 81,000 tons of solid manure was trucked in 2022 and 2023 to unidentified fields elsewhere that are owned by another part of the same corporate entity.
Local citizens started mobilizing and are now demanding that KDHE clean up this mess before they approve a new feedlot and that they research solutions to the heavy air pollution that comes with cattle feedlots. More information is available on their Facebook Page.
This situation is emblematic of a much bigger problem in Kansas and elsewhere. Our Legislature has never owned up to the whopping water problems in our state. More than 50 years after the passage of the Clean Water Act the quality of our surface water is not improving much, our groundwater is becoming more polluted, and our High Plains Aquifer is becoming seriously depleted. The March 4, 2025 Supreme Court decision in San Francisco vs. EPA dealt another major blow to the Clean Water Act by limiting the agency’s power to protect surface water quality from pollution. It’s time for our politicians to stand up to Big Ag.
See a past Featured Waypoint: Dodge City Feedlots