Beware if you live near a wheat stubble field because a fleet of manure tankers (some from Iowa) are invading Wood County, destroying our roads, and filling the air with the raunchy stench of a witch’s brew of animal feces, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and other pollutants.
If the manure pits were full, Wood County’s three largest dairy factory farms alone would need over 10,000 tanker loads to haul millions of gallons of untreated waste, and that doesn’t count the waste from a huge poultry factory farm and an unknown number of hog factories. County Commissioners and township trustees are supposedly powerless to stop this madness even though these tankers destroy local roads.
Governor DeWine’s highly-touted voluntary H2Ohio program offers grain farmers a $60/acre payment (taxpayer $$) if they allow animal manure from factory farms to be applied to their fields – even on tiled fields that have phosphorus levels already much higher than the recommended agronomic rate. This means the largest farm operations, some of which already get significant subsidies (see https://farm.ewg.org), can now get even more taxpayer money! This money should be used to repair the roads all these manure tankers are destroying.
It is absolutely senseless to apply “nutrients” to fields with no growing crops. This is not protecting Lake Erie – it is just taxpayer-funded waste disposal.
U.S. dairies have dumped over one hundred million gallons of milk during the past few years. In fact, a neighbor saw a load of milk dumped into the manure pit near Weston just last week.
Governor DeWine, why are you willing to sacrifice Lake Erie for more highly-subsidized factory farm milk? Please issue an executive order to stop this $60 incentive which is just funding waste disposal.
Why are taxpayers being forced to prop up this failed model of industrial animal agriculture – especially since Ohio’s voluntary manure practices have failed to stop factory farms from using Lake Erie as a free toilet?
Vickie Askins
Cygnet
