Lagoon Spill

Lagoon Spill

A. Introduction

During the last twenty years, industrial livestock farms have been replacing the traditional family size farms that once raised most of the nation's swine. The number of livestock animals produced in the United States has grown modestly in the past two decades, but the number of farms raising them has slunk dramatically because large producer now dominate the market. The large increase in industry farming has led to large quantities of manure.

B. Problem Definition

The over abundance of manure has become a problem that leads to problem with

Pollution, heated debates between the industries and societies (people of the community), ways to try and find solutions for the pollution.

Today, large live stock operations look more like animal factories than animal

Farms. The farms usually consist of several metal barns, each containing several hundred to several thousand animals tightly confined. The floors in the barns are slatted so manure can be flushed away. The manure is pumped into open-air lagoons, which are large, shallow pits dug into the ground, where it is stored until it can be pumped out irrigate fields. The solid manure sinks to the bottom of the lagoons and is broken down by anaerobic bacteria over several months. The liquid rises to the top and is collected and sprayed over nearby fields. Many problems come with lagoons

North Carolina is one of the top hog producing states in the country. On June 21, 1995, North Carolina suffered the largest agricultural waste spill in its history: a 7.5-acre, 12-foot-deep lagoon leaked 25 million gallons of hog waste into the headwaters of the New river near Richmond's. The waste from the 10,000-head operation, owned by Ocean view Farm...

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...ty problems and is funding research and development to investigate alternative waste disposal technologies that are economically viable and efficient.

E. Conclusion

The extreme amounts of livestock waste have left us with a polluted planet, controversy between those for and against livestock industries and the problem of how to deal with the waste. While there is no unanimous decision on how to deal with livestock waste, almost everyone agrees that there is a need to educate livestock operators better and fund more research to determine the best ways to manage livestock waste. Although all of the problems that have come from the lagoon spills were horrible at the time, they may benefit the health of the environment and the public by forcing people on all sides of the issue to face the problems that livestock waste causes and work together to find a solution.