By Bennet Goldstein for Wisconsin Watch.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for Wisconsin Watch-Public News Service Collaboration

As environmental groups and policy analysts in the Mississippi River basin seek solutions to shrink a massive “dead zone” that forms off the coast of Louisiana each year, they have looked to a regional cleanup program in the Chesapeake Bay as a model.

A key component of that effort, known as the Chesapeake Bay Program, is regulation.

For nearly 15 years, it’s included a legally enforceable, multi-state pollution quota — one of a select few in the nation. This “total maximum daily load” aims to reduce the amount of nutrients, like phosphorus and nitrogen, that run off into the bay’s waters. 

In excessive quantities, chemicals derived from these elements, commonly used to grow crops and fertilize lawns, can cause algae blooms and die-offs that rob waters of oxygen and suffocate aquatic life.

But the bay program’s scientific advisers recently noted the strategy is imperfect. 

After two missed deadlines to reduce nutrient runoff, and a third looming, Mid-Atlantic state and federal officials are reevaluating their options.

A unique legal agreement

In 1983, the Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia governors along with the mayor of Washington and administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed the Chesapeake Bay Agreement, a pledge to reduce the pollutants and sediment entering the bay that contribute to the loss of organisms like seagrasses, shellfish and waterfowl.

The tapering of nitrogen and phosphorus remained the focus of subsequent agreements, but the jurisdictions did not meet their goals voluntarily, so in 2010 the EPA created the country’s most expansive pollution quota. It applied to six states — Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia — and the District of Columbia.

The quota’s creation and enforcement took political arm-twisting, including an act of Congress, a presidential executive order and multiple lawsuits. It requires nutrient plans from each jurisdiction and “reasonable assurances” each will take steps to control pollution from “nonpoint sources” like farm fields and parking lots. 

If states fail to meet their obligations by set deadlines, the EPA can implement stricter limits, force unregulated polluters to get permits and redirect or condition grant money.

Signatories believed they would achieve the program’s primary goal — improving habitat for the bay’s aquatic life — if they capped nitrogen and phosphorus entering the Chesapeake each year at 214.9 million and 13.3 million pounds, respectively, and sediment at 18,587 million pounds per year.

Instead, scientific modeling estimated that 258 million pounds of nitrogen and 15 million pounds of phosphorus entered the bay in 2021, a reduction from previous years thanks to upgrades to wastewater treatment plants and lower airborne emissions, but still off the mark. The program did hit its sediment target.

The bay program’s advisers say those declines represent achievements. Without the nitrogen and phosphorus reductions, things could be a lot worse as the region’s waters warm, urban population grows and agriculture expands. The bay’s 1-cubic-mile dead zone also might be even larger. 

Nonetheless, the sluggish progress remains an inconvenient truth. Officials have concluded they will not meet a 2025 deadline to stem the flow of nutrients after failing to achieve benchmarks set for 2000 and 2010.

“At the rate we’re going, it’s going to take about 150 years,” said Denice Wardrop, a bay program science adviser who directs the Chesapeake Research Consortium. “We better learn how to do it better.”

The program offers lessons for the Mississippi River basin too.

Something is better than nothing

Efforts in the Mississippi River, where environmental regulations are comparatively lax, to reduce annual injections of waterborne nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico largely have failed. This summer’s hypoxic zone is forecast to span 5,827 square miles, 5% larger than average. 

Scientists expect climate change to worsen conditions by warming the gulf’s waters, which would cause it to retain even less dissolved oxygen, and increasing rain, causing more runoff.

“The way that we operate right now is very much a state-by-state, choose-your-own-adventure model,” said Maisah Khan, former policy director at the Mississippi River Network.

Several groups say the federal government needs to lead and coordinate state restoration efforts, as it does in the Chesapeake Bay.

A Mississippi River-wide nutrient quota could streamline and prioritize runoff control projects and allocate federal dollars where they are needed most. Numerous academics and the National Research Council Water Science and Technology Board of the National Academies also embrace the concept.

“Without that,” said Alicia Vasto, water program director with the Iowa Environmental Council, “I think we’re kind of rudderless.”

So why doesn’t a Mississippi River quota already exist?

For one, the scale of the problem, said professor emeritus David Dzombak of Carnegie Mellon University, who chaired the National Academies committee that recommended policies to improve the river’s water quality.

Given the challenges that come with coordinating nutrient quotas in the 64,000-square-mile bay watershed, doing so across 1.2 million square miles in the Mississippi River basin — which comprises 41% of the continental United States — seems unimaginable.

Another factor: political will.

Basin states must cooperate with their neighbors to enforce a quota, but their interests vary significantly. Far upstream, a Louisiana shrimp trawler’s livelihood is all but haze in the distance. Meanwhile, few states are hungry for more federal oversight, and the EPA is likewise reluctant to brandish a stick.

The agency said it prefers helping states develop their own lists of impaired waters and cleanup plans, rather than doing so itself for an entire region all at once.

That’s exactly what environmental groups say isn’t working.

A better quota

Yet Chesapeake Bay scientists admit their regional nutrient quota isn’t a panacea.

“It’s a two-edged sword,” Wardrop said. “While it had some wonderful benefits in initiating action, of building an accountability system, it had some consequences where you got painted into a corner.”

Regulators fixated on tabulating the total pounds of sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus that drain into the bay’s deep channel (where the hypoxic zone forms each year), she said, instead of considering other ways to improve conditions for its plants and animals.

For instance, restoring wetlands and protecting shorelines could enhance shallow-water habitat for fish and mollusks, even if the bay program hasn’t completely reduced nutrient runoff.

“Yes, phosphorus and nitrogen are important, but it’s not a fix-all,” said Zach Taylor, freshwater mussel hatchery manager at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. “There are still other considerations for improving the water quality, but I do think that it’s a good place to start.”

Because the bay’s shallows respond more quickly to falling nutrient levels, scientists say, the program should prioritize those regions for habitat improvement, which could help rally public enthusiasm. 

The same holds true for the Mississippi River basin. Improving water quality in upper basin states helps that region and the gulf, said Doug Myers, Maryland senior scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

“You certainly don’t want your whole Mississippi River project tied to meeting dissolved oxygen criteria in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “It’s the people who live in those inland states that are gonna have to see the benefits for themselves and get excited about it for the benefit of their communities.”

The elephant in the room

As industry and sewage facilities cut their discharge, agricultural runoff now ranks as the largest remaining contributor to the bay’s water pollution — about half of all nitrogen and a quarter of phosphorus.

The situation is more pronounced in the Mississippi River basin, where an estimated 60% to 80% of the nitrogen entering the gulf originates at farms and livestock operations.

Bay scientists say a nutrient imbalance impedes improvement more than anything else. 

As farms multiply and expand, agricultural producers import more nutrient-rich fertilizer and animal feed. Hungry livestock convert feed into manure, which farmers apply to fields along with synthetic fertilizer. But crops don’t absorb all the nutrients. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus build up in soil, resulting in harmful runoff.

The source of the bay program’s authority, the Clean Water Act, can’t place pollution limits on field runoff. Instead, state and federal agencies offer grants and incentives to encourage producers to adopt better practices like planting cover crops or ceasing to till fields before planting.

But bay researchers say agencies promote these practices without considering their effectiveness or placement. 

The cheapest interventions, such as cover crops, offer farmers private benefits like improved soil health. But they are the least efficient at removing nutrients from the ground compared to other remedies like denitrifying bioreactors, structures that reduce nitrogen in field runoff. 

That leaves taxpayers with the fewest pounds of nutrients removed per public dollar spent.

The scientists say the program could stop tallying the number of nutrient-cutting practices installed on farms and instead incentivize success. For example, regulators could measure the nitrogen coming off fields and pay farmers when they fall under a set limit.

“We’ve maybe got to change our incentivizing systems for how we ask farmers to do things,” Wardrop said.


Bennet Goldstein wrote this article for Wisconsin Watch.


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By Nina B. Elkadi for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Nebraska News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

The Clean Water Act, salmonella inspections and equity in the Packers and Stockyards Act are just a few of the regulations that the industry lobbying group the Meat Institute, formerly known as the North American Meat Institute, is calling for the Trump administration to pull back.

On January 27, Meat Institute president Julie Anna Potts penned a letter to the White House providing the new administration with "strategies to reduce burdensome regulations and address meat prices for consumers." In the letter, Potts blames the previous administration for inflation, which she claims was caused by increased regulation in the food industry. Potts also targets increased worker protections against discrimination, which she claims are part of diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

"Based on what they propose, the path to lower food prices is exploiting child labor and engaging in sharecropping production models," Austin Frerick, antitrust expert and author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry, tells Sentient. "They're grab-bagging words in the moment to fit their deregulatory race to the bottom."

If Trump takes the advice of this lobbying group - which touts its representation of meat packers and processors that "account for more than 95 percent of U.S. output" of processed meats - experts do not agree that prices will necessarily go down. According to Food & Water Watch staff attorney Emily Miller, the real issue at play is consolidation in the industry.

"We know that the real cost of high food prices in this country is not inflation or the cost of regulatory compliance, as the industry is claiming. It's corporate consolidation and greed," Miller says. "Rolling back regulations that are meant to protect farmers, slaughterhouse workers, frontline communities and consumers from exploitation and pollution will just allow the meat industry to break even more profit."

While food prices have increased at a fast rate - as much as 2.5 times the rate of inflation - corporate profits have sky-rocketed five times faster than inflation. Four companies control around 70 percent of the pork industry and four companies control more than half the chicken processing market.

Even if the industry successfully de-regulates and lowers costs associated with stricter environmental and worker protections, there is no guarantee that would result in lower food prices. Corporations can continue to pocket the difference.

What This Could Mean for Workers

One rule the Meat Institute wants to rescind is the Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity Under the Packers and Stockyards Act. The rule, which went into effect in 2024, "prohibits the adverse treatment of livestock producers and poultry growers based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), disability, marital status, or age."

The Meat Institute claims this rule "attempts to enshrine" diversity, equity and inclusion concepts into the act.

"I think this is definitely a way of baiting Trump to act," Miller says. "What they're really asking, pretty unabashedly, is for the ability to discriminate against other people for personal characteristics that have nothing to do with their business or the economy or anything that would have any sort of justification, which is pretty outrageous."

Another set of protections the Meat Institute targets in its bid to the new administration relates to contract chicken producers - farmers who raise chickens on a contract basis for mega-corporations like Tyson Foods. Passed under the Biden administration, the regulations had been intended in part to help chicken farmers who end up taking on enormous debts as part of their contractual agreements with poultry companies.

What This Could Mean for the Environment

The Clean Water Act is considered one of the cornerstones of environmental protection in the U.S., but when it comes to regulating the discharges from agriculture, it has long fallen short. Clawing back the already weakened regulatory power of the act could further pollute waterways that are already in poor shape, especially in states with increasing density of factory farms. For instance, more than half of rivers and streams are degraded in Iowa - a state where most counties are "severely or highly concentrated with factory farms."

Miller, of Food & Water Watch, notes that the federal government is under a court enforceable settlement that requires them to finalize the rule the Meat Institute wants to disassemble. Any effort to roll that back, she says, would be in direct violation of the settlement.

"The industry would, of course, want the least amount of regulation possible and to maintain the status quo that allows them to really harm the communities that neighbor these operations, which overwhelmingly are low income communities of color," she says.

In states dominated by factory farms, manure discharged into waterways has led to detrimental health outcomes, fish kills and higher drinking water costs.

In addition, much of the meat produced in Iowa factory farms is in turn exported. "We're basically destroying rural communities in the Midwest, notably Iowa, to feed foreign nations," Frerick says. "The environmental destruction these production models do and that says something when it's cheaper to do it here than in China."

Frerick argues that Republican administrations "turbocharge" the race to the bottom with de-regulation, opening the doors for catastrophic changes to not only the food system itself, but consumer trust and confidence that they are getting a safe product.

"You're playing Russian Roulette with people's health and safety. If you have one big scandal, one big outbreak, you could really shift people's consumption and food diets in profound ways that really can wreck an industry," Frerick says.

What This Could Mean for Food Safety

Pulling back proposed salmonella regulation could endanger consumers, Jaydee Hanson, Policy Director of the Center for Food Safety tells Sentient. Meat Institute is calling to replace a proposed rule that would increase monitoring in the poultry slaughter process with "a performance standard with the input of stakeholders."

"I'm concerned that the next thing they'll be pushing for is less aggressive enforcement of rules on E coli," he tells Sentient. "We don't want to go back to poor inspection with state inspectors that are being bribed and say that that's going to give us cheaper meat."

"You want a regulatory system where consumers know they're getting a healthy, safe product that was produced in a way that was ethical," Frerick says. "When you get rid of that, you're incentivizing the worst people."

The Bottom Line

"Any regulatory rollbacks that allow the meat industry to further consolidate its market power will just have the opposite effect on consumers and on food prices generally," Miller says. "Efforts to roll those things back would just continue to inflict harm on the people who are growing and producing our food in this country, and simply give a bigger profit margin to the corporations that are at the top of the food chain."

Though no distinct moves have been made to address the Meat Institute's requests, on January 31, the Trump White House announced a de-regulatory blitz, requiring that "whenever an agency promulgates a new rule, regulation, or guidance, it must identify at least 10 existing rules, regulations, or guidance documents to be repealed."

"Concentrated markets gouge. It's what they do. You see innovation and quality decline," Frerick tells Sentient. "Once you add in the cost, the negative externalities, all the pollution stuff, it's even more expensive. So we're being doubly-screwed, to be blunt."


Nina B. Elkadi wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Nina B. Elkadi for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

In Postville, Iowa, a town with a population of 2,503, the slaughterhouse Agri Star Meat and Poultry LLC is the largest employer. Although there is no publicly available data on how many animals are slaughtered at Agri Star every day, in 2010, CEO Hershey Friedman hoped the plant could “process 1,000 head of cattle per day within a couple of years.” In December 2024, three non-profit organizations filed an intent to sue Agri Star for illegally discharging animal waste products into public waterways. The slaughterhouse has until February 21, 2025, to respond and answer how they will comply with the Clean Water Act — or the suit will be filed.

Attorneys working on the current case claim that Agri Star has been violating its National Pollution Discharge Permit — a Clean Water Act rule aimed at limiting excessive pollution from point sources — by illegally discharging large quantities of animal processing waste. Last year, “250,000 gallons of untreated beef processing waste,” flowed into the Postville water supply, the notice states.

Agri Star, formerly known as Agriproccessors, is no stranger to controversy (under different ownership, in 2008 it was the site of one of the largest immigration raids in U.S. history, which also found child labor violations).

“The City of Postville stated that while Agri Star worked to fix the blocked sewer line, Agri Star did not appear to limit or cease production — processing waste continued to flow to the City’s treatment system at a rate of 148 to 164 gallons per minute,” the attorneys wrote. This resulted in “an interference with the City of Postville’s normal wastewater treatment process,” which is a violation of their permit. As a result, the Postville water treatment facility was shuttered for two days.

The intent to sue notice was co-authored by Driftless Water Defenders, a non-profit Iowa-based group working to protect Iowa waterways from agricultural polluters, as well as Public Justice and FarmSTAND, both non-profit legal advocacy groups.

“We’ve got a very powerful structure of industrial agriculture that has found a way to feel immune to the pressures of individual citizens to rebuff them, particularly on political fronts,” counsel for the Driftless Water Defenders board of directors James Larew tells Sentient. “They’re so strong and that litigation is a critical ingredient that we need, because the laws like this one are on the books. They need to be enforced. And so we state that we’re there to litigate.”

A State Built on Animal Agriculture

Iowa is at the forefront of what some experts are calling a water quality crisis. As the state with the most animals being raised in confinement, animal waste, which is often illegally discharged, has become a central component of Iowa life.

Chris Jones, a water quality expert and president of Driftless Water Defenders, explains that prior to the passage of the Clean Water Act, Iowa’s waterways were completely “dead” due to slaughterhouse discharges. The Clean Water Act changed things — but without enforcement, the law obviously becomes less efficacious.

“Our [Department of Natural Resources] is not exactly zealous about enforcing rules and doing things that are going to improve the quality of our water,” Jones tells Sentient. “Anybody with eyes and ears in their head can see and hear that. I think they’re reluctant to do things that might appear to be unfriendly to industry or to agriculture, and as such, they sort of abdicated their role as a deterrent for these sorts of things.”

The overwhelming majority — 99 percent — of farmed animals in the U.S. are raised in factory farms. In Iowa, there are over almost 124 million farmed animals; around 55 million chickens, 53.4 million hogs, 11.5 million turkeys, and 3.7 million cattle and cows. With a new federal administration, Jones predicts that the livestock industry has the potential to expand even further, and regulations could diminish.

To demonstrate the extent of this issue, Jones poses a hypothetical scenario: What if the Des Moines wastewater treatment plant did not follow their pollution discharge permit requirements and decided to dump unlimited quantities of human waste into the Des Moines river, poisoning the water supply of a community 75 miles downstream?

“That’s essentially what [the Department of Natural Resources] is doing,” he says. “They’re just saying, okay, Agri Star, go ahead, dump whatever you want into the stream.”

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency have recently come under scrutiny for not enforcing these discharge permits strongly enough. Several groups sued the EPA for their lack of enforcement under the Clean Water Act, and in October 2024 the court struck them down.

Holding polluters accountable through targeted lawsuits, Larew tells Sentient, is one potential path forward.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources declined to comment due to pending litigation.

Private Attorneys General

In lieu of strong federal or statewide enforcement, these legal groups see themselves as “private attorneys general,” Public Justice attorney Daniel C. Snyder says. To remedy the harm caused by these discharges, the groups are calling for civil penalties against Agri Star.

“Those civil penalties are meant to deter these exact types of violations. You have a penalty that is high enough so that everyone goes, ‘Wow. We should take notice of that. We should make sure we’re complying with our permits so that Driftless Water Defenders or other groups don’t come around and say, hey you you are also in violation of the act,’” Snyder tells Sentient.

For these advocacy groups, the goal is not to put these operations out of business. Larew emphasizes that they are simply using public information and public laws to hold polluters accountable.

“I think there’s a public realization these last couple years in particular, that something’s really out of whack, that we feel threatened with the quality of our water,” Larew says. “[We have an] imbalance right now with the new industrial agricultural model, the concentration of livestock into particular areas, with waste so concentrated that it can’t be adequately used and it ends up being in our water.”

Agri Star did not respond to multiple requests for comment.


Nina B. Elkadi wrote this article for Sentient.


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Watchdog groups said the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection seems poised to allow coal company Keystone West Virginia to walk away from its obligation to treat acid mine drainage at a 160-acre surface mine near Marmet, in Kanawha County.

When a company is done mining and is done doing required reclamation work, it will ask the state to return the bond money given when it received its permit to mine. But in this case, the company has not done the cleanup.

Chad Cordell, coordinator for the Kanawha Forest Coalition, said the company has been involved in numerous complaints related to water pollution in Lens Creek.

"This is really a push where we're telling the DEP, not only do you need to not grant this bond release, but you really need to start enforcing the water quality laws and get this company to deal with this water pollution," Cordell outlined.

Keystone West Virginia has been plagued with regulatory problems and lawsuits. The mine the company is seeking for bond release has received 36 notices of violations and 12 cessation orders since it was first permitted, according to the coalition.

Cordell added decades of research and lived experience from residents show the high levels of heavy metals from acid mine drainage, which color the water a coppery brown, can cause permanent damage to drinking water quality, local infrastructure including bridges, public water and power plant supplies, and public health.

"There's really no debate about that at this point," Cordell contended. "We know that there are all sorts of health impacts from these mines. A lot of that is connected to the water impacts of these mines."

There are roughly 400 miles of freshwater trout streams in West Virginia that are impaired because of increased acidity levels from acid mine drainage, according to the West Virginia Water Research Institute.


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