Busted! Colorado Dairy Farm Caught Dumping Manure Into Nearby River

A dairy factory farm just outside Loveland, Colorado, is under investigation after public health officials claimed cow manure had been dumped into the Big Thompson River.

In November 2015, inspectors from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reported two manure ponds overflowing into a drainage ditch that flowed into the Big Thompson River. The inspector stated that the leaks had likely been “ongoing for a significant period of time.

The dairy factory farm, which is a contract supplier of Longmont Dairy Farm, was issued a violation and a cleanup order in March. City officials claim it took them nearly a year and a half from the first report of the violation “to conduct a thorough investigation of the facts.

Unfortunately, incidents like this happen all too often. Toxins like manure and fertilizer from factory farm runoff leak into nearby waterways. These toxins promote algae blooms, which create oxygen-deprived zones that kill marine life.

Animal agriculture is a major source of water pollution. In fact, animal excrement and agricultural runoff have polluted nearly one-third of rivers in the U.S.

In April, more than 190,000 gallons of manure from Tony Silveira Dairy spilled into Tillamook Bay in Oregon. And this summer, an HP Hood dairy facility in Frederick County, Virginia, came under fire for regularly violating pollution limits in its wastewater.

Dairy factory farming is not only damaging to human health and the environment but unspeakably cruel. At dairy factory farms, cows are treated as mere milk-producing machines. They are forcibly impregnated and kept in terrible conditions. Calves are torn away from their mothers shortly after they are born. Male calves are killed for veal. Females are forced into the dairy herd, trapped in a cycle of abuse for years until they are considered “spent and sent to slaughter.

Heartbreaking, right? Just watch this undercover video from a Mercy For Animals investigation.


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