Sunday, June 25, 2017

Waste lagoons associated with feedlots are not only smelly and emitting methane, but, they are simply dangerous.

Government rules require feedlots to contain the waste they produce, which often means controlling water runoff in a series of lagoons and retention structures. Viewed from the air, retention ponds are visible at a feedlot in southwest Kansas

...Not all waste impoundments (click here) are planned to have an embankment. Those that do must consider the risk to life and property should the embankment fail. The information that follows is limited to embankment impoundment sites where the potential risk is limited to physical damage of farm buildings, agricultural land, or township and county roads. This hazard criterion is the low hazard classification for dams that will impound clean water. Waste impoundments, however, present additional risk beyond that of clean water impoundments because of the nature of material they contain. This material can be high in organic matter, nutrients, and microorganisms. In addition, the wastewater may produce offensive odors. As such, even though a waste impoundment is sited so the risk is limited to physical damage of property, there may still be a significant potential in failure to degrade soil, water, air, plant, and animal resources as well as negatively impact the human environment....

The feedlot in the picture above is in Kansas. The government regulations don't demand reducing methane emissions. 

December 19, 2012
By Jeremy Bernfeld

You think you deal with a lot of bull crap? (click here) Allan Sents needs a front-end loader and a dump truck to deal with all the cattle manure he’s up against. Literally.
Sents and his wife Deanna co-own McPherson County Feeders, a beef feedlot home to more than 11,000 head of cattle. It’s in Marquette, Kan., and it’s the penultimate stop for cattle, fattening them up before they head to the slaughterhouse.
Sents doesn’t just feed his cattle. He has to dispose of the unending stream of manure his cattle produce every day.
“Realistically, it’s as much a part of the job for us as feeding for the cattle and caring for them that way,” Sents said.
With more than 2.3 million cattle in Kansas feedlots dropping millions of pounds of waste each year, the environmental challenge is immense. And an increase in bigger, specialized feedlots over the last two decades doesn't make it any easier....