As a longtime observer of environmental affairs and 25-year veteran of the green industry, I’ve often been amazed at the polarized nature of debate on modern ecological topics, as well as some major oversights that have developed. The two main environmental subjects that EPA and its allies can’t shoot straight about involve reckless government sewage and stormwater handling—a source of thousands of public beach closures and millions of associated sick swimmers each year—and the routine fish kills, multiple large aquatic “dead zones” and other widespread problems caused by our heavily subsidized agribusiness.

EPA, various green groups and their friends in Legacy media are well aware of all this. But for the most part, they keep to the script of blaming all environmental harm on “corporate polluters” while concocting poor excuses to downplay government malfeasance.

With many environmental organizations promoting anti-industry fear to solicit contributions from their supporters—and with conservative/pro-business types permanently in defense mode pushing back on those narratives—these major pollution topics get little coverage and virtually zero traction in mainstream media or among the general public. At most, some hardcore environmentalists occasionally rail against “factory farms,” the one segment of agribusiness it’s OK to hate. But even that coverage is usually slanted for political purposes.

The many aspects of government pollution are all problematic. But all are drenched in power politics that most in Washington would rather not disturb. Admitting that non-industrial operators cause pollution threatens not only the entrenched message of the Green Lobby, but also the pristine image of the powerful Farm Lobby and the “progressive” aura of big-city political machines. These pollution sources lead to trouble waters in a variety of ways.

The twin pillars of government pollution are the skyrocketing usage of USDA-backed chemical fertilizers since 1945 and the 16,000 government-run (patronage laden) sewage treatment systems. The latter may work well during dry weather, but after a rain event soaks into porous sewer networks, anything goes, with EPA’s full approval. The option of privatizing the operations of any of these municipal monopolies with periodic competitive bidding is fiercely opposed by pro-government activists as well as civil service unions.

Farm Lobby advocates often claim chemical fertilizers are completely “natural” and nothing new, both assertions being false. Nitrogen is pulled from the air by a complex set of industrial steps known as the Haber–Bosch process. Phosphates are mined and purified at industrial facilities like this one in Florida. Chemical fertilizers have been a tremendous success for feeding a hungry world, but they create side-effects that still need to be addressed. Much of the nitrogen and phosphorous in fertilizers get absorbed into crops, fed to animals, then deposited as animal manure. The rest of it builds up in the soil or gets flushed into nature.

Subsidized agribusiness (FY 2020 USDA budget $150 billion, 91,000 agency staffers) gets a free pass to deposit over 20 millions of tons of chemical fertilizers and over a billion of tons of bacteria- and nutrient-rich animal manure right onto porous ground surfaces each year with little or no attempt at abatement. Much of that noxious stew is carried away via surface water or groundwater any time it rains, becoming major causes of nitrate contamination in drinking water wells, widespread river and lake pollution (according to EPA’s National Water Quality Inventory, which was more robust in the past), routine and substantial fish kills, and large “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and scores of other locations.

While human waste is now collected and treated (except when it’s raining), very little effort goes to manage the mountains of animal waste created by the billions of chickens, pigs, cows and other tasty critters served up to consumers each year. Using the most conservative of available figures, at least 1.4 billion tons of livestock manure is produced each year in the U.S., which is roughly 130 times the amount of human waste generated annually in the nation. (Those manure figures come from a 1997 report from Tom Harkin, then-U.S. Senator from Iowa and strong supporter of agribusiness.) Whether that waste is stored in leaky open-air lagoons or spread haphazardly on broken soil, significant amounts seep into groundwater and cascade off of farmland whenever it rains. Downstream rivers, lakes and shorelines get hit with a tidal wave of this filth.

Regarding farm pollution, I’m intentionally avoiding the controversies about trace pesticide residues in food. Pesticides tend to be an obsession of some anti-chemical purists that I have reviewed and don’t find significant enough for discussions involving national environmental policy. Without the use of pesticides, there would be tens of billions in annual crop losses to weeds and insect damage in the U.S. alone.

On the topic of human sewage, as detailed later in this essay, EPA frequently boasts of the billions they helped spend for building and upgrading thousands of government-run wastewater facilities like the one pictured above. But high-tech equipment become irrelevant when leaky sewer pipes overload the plant causing pollution to bypass treatment and trigger waves of beach closings. Government’s inability to fix this longstanding problem beckons the old saying: “We can put a man on the moon” … but not handle this?

After decades of neglect, it looks like Lake Erie is headed backwards to routine beach closures and floating green algae blankets most summers. (EPA and environmentalists rarely admit why this once “dead” lake recovered in the 1970s. I’ll get to that important but forgotten victory.) Smelly, thick, toxic algae blooms fed from animal waste and chemical fertilizers—veritable rivers of “farm sewage”—wreak havoc at popular beaches from Ohio to Florida and harm every state across the U.S. farm belt.

Similar toxic algae blooms, oxygen-free aquatic dead zones, fish kills and beach closures are now a global phenomenon. The British magazine The Week reported on beach closures and algae blooms in France last summer. A story this year from UPI news leads off with “Record amounts of seaweed this summer have caused historic damage to beaches and cut tourism in Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean”; that article provides weak excuses that I’ll address in the Florida section of this essay. Pollution around China is so notorious that a single link to their algae problems barely does justice, although that article is quite good (scroll down in the prior link for a global map of 500 aquatic dead zones).

For this essay, I’ll stick primarily with American problems. Since we haven’t figured out a viable solution, there’s no sense in scolding the rest of the world. The first-third of this essay deals primarily with the travails surrounding government stormwater and sewage discharges—issues that mostly affect local residents or tourists in urban and suburban areas. The latter two-thirds address some of the many difficulties associated with farm pollution.

60-Second Op-Ed break for why concise articles are usually better than books. Partly in response to some previous comments on “long” article length, a few words are in order to challenge prevailing literary orthodoxy. To avoid the politicized world of modern book publishing, the long-format 500,000-word exhaustive manifesto approach was ruled out before I started typing the first line many years ago. Some of the problems with that highly subsidized format include full-time authors with no independence and/or little real-world experience, a tendency towards isolationism and single-issue extremism, and rampant hidden agendas. While grant-chasing academics rave about their beloved paper horcruxes ad nauseum, I find the anti-social nature of the monologue teaching style to be problematic and prone to pandering. Although a dialogue communication method would usually be preferred, I’ll settle for a comparatively shorter essay at a non-partisan publisher, with direct referencing web links and a “robust” comments section. I’d call that progress.

On the other hand, to keep this essay manageable for one or two extended sittings, I’ve skipped other significant farm anomalies. Important but omitted topics include: 1) the tremendous wasting of water to grow crops in arid parts of the nation, 2) environmentalists’ correct assertion that meat consumption creates a bigger impact on the environment than growing vegetables, due to the heavy fertilizer inputs and water usage for animal farming; to what degree coercive government policy is “needed” to achieve any green goals is another matter entirely, 3) EPA double standards on minor construction erosion vs. the much bigger issue of ongoing farm erosion and the expensive river dredging and dam sedimentation it causes, 4) the flimsy evidence and meanspirited assault against Monsanto for developing its beneficial herbicide Roundup—a product so safe that critics and trial lawyers resort to speech policing to make their twisted case. (There’s something really perverse when productive industries get worse courtroom treatment than suspected murderers and rapists. That’s the beauty of our “dual justice” system.)

For a snapshot on farm pollution (much more to come), I’ll lead off with the following national map of nitrate pollution from the U.S. Geological Survey published in 2006. The graphic is based on sampling from about 2,300 shallow groundwater wells, which they define as typically less than 5 meters deep, and associated computer modeling. This map is more reflective of nitrate surface pollution than contamination in deeper drinking water wells.

According to EPA’s annual Right to Know program, any aqueous nitrate compound is a reportable “toxic chemical” when used in excess of 5 tons per year by industries, even if nothing is discharged. Yet somehow, unlimited use and discharge of any nitrate compounds—in far greater quantities from agricultural fertilizers—is completely exempt from Right to Know reporting. In general, farm pollution is exempt from most U.S. environmental rules. This special treatment of agribusiness—staunchly guarded by USDA and the Farm Lobby—has allowed nitrates and other farm pollutants to environmentally accumulate across vast sections of the nation with little public attention.

Based on the USGS map of nitrate groundwater concentrations (generally coinciding with the presence of agriculture) farm pollution is now experienced from Washington and California across to Delaware, North Carolina and Florida, and throughout most of the Midwest. To get shallow groundwater nitrate levels to jump from below 1 mg/L (normal) to even 3 or 4 mg/L (light blue on the map)—over a few square miles, let alone an entire state—requires enormous chemical inputs. So this map, along with other evidence of present harm (not futuristic projections) caused by farm pollution, are anything but alarmist.

Dangerous Double Standards

I should probably mention up front my observation that private-sector industries are wildly over-regulated (discussed towards the end), although this harassment directly benefits the consulting engineering firms I’ve always worked for. I’m just an employee, not an owner; I get paid whether the rules make sense or not. And I’m not receiving payment for this writing.

With government-oriented pollution, political handling of bad actors works just the opposite as experienced by the private sector. Government polluters get coddled and subsidized as a general rule, and never face criticism as “polluters” in public. Government sewage dumping and socialized farm pollution draws no interest whatsoever from the conservative and libertarian camps, whom one might expect to pounce on these topics (if framed correctly). Their understandable hostility to anything sounding “green” sends them off the trail immediately. Liberal environmental groups have paid some mild and usually misguided attention to these topics over the years, but typically lose interest as soon as donations dry up from lack of an industrial ogre.

The profound double standards on public-sector vs. private-sector pollution goes beyond petty politics. When it comes to industrial pollution as well as pesticides, EPA and other public health officials use high-dose animal toxicology tests to project a dubious one-in-a-million lifetime adverse human response. That ostensible “extreme caution” quickly melts away when it comes to the major sources of government-subsidized pollution. For the trillions of gallons of urban stormwater discharges, municipal sewage dumping, and the foul runoff from socialized farming, associated pollutants like nitrates in drinking water, bacteria at public beaches and low-oxygen in lakes and estuaries are deemed completely “safe” unless they immediately sicken or kill large numbers of people or fish.

These double standards are problematic in all areas mentioned above. One particular discrepancy I’ll start with is Washington’s refusal to establish ANY long-term (or “chronic”) exposure limits to its controversial 10 milligram per liter (mg/L) short-term (or “acute”) nitrate standard for drinking water, established in 1962 and now managed by EPA. That short-term nitrate standard is apparently exceeded by many thousands of groundwater wells in the nation—where people may be consuming polluted water for years.

Rather than alert the public in any meaningful way, EPA clouds the discussion with incomprehensible data and stock photos of family purity, as shown on EPA’s main website on the topic. Unlike the national hysteria over elevated lead levels in Flint, Michigan’s tap water a few years ago, mass media also refrain from stern warnings of “poisoning” or “toxic” chemicals when murmuring about widespread nitrate contamination.

Side Bar on Today’s ‘Silent Green’: Almost two months into the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that began on April 20, 2010—with so few actual animals being harmed—Legacy media spread fear of potential future injuries, as with this June 14, 2010 Newsweek cover. Just inside the magazine, their table of contents page featured a display of over a dozen white crosses implanted on a lawn in Louisiana—with the words “Summer Fun”, “Walking the Dog on the Beach”, “Gumbo” and other shoreline classics scrawled in black, signifying the anticipated deaths of these natural pleasures.

Eight years later, EPA’s quiet (probably low-ball) estimate for 2018 of 35,530 days of beach closures and advisories against swimming among America’s roughly 3,900 monitored beaches elicits only yawns from the same journalist watchdogs, as discussed below. As detailed in the Fish Kills section of this essay, millions of dead animals likely caused by farm pollution triggers scant concern from EPA, environmentalists and major media.

Thankfully, another federal agency shows more independence than EPA or the mass media. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 2006 study on nitrates in drinking water wells noted that “adverse effects are associated with nitrate concentrations as low as 2.5 mg/L” and “Recent studies have associated nitrate in drinking water with several types of cancer,” citing four other scientific studies to support the cancer claim. A separate USGS study published in 2010 estimated:

more than 1.2 million people live in areas predicted to have moderate nitrate contamination of groundwater (greater than 5 mg/L but less than or equal to the MCL [maximum contaminant level] of 10 mg/L).

My point here is not necessarily that large numbers of rural Americans run a significant risk of getting cancer. That’s a scientific matter for others to settle. My point is that EPA has a completely different set of scales when regulating pollution originating from the private sector and the public sector. One is ridiculously strict; the other is rather lenient.

Another reason I won’t dwell on the nitrate groundwater issue beyond this paragraph: it’s almost entirely a LOCAL issue. States and local jurisdictions can always be more strict than federal EPA standards. If local residents want cleaner well water, it’s up to them to change local laws or move to an area with city water services. If I lived in a house with well water, I would always drink bottled water. No one should need a federal program for that.

The other protracted public issues surrounding government pollution are more troubling and often cross state boundaries. Instead of taking any of these major problems seriously, EPA would much rather talk about “climate change”—a topic where they have nothing to lose. Federal bureaucrats coincidentally stand to reap political profits and job security if any of the multi-trillion dollar social overhaul plans become implemented. Non-profit environmental groups and subsidized college professors also prefer this righteously lucrative quest. All such parties usually forget to admit that their relentless fury is over a 1°C rise in global temperatures over the last century. (For an alternate view, here’s an article from Collective Evolution on the many flaws of climate doom, including a good video from the co-founder of Greenpeace.)

Even if some or most of that temperature increase does come from man-made sources (which is debatable) there is no need for immediate panic to “ACT NOW!” Five or ten more years of data collection and “refining the models” won’t harm anyone. Every additional year of dawdling on government-related pollution causes significant, proven damage affecting millions of people in the U.S. and probably billions elsewhere.

The Principles Behind any Legitimate Pollution Policy

As much as I don’t care for ideologues who incessantly reiterate their enshrined principles—to the neglect of any realistic solutions—I’ll agree that any good policy should have some legitimate philosophy to stand on. Unfortunately, professional pundits of various persuasions usually offer false choices of: A) millions of arbitrary rules enforced on everyone, B) only rules imposed on unpopular minorities, or C) no rules whatsoever, coupled with blind faith that the “marketplace” will magically sort everything out.

A better option rarely mentioned among the chattering classes: establishing and enforcing clear LIMITS on harmful actions imposed on others—such as pollution or speeding or drunk driving or other tangible actions that can be proven to cause harm, where no voluntary market remedy is available. Meaningful prohibitions on toxic products like leaded gasoline or phosphate detergents can also be useful, when safer alternatives exist. But full prohibition is not appropriate for products discussed in this essay.

Limits (or progressive thresholds) on harmful activity put the focus on real outcomes, not ambiguous thought crimes of “intent.” Giving people wide latitude to comply with a few objective limits, where necessary, maximizes efficiency and freedom of choice—as opposed to maximizing political power and opacity. By their nature, objective limits curb the damage from trouble makers abusing the public for personal gain.

One of the better programs managed by EPA is the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) that establish objective thresholds on various air pollutants like “smog” (ground-level ozone), particulate dust, sulfur dioxide and a few other common emissions. Congress mandated the NAAQS approach in the 1970 Clean Air Act, when politicians were thinking somewhat more rationally—although air pollution is rarely an interstate issue.

Doing Too Much on the Little Things… Almost Nothing on Major Problems

On overall environmental affairs, we have a rare category where state and federal authorities arguably do WAY TOO MUCH of the wrong things yet completely fail in their objectives on other daunting local and interstate pollution matters. With most mainstream observers preoccupied arguing for or against climate action, and devout eco-puritans obsessed exclusively with industrial pollution—these problems have been festering for decades.

Few people probably give much thought to where wastewater goes after it gets flushed down the toilet or swirled down the shower drain. The answer: any of the nation’s 16,000 municipal sewage plants. These facilities are almost always owned and operated by local government. In the first three decades of EPA’s existence, the agency helped dispense over $100 billion in federal tax dollars to upgrade municipal wastewater facilities or build new ones altogether. By inserting EPA into the grant application review process, Congress threw away any pretense of objective oversight. This conflict of interest is even more profound with the EPA-USDA farm pollution “management plans” (I’ll get to those)—kind of like the Dallas Cowboys hiring the same people to manage the team and referee the game. A totally flawed concept, but “good enough” for most in Washington.

The alternative of establishing and enforcing pollution limits even-handedly—rain or shine—on all participants was rejected long ago. The excitement of handing out billions in urban and suburban pork was evidently too irresistible. In all the commotion, the longstanding problem of leaking sewer networks—inundating sewage plants with massive amounts of infiltration every time it rains—was another lapse of judgment.

On the topic of just how “socialized” farming has become, the hefty U.S. Department of Agriculture budget of $150 billion (which doesn’t all go directly into farmers’ pockets) does not include the ethanol mandates, generous property tax breaks, special exemptions to utilize immigrant labor, or the cut-rate water prices granted to agribusiness. Abusing taxpayers and the environment is hardly “new” to the subsidized farming community. These are the same guys who drained millions of acres of wetlands (see Figure 5), plowed down even greater swaths of drought-resistant prairie grass and brought us the horizon-darkening Dust Bowl of the 1930s—easily the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in American history. With help from major media, the Farm Lobby still insists that deadly assault was totally, utterly, completely not their fault!

U.S. Beach Closures

On the growing problem of beach closures, it wouldn’t quite be correct to say that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is doing nothing. They’re actually in heavy spin mode, consistently downplaying the problem with passive language about “runoff” and “overflows” to put people at ease. They also maintain a slick Beaches website that shows pristine shorelines with frolicking children. (EPA only uses the term “dumping” for private-sector discharges.)

EPA’s prime offering on the subject is its annual Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) report. Their most recent 2018 edition was a paltry 3 pages. On page 2, we learn that “Almost half (47 percent) of coastal and Great Lakes beaches in the United State were monitored in 2018.” In other words, over half of America’s beaches are still not monitored at all. EPA felt this major finding warranted a single sentence.

On the last page of the EPA BEACH report, we get another single sentence mentioning “Notification actions were reported on 35,530 days” in 2018 among America’s roughly 3,900 monitored beaches. “Notification action” is jargon for when beaches are closed or have posted advisories against swimming.

EPA neglects to mention that these figures are based on self-reporting by the same government staff who run the beaches and desperately want vacation tax dollars flowing into state coffers. EPA also claims that 95% of the time, beaches are “safe for swimming,” which is debatable due to lax health standards on beach water quality. Any day of beach closure would be a big deal if your summer vacation was canceled by a sign reading “Beach Closed. No Swimming Allowed.”

To see a more professional beach report, California’s private non-profit group Heal the Bay’s annual Beach Report Card seems to be the gold standard for coastal water quality assessments. A related article on beach closures in USA Today begins to touch on why this is such a sensitive topic to tax-hungry state and local authorities:

Los Angeles’ recreation department referred inquiries to the California Coastal Commission, which issued a statement that said curtailing pollution is a high priority: “Our $45 billion a year coastal economy depends on keeping the water and beaches clean.”

If you happen to stumble across EPA’s Nutrient Indicators Dataset, which is not well publicized, you’ll read that:

Recent estimates suggest that nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in freshwaters [ignoring ocean pollution] costs the U.S. at least $2.2 billion annually, with the greatest losses attributed to diminished property values and recreational uses of water (Dodds et al. 2009).

Decades ago, this type of report was filed away in a dusty bookshelf and forgotten about, until the next round of research funding became available. Now, it collects cyber dust.

EPA’s Conflicted Interests: Paying Polluters to Pollute while also Playing ‘Eco-Cop’

Contrary to common belief, there was already widespread progress in water pollution prior to the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, U.S. cities and towns were upgrading their sewage treatment facilities from “primary” treatment (such as settling tanks) to “secondary” treatment (including aeration systems to biologically remove organisms). These government-owned facilities are commonly referred to as Publicly Operated Treatment Works or POTWs.

EPA’s 2004 Report to Congress on Combined Sewer Overflows and Sanitary Sewer Overflows (CSOs and SSOs) states:

• 30 percent of POTWs (3,529 of 11,784) provided secondary treatment in 1950.


• 72 percent of POTWs (10,052 of 14,051) provided secondary treatment in 1968.


• 99 percent of 16,024 POTWs provided secondary or greater treatment, or were “no-discharge facilities,” in 1996.

It appears that nearly all of the sewage treatment plant (POTW) progress between 1950 and 1968 came from state and local funding. The 1956 Clean Water Act only allocated $0.15 billion to Construction Grants for sewage plant upgrades. EPA does not specify how much federal funding was provided during the next decade but states: “Additional construction grant funding was authorized with the 1961, 1965, and 1966 [Clean Water Act] amendments.”

The 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act (a.k.a. the official “Clean Water Act”) merely put a sloppy and expensive band-aid on the wound. Washington’s solution in 1972: spend federal tax money to reward the political machines of big city sewage polluters.

According to EPA’s 2004 Report to Congress on CSOs and SSOs “between 1970 and 2000, the federal government invested more than $122 billion in the nation’s wastewater infrastructure” in 2000 dollars. In their excitement to “save” the planet and spend taxpayer money, Congress and EPA overlooked a crucial detail. Even the most high-tech sewage treatment facilities don’t work when they get inundated with incoming sewage and stormwater every time it rains. As it turns out, government-run sewage plants accidentally receive massive amounts of infiltration from leaking sewer networks. EPA estimates that local governments own about 584,000 miles of sewer pipes. After a heavy rain, many (probably most) of the nation’s thousands of municipal sewage plants dump partially treated wastewater into the nearest receiving water body, usually out of sight from the general public. And EPA has successfully fought to have this practice remain fully legal.

The last time Congress tasked EPA with reporting on government sewage affairs, in 2004, the agency estimated that combined storm-and-sanitary sewers (found in older cities around the Great Lakes and Northeast) annually discharge 850 billion gallons of untreated sewage and stormwater—equivalent to 13 days of flow from Niagara Falls. Combined sewers discharge 80 times the fecal coliform load compared to all treated wastewater discharged by the nation’s sewage treatment facilities, per EPA data.

In EPA’s own words from that same report (page 2-9):

In 1980, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit accepted EPA’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act that discharges at CSO [Combined Sewer Overflow] outfalls are not discharges from POTWs and thus are not subject to the limits based on secondary treatment standards otherwise applicable to POTWs.

CSO discharge volumes are nothing compared to the torrent of 10 trillion gallons of untreated urban stormwater discharged to public rivers, lakes and beaches by municipalities each year. This tsunami of dirty street runoff tainted with gasoline, food scraps, tire residues and oil drippings contains 2.4 million tons of suspended solids and over 20 times the fecal coliform load than all the treated wastewater discharged by the entire country, according to EPA’s 2004 Report to Congress (page 4-29).

To give some comparison to the “good” discharges from American sewage plants, EPA estimates (A) 11.43 trillion gallons of treated wastewater annually disposed by public municipalities, with a median concentration of (B) 200 counts of fecal coliforms per 100 milliliters (mL). EPA estimates untreated urban stormwater runoff to be much more polluted, with about 5,100 counts of fecal coliforms per 100 mL. (Drinking water, in contrast, must have zero counts of fecal bacteria or other coliforms per 100 mL to pass EPA standards for human consumption. 100 mL is roughly one-tenth of a quart, or about one large mouthful.)

To comprehend the total municipal fecal coliform load to the environment for the latter waste stream, multiply A x B x 37.85 (conversion factor for units of “100 mL” per gallon) x 22.4 times worse based on field data. This gives you a really huge number (194 with 16 trailing zeroes)—EPA’s estimate just for annual fecal bacteria discharges in segregated urban stormwater. This wastewater is considered so “clean” that virtually no one bothers to treat it. (City stormwater contains other pollutants as well, but I’ll just focus on the tail end here.)

Multiplying that unfathomable number with 16 trailing zeroes times about 3.6 gives you EPA’s estimate for fecal coliform load to the environment from combined storm-and-sanitary sewer “overflows” annually. One swallow of combined sewer potpourri (perhaps while swimming at a public beach) could send you to the hospital. But at least your “privacy rights” would be secure, since Legacy media would most likely ignore your suffering.

Getting Sick from Sewage

When you add it all up, the public sewer fiasco amounts to some troubled waters to dive into. Swimming in partially treated wastewater has long been known to cause human illness. But the question of how much sickness is less clear, and not something EPA likes to publicly talk about. This topic also rarely receives mainstream attention.

Looking back quite a bit, the June 12, 2000 issue of U.S. News and World Report mentioned a preliminary study done for the EPA that estimated over 1 million Americans get sick each year just from sanitary sewage overflows. (From my discussions with associated EPA staff two years later, the agency apparently never released the final version.) In another brief disclosure, EPA pitched similar figures—strictly as an opportunity, though, not a problem. Buried in a 1999 report to Congress, EPA claimed that “up to 500,000 cases of illness will be avoided annually” just by “reducing” stormwater pollution with their programs.

Current beach sickness data seems to be both worse yet possibly more opaque. Giving credit where much is due, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been the national leader on reporting beach closure activity since 1991—long before EPA offered any public attention to the topic. NRDC’s 2014 Testing the Waters report states: “The EPA has estimated that up to 3.5 million people become ill from contact with raw sewage from sanitary sewer overflows [SSOs] each year.” (This excludes combined sewers and polluted stormwater, which discharge nearly 50 times the fecal load as SSOs.) Besides the fact that EPA is staying quiet on this important finding, NRDC’s footnote to that figure raises eyebrows to say the least:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, NPDES Permit Requirements for Municipal Sanitary Sewer Collection Systems, Municipal Satellite Collection Systems, and Sanitary Sewer Overflows, January 4, 2001, withdrawn January 20, 2001. (bold added)

NRDC adds that “Many public health experts believe the number of illnesses caused by untreated sewage and other beach pollution sources may be much higher than is currently recognized because people who get sick from swimming in polluted recreational waters are not always aware of the cause of their illness and do not report it to doctors or local health officials.”

A newcomer to the beach closure issue, Environment America, confirms NRDC’s “much higher” assessment. Environment America’s July 2019 report on Water Quality at Our Beaches states: “Each year in the U.S., swimmers suffer from an estimated 57 million cases of recreational waterborne illness.” Their figure comes from a study by public health scientists at the Universities of Illinois and Indiana, published in the January 2018 issue of Environmental Health (Table 3).

It turns out that Environment America is being conservative with their reporting of that study, which mentions another 30 million illness from waters contacted while fishing and boating. Digging in a bit further, the combined 87 million illnesses are based on a total of 4 billion annual surface water recreation events in America. That comes to a 2.2% incidence rate of sickness for each swimming, fishing or boating event on average. Focusing just on beach swimming, 1.9 billion annual recreation events with 57 million illnesses (mainly acute gastrointestinal ailments) yields a 3% rate of sickness. So an afternoon of swimming at the beach doesn’t guarantee you’ll be sick the next day. But if there were heavy rains prior to your outing, the odds of catching a bad stomach ache may increase.

Regardless of whose figures we settle on, millions of U.S. citizens get sick every year from contacting sewage that should not be in the water. EPA’s conflict of interest from its decades of assuming the role of POTW Construction Grants kingmaker may have something to do with their reticence to come public with these important findings. With any matter of industrial pollution allegedly causing much less civic harm, EPA would be thundering fire and brimstone.

Keeping People in the Dark: No ‘Right to Know’ on Government Pollution

The amazing part of all this, due to Congressional and EPA malfeasance, government sewage dumping and farm pollution are completely exempt from the popular and effective Right to Know reporting of the EPA’s annual Toxic Release Inventory. If anyone wants to get serious about these major pollution sources, this would seem to be a good place to start. States and counties don’t have to wait for federal EPA permission to broaden their local reporting requirements.

Mind you, not all food production is exempt from federal Right to Know reporting, which falls under Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 372, or 40 CFR 372 for anyone eager to dive into the environmental weeds. Private-sector food processors are fully liable to report their comparatively minor and well-controlled releases. Private-sector energy utilities, mining companies and waste handling facilities are also subject to annual Right to Know reporting. Only utilities owned by the government (i.e., sewage treatment plants) and heavily subsidized agribusiness are exempt. So there seems to be a pattern.

EPA goes to great lengths to establish double standards for increasingly trivial private-sector industrial emissions vs. more harmful public-sector activity. For instance, nitrates (one of the key government pollutants) are officially designated a “toxic chemical” under the Right to Know reporting—if discharged by industry. Another baddie, ammonia, is both a “toxic chemical” under those rules and also an “extremely hazardous substance” triggering additional Right to Know burdens—again, if you’re a manufacturing facility. Phosphates are strictly limited in industrial and some municipal wastewater discharges, but get a free pass for most farmers to intentionally place on the ground with no controls.

For subsidized farming and government sewage facilities, vast disposal rates of these synthetic chemicals suddenly become “natural” and exempt from Right to Know rules. Wet-weather government sewage releases may prompt some rudimentary paperwork recordkeeping, but also get special exemptions for unlimited pollution. These disparities keep the public unaware of real environmental and health threats.

The One Segment of Agribusiness it’s OK to Hate: ‘CAFOs’

EPA, USDA and Legacy media usually can’t even bring themselves to say “farm pollution.” If the words “farming” and “pollution” are ever used in an agency report or mainstream news article (rare in itself), you can be sure that officials and journalists will throw in warning labels of “industrial” feedlots or “factory” farming. Such reporting invariably injects their favorite acronym “CAFO”—short for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations—giving themselves an easy buzz-word to dehumanize the selected target of shame. (Regardless of how a person feels about confined animal fa