Cow Waste Slurry From Livestock Farming and Fertilizer Pollutes UK Rivers Up to 300 Times in 2021, EA

The Environment Agency reveals that UK rivers were polluted about 300 times in 2021 because of cow waste slurry from livestock farming and fertilizer. The most recent government statistics indicate that this has resulted in 20 significant incidents.

However, in 2021 the Environment Agency only issued warning letters; only six farms were prosecuted.

Cows, Dairy, Pollution

The dairy industry is the worst polluter on farms, contributing to half of all pollution, largely because of the waste that its millions of cows produce.

The government claimed that for persistent offenders, the prosecution was a last resort.

According to the National Farmers Union (NFU), all farmers take their environmental responsibilities seriously and are actively participating in industry-led initiatives to promote changes that are advantageous to the water environment.

Slurry from 50 Billion Liters of Manure

Slurry is a mixture of water and cow waste or manure. Farmers store and spread slurry as fertilizer. However, it is a major source of the environmental risk that farming poses to rivers.

The 2.6 million dairy cows in the UK produce up to 53 liters of manure each day. That amounts to roughly 50 billion liters of manure annually, which would more than fill Wembley Stadium twelve times.

The generated slurry must be stored, but it may leak from poorly maintained containers or runoff from fields if too much is applied to the ground or if it rains heavily.

Serious pollution-related incidents may result in legal action.

Michael Aylesbury, director of Cross Keys Farms Ltd., is one of the offenders. He was fined more than £25,000 in June of this year for releasing slurry into the River Frome, Somerset in 2020.

He had previously faced legal action for contaminating the same section of the Frome in 2016, an incident that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,700 fish, Seazeus reports.

Slurry: Pollutant or Liquid Gold?

Nearby resident Sue Everett recorded a video of the most recent incident in 2020 when the river was black and teeming with dead fish.

The slurry pollution of rivers is a problem that is being addressed, according to the government, farmers, and the dairy industry.

Kate Hoare, a farmer in Cornwall near Saltash, is paving the way. She not only manages her slurry with care, but she has also set up one of the first covered slurry lagoons in the UK that can capture methane for use in her tractor's engine.

Every farmer understands the importance of keeping slurry on the land and out of rivers, she claims, and refers to it as "liquid gold." She asserts that slurry benefits the soil, the grass, and the ability of the cows to produce milk. She later points out that storage could be improved, Canada Today reports.

The Environment Agency inspects farms to ensure best practices.

Read also: Worst Climate Polluters in US Named in 2021 EPA Report 

721 Inspections, 693 Farms

On 693 farms, 721 inspections were conducted in 2021.

In more than half of the inspections, it was discovered that farmers were not following the rules governing slurry storage.

The government is currently being sued by the freshwater fish conservation organization Wildfish for the way it handles water companies pumping sewage into rivers and oceans.

The Environment Agency stated that it has increased the frequency of inspections to over 3,000 since January of this year and that it is cooperating "constructively" with farmers to reduce water pollution.

In addition, it stated that 2,791 out of 6,169 improvement actions on farms were required since April 2021 and at least 140 warning letters had been issued.

It claimed that it concentrated on high-risk areas, companies that had previously broken the law, and the most problematic farming sectors.

However, it acknowledged that only six agricultural prosecutions were brought in 2021-2022, claiming that court action was only taken as a last resort in cases of persistent noncompliance, the BBC reports.

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