In Eastern Oregon, a city called Salem made national news over labor day in 2018 for its contaminated water. Four days after scientists detected algal bloom toxicity in the city’s water port of entry, Salem officials took the Oregon Health Authority’s advice to heart and issued a water warning on their website. Days later, there were bottled water shortages, an inevitable result of inadequate planning for vulnerable populations impacted by deadly tap water. Although the city lifted its advisory soon after, the toxic algal blooms continued to form in the Detroit Lake reservoir, and in less than a week had posted another advisory. The toxicity made its way through the filtration system and fed into the Salem’s water supply, threatening liver and nervous system damage in Salem’s inhabitants (Department of Environmental Quality : Harmful Algal Blooms : Water Quality : State of Oregon, n.d.). This has since become an annual problem for residents. Addressing the problem is multifaceted and complicated by ego, political leanings, and of course, money. The problem of toxic algal blooms in Oregon is a problem of a barely regulated dairy industry clogging groundwater with nitrogen-rich cow manure. In March of 2017 (15 months prior to the record-breaking water contamination in Salem) a megadairy “farm” just outside Salem city limits wracked up a $5,700 fine for violating its pollution permit (Loew, 2017).
We can learn from Salem’s water crisis not only how to better monitor harmful algal blooms and how to ensure public health, but how to prevent them in the first place by regulating Caged Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) as industrial instead of farming, thus forcing these mega-polluters to adhere to EPA standards that farms are able to evade.
Let’s back up.
3. What is a harmful algal bloom?
Cyanotoxins, or cyanobacteria, are not true algaes at all, but are microscopic organisms that can rapidly multiply in warm, nutrient-rich water, specifically nutrients that come from agricultural runoff. These bacteria multiply and cause blue-green algal blooms, which “steal” oxygen from other life forms and create toxins that poison fish, livestock, pets and humans. These toxic blooms can be fatal, especially for dogs and other animals. (Blue-Green Algae and Harmful Algal Blooms, n.d.) In Salem’s case, 2018 was the first instance where toxicity from the algal blooms in a reservoir made it through the city’s filtration system, the cyanotoxin levels at 6.96 parts per billion. The advisory level for children and immunocompromised people (pregnant people, the elderly, those with cancer, etc.) is just .7 parts per billion.
As climate change warms Oregon’s aging reservoirs, blue-green algal blooms are becoming more prevalent (Blue-Green Algae to Become More Prevalent, Experts Say, 2018). Posted signs warning recreationists of harmful algal blooms have become nearly commonplace at Oregon lake trailheads in late summers, detailing the deadly effects of these blooms and how to avoid them without explaining how they’re formed. Although a quick public service announcement is necessarily uncontroversial, to truly address and prevent these ever-increasing blooms we need to talk about their cause. In the case of dangerous algal blooms in Oregon, that inconvenient cause is the “Megadairy”: a tricky-to-define caged animal feeding operation (CAFO) that has more than tripled the number of cows in Oregon over the last thirty years (Chronicle, 2022). It is not just the methane-burping air pollution effects of cows to address but the literal tons of cow poop these industries can’t recycle fast enough. These “lagoons” of manure seep into groundwater and flood into lakes and rivers already warmed by increasingly hot and early-starting summers, thus providing the perfect environment for HABs to form.
4. Who’s most impacted by HABs?
Since mega-dairies need land and limited opposing voices, they are situated in rural areas, where the human population is often poor and without the means to fight back for clean water and healthy air. The people most affected by the harmful effects of these algal blooms are already marginalized.
It isn’t just dogs dying in Oregon lakes; harmful algal blooms kill fish and other wildlife with gusto. In fact, in 2020 a harmful algal bloom in Oregon caused the deaths of over one thousand carp. (Summary Report – One Health Harmful Algal Bloom System (OHHABS), United States, 2020 | CDC, 2022). The impacts of HABs on industries like fish hatcheries and tourism is far-reaching as well. Fish die-offs in hatcheries means less food for humans, and industries that rely on tourism suffer when the sought-after lakes are unsafe to swim or boat in. (Gunther, 2015) In 2017, an Oregon rancher watched 32 of his cattle die after drinking cyanobacteria-contaminated water, a bitter irony. (Press, 2017).
5. How to address the root cause of Harmful Algal Blooms
The public health model differs from the medical model in this; we focus on sustainable, long-term solutions to illness and seek to eliminate their causes. We don’t simply treat an acute symptom. In keeping with that mentality, preventing harmful algal bloom toxicity is not about urging residents to avoid Oregon lakes in summertime, it's about ridding our state of the blight that is the unregulated megadairy. The symptom is cyanobacteria overgrowth; the disease is the megadairy. The “Got Milk” campaign had a twenty-three million dollar a year marketing budget for. (Got Milk?, n.d.), while time and again animal agriculture (specifically CAFOs and other large-scale factory farming operations) have been proven to be detrimental to the environment and human health.
There are at least four megadairies in the immediate vicinity of Salem, Oregon, but the largest dairy CAFO in the state is a 70,000 cow monstrosity called Threemile Canyon Farm, located in Boardman, a town which unsurprisingly and continually earns an “F” from the American Lung Association for high ozone days (Stenvick, 2019). Because of Oregon’s controversial “right to farm” act, these dairies and other CAFOs skirt accountability by prohibiting the state from enacting environmental restrictions on farming operations, no matter how far from the concept of a “farm” these force-fed, painfully confined animals truly are.
We are not helpless, however, and we are not doomed. Societal outcry and organized efforts to address the devastating impacts dairy farms have on Oregon’s water have made recent waves in local legislature.
One policy that could be enacted to combat agriculture-induced nitrogen pollution (and therefore HABs in our water supply) is Oregon House Bill 2667, which would prohibit licensure for new industrial confined feeding operations as well as expansion of existing CAFOs. (HB2667 2023 Regular Session - Oregon Legislative Information System, n.d.) This bill declares the state of CAFO-caused air and water pollution an emergency, and implores elected officials to act. While it will probably be reviewed, amended, and whittled away to submission, it's a start.
After years of advocacy, education, and mobilization, environmentalists and social justice activists have finally made progress in the battle for CAFO regulations. On July 31, 2023, Governor Tina Kotek signed Senate Bill 85 into state law, which requires those who’d open or expand a CAFO in Oregon to apply for water use permit by submitting an official plan to the Oregon Department of Water Resources, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Environmental Quality. (Oregon SB85 | 2023 | Regular Session, n.d.) This law also allocates funding to the department of agriculture as well as the department of environmental quality for testing as reporting on water safety, alleviating a financial hurdle often cited as the primary crux in water safety regulations.
SB85 shows us there is hope in combating CAFO-caused water toxicity, and that progress is possible. The US dairy industry is a multi-billion dollar lobbying power, but it is not all-powerful. Through undeterred advocacy for safe drinking water and clean healthy air we can stand up to the industries that poison us. Voting for environmentally-conscious public servants is a huge step in preventing illness from Harmful Algal Blooms.
References
Blue-green algae to become more prevalent, experts say. (2018). DRC News & Resources. Retrieved July 22, 2023, from https://www.deschutesriver.org/blog/news/blue-green-algae-to-become-more-prevalent-experts-say/
Chronicle, A. B. O. C. (2022, November 10). Oregon environmental commission rules out air pollution regulations for large dairies. Salem Reporter. https://www.salemreporter.com/2022/11/10/oregon-environmental-commission-rules-out-air-pollution-regulations-for-large-dairies/
Department of Environmental Quality : Harmful Algal Blooms : Water Quality : State of Oregon. (n.d.). Retrieved August 22, 2023, from https://www.oregon.gov/deq/wq/pages/harmful-algal-blooms.aspx
got milk? (n.d.). ANA Educational Foundation. Retrieved August 5, 2023, from https://aef.com/classroom-resources/case-histories/got-milk/
Gunther, T. (2015, December 15). Economic impact of algae blooms. LG Sonic. https://www.lgsonic.com/economic-impact-of-algae-blooms/
Loew, T. (2017). Volbeda Farms dairy fined for violating pollution permit. Statesman Journal. Retrieved August 22, 2023, from https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/tech/science/environment/2017/03/02/volbeda-farms-dairy-behind-salems-willamette-valley-cheese-co-has-been-fined-violating-water-pollution-permit/98650854/
Oregon SB85 | 2023 | Regular Session. (n.d.). LegiScan. Retrieved August 20, 2023, from https://legiscan.com/OR/bill/SB85/2023
Press, B. A. H. C. (2017, July 12). Blue-green algae bloom kills 32 cattle in S. Oregon. Capital Press. https://www.capitalpress.com/state/oregon/blue-green-algae-bloom-kills-32-cattle-in-s-oregon/article_2bc261d3-417a-54aa-b39e-7d2a7a452304.html
Stenvick, B. (2019). Oregon’s Largest Dairy Farm Wants to Cash In On Cow Shit. Environmental Groups Are Calling BS. Portland Mercury. Retrieved August 20, 2023, from https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2019/04/30/26407016/oregons-largest-dairy-farm-wants-to-cash-in-on-cow-shit-environmental-groups-are-calling-bs
Summary Report – One Health Harmful Algal Bloom System (OHHABS), United States, 2020 | CDC. (2022, October 21). https://www.cdc.gov/habs/data/2020-ohhabs-data-summary.html