Prairie Rivers Network, Illinois Citizens for Clean Air & Water, and Environment Illinois have created a new IL Factory Farm Factsheet. Also known as CAFOs, factory farms can pose a number of risks to the streams and lakes of Illinois. Please see the factsheet for more information, including solutions that citizens can implement to make a difference. 

Prairie Rivers Network will be passing out these factsheets at the following upcoming presentations on factory farms. These presentations are being hosted by local Sierra Club groups and are open to the public:

March 22, 6:30pm, Lincoln Library Carnegie Room, Springfield

March 23, 6:30pm, Fairview Heights Library

March 28, 7:00pm, Robeson C, Champaign Public Library

Prairie Rivers Network’s Watershed Scientist, Stacy James, has been working with citizens across the state to win stricter rules on factory farm pollution.

Recently, she highlighted in a press release that Illinois EPA has committed to a number of significant policy changes in regulating factory farms. If implemented, these changes have the potential to improve on a serious and longstanding failure of environmental protections in Illinois: insufficient regulation of factory farms that pollute.

Read more from the press coverage of this important development:

Hog-Processing Plant in Beardstown Dumping Waste Into Illinois River

On a related topic, the press also recently covered a story where Stacy James discusses a hog-processing plant run by Cargill in Beardstown, where, according to the U.S. Toxics Release Inventory, dumps blood, feces and other waste into the Illinois River from the processing of 18,000 hogs a day.

Opinion Piece by Stacy James, Watershed Scientist

Published in the News-Gazette on November 14, 2010

If fish were people, we would still be mourning the mysterious death of tens of thousands of our fellow citizens. We wouldn’t just be talking about it in the break room. We would be making phone calls and demanding the perpetrator be caught. We would declare the incident an atrocity that should never happen again.

But fish aren’t people. And the 40,000 fish that died north of Mahomet over Labor Day weekend seem to have lost our attention. Out of sight is out of mind. Few of us actually saw their pale bodies floating in the remote waters of Lone Tree Creek and the Sangamon River. Thus, we are neither haunted nor motivated by the memory of what we experienced directly. And we have not been reminded by the media, which has been quiet since the initial story broke. The fact that the government investigation continues may be a sign that the culprit will not be caught. Yet the fish still have a story to tell. {Continue Reading »}

CHAMPAIGN, IL—In September 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a highly critical report highlighting a number of shortcomings in Illinois’ program to regulate factory farms. On November 1, Illinois EPA responded to the report by committing to a number of significant policy changes which, if implemented, have the potential to improve on a serious and longstanding failure of environmental protections in Illinois: insufficient regulation of factory farms that pollute. {Continue Reading »}

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) recently referred a water pollution matter to the Attorney General’s office. Prairie Rivers Network is pleased by the referral, which should result in the State taking significant enforcement action against the polluter.   

On October 1, a stream turned purple in rural Jo Daviess County. The stream, a tributary to the South Fork of the Apple River, originates just downhill of where a new mega-dairy is under construction. Local residents took pictures of the purple water and notified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Staff from Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) inspected the site later that day. The IEPA is awaiting the results of water samples, which will identify any pollutants in the water.  {Continue Reading »}