Senator Carter holds town hall meeting on new environmental laws in Missouri
Missouri State Senator Jill Carter held a public meeting on new environmental laws that were passed last year in the Show-Me State. The event was held at the Joplin Greenhouse and Coffee Shop at 2820 E. 32nd Street in Joplin.
“Land application of sludge is something we have been dealing with for quite a few years,” Carter said prior to the meeting. “We passed legislation passed last year. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is now promulgating the rules for that legislation.
“We’re trying to let everyone know we are engaged. I think this is our sixth or eighth town hall meeting.”
“We had a meeting in Jefferson City a few weeks ago,” Carter said. “Some of the companies that pick up industrial sludge were there. We had a conversation with the DNR to help our businesses, our partners and the community know what’s going on.”
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is currently promulgating the rules for the new laws, a process that has gone on for the last several months.
Carter said there were many challenges in getting the new laws passed last year but the greatest of those was fear:
“We had the producers afraid; you had the land appliers afraid; you hand the municipalities afraid. The farmers were afraid,” she said.
“It really was cattlemen standing up saying no, this is going to be good for us. It was us assuring other stakeholders in the capitol our goal wasn’t just to control or regulate those industries more than CAFOs,” Carter added.
Goals:
Educate citizens, landowners and farmers about land application;
Deter waste from outside Missouri;
Add bond requirements for manufacturers & companies land applying;
Implement testing and treatment of pathogens prior to land application;
Work with municipalities to include waste management and treatment in plans for industrial parks;
Encourage local municipalities to increase treatment capabilities with focus on accepting more waste from manufacturers and wastewater processing facilities;
Once proposed rules and regulations are passed, begin to address PFAS – so called “forever chemicals.”
Webb City Mayor Lynn Ragsdale was one of the area leaders in attendance at the Joplin town meeting. He said a major hurdle for the effort was attaining visibility:
“The people that had to smell it are the first people to really control,” Ragsdale said. “Then it moves to the state, our state. And now that it has moved all the way to the Governor’s desk, we really did start to see interest. And it’s slow, yes, but it is with the right people now.”
Once the proposed rules and regulations are passed, begin to address PFAS, so called “forever chemicals” that might be contained in the waste and wastewater. Missouri farmland has become a prime disposal site for untreated food manufacturing waste. While most would think this waste is trucked into landfills, it is instead applied to farmland. Until 2023 it was called fertilizer.
Food processing waste contains organic residues from spoilage, cleaning products, food materials and animal byproducts. Poultry byproducts commonly found in southwest Missouri and Arkansas often contain raw animal parts, blood and feathers that are transformed into a slurry.
An EPA assessment of poultry processing by products in 2023 state, “Contamination of viral Avian Influenza, Salmonella and Campylobacter bacteria are common in poultry by-products (P, Gerber, et al., 2008; P.J. Gerber, et al . . . “). Pathogens such as avian flu can survive for weeks on farmland exposing wildlife.
How could this happen?
The Missouri Fertilizer Board in July 2023 determined industrial waste did not qualify as fertilizer and unexpectedly discontinued permits for land applications. Land application was renamed waste disposal and regulatory responsibility moved to the Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR). The DNR was suddenly tasked with regulating an industry while simultaneously creating rules and regulations.
The DNR used “enforcement discretion” that left a chaotic situation for waste haulers, manufacturers, farmers and citizens. This lack of regulation made Missouri a more economical alternative for waste disposal than neighboring states. The DNR estimates almost one-half of the aste applied to Missouri fields is from outside the state and, until the Senator’s efforts in 2024, over one-half of Arkansas manufacturing waste was brought into Missouri and held in basins in Newton, McDonald & Macon Counties.
Senator Carter and the Newton McDonald County Cattlemen have led the charge to understand the waste disposal issues and the effects on environment, pass new legislation, push for completion of regulations and find long-term solutions.
The appearance by Senator Carter was co-sponsored by the Newton-McDonald Cattlemen Association.