Agriculture is Michigan’s second largest industry. It contributes $4 billion annually to the state’s economy. Michigan has 52,000 farms of which ninety-seven percent of these are family owned farms, many of which have been in the same family for generations.

Currently, legislators are putting our environment and our family farms at risk. They are pandering to the corporate CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) with legislation that would allow CAFOs to have absolutely NO environmental restrictions or oversight; in fact, it exempts the discharges of CAFO waste by defining the waste as "storm water." These corporate farms will be able to pollute with impunity, while victimizing family farmers and rural residents being poisoned by their “storm water” waste.

Michigan’s family farms and farming traditions need to be protected. Protected from corporate goliaths and their lobbyists and protected from irresponsible legislators. Michigan citizens, our Great Lakes, and our fragile environment need responsible legislation which will provide for protection from and the oversight of poor corporate farming practices.

For most family farmers in Michigan, farming is more than an industry, more than a business… it is a way of life.

Al is an ISO environmental compliance auditor for General Motors. He understands that self-auditing is like the old saying, “If the fox is watching the henhouse, who is watching the fox”. It is more believable that CAFO farms will look after their own interests, rather than the interests of their neighboring family farms and residents. Removing DEQ oversight is not only irresponsible at the moment; drafting legislation that re-classifies pollution as “storm water” is irresponsible for the future of Michigan and opens the doors to deregulate other known pollutants.

Examples of “Storm Water” pollutants