Chris Wieberg
director,
Water Protection Program
Missouri Department of Natural Resources
Dear Editor:
The recent News Tribune online article, titled “Moniteau County group divided over CAFO issue,” provided inaccurate information regarding water quality impacts from CAFOs. In the interest of accuracy and public understanding of these issues, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources would like to provide the following corrections and clarifications.
In response to a question during the meeting about how many drinking water wells had been affected by CAFOs in Missouri, Department representatives clearly stated that no CAFO has ever been linked to contaminant exceedances in a regulated public drinking water well. To clarify, this excludes non-regulated domestic or multi-family wells, for which the department has no data.
According to the article, department officials said there has not been one case of water pollution linked to a CAFO. In fact, there have been instances where CAFO facilities have inadvertently released waste that did impact surface waters, such as streams and rivers.