MANURE MINUTE

will treat all farms the same using similar monitoring requirements regardless of size and production style. The DEQ will hold several public meetings to get feedback from the community. The general permit is supposed to be finalized by July.

Illinois

Missouri

Two counties in Missouri filed an appeal to the state’s Supreme Court last month to overturn a law passed in 2019 that prohibits county commissioners from setting policies that are “inconsistent with or more stringent than” the state’s rules for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The commissioners for these two counties and several Missouri residents previously sued the state, saying the law and its 2021 update violated the state’s constitution, but they lost their case at the trial court level.

Late last month, State Senator Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago) filed a senate bill to extend the Partners for Conservation Fund, a program run through the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, through 2032. The funding for the program would rise from $10 million to more than $25 million over the next 10 years.

Illinois is one of 11 states in the Mississippi River basin that have pledged to develop strategies to reduce the amount of nutrients leaving their borders. The state set a goal to reduce nitrates and nitrogen runoff by 15% and phosphorus runoff by 25% before 2025. However, the most recent update from 2020 showed that nitrate/nitrogen loss rose by 13% and phosphorus loss grew by 35% compared to the baseline period of 1980 to 1996.