As a result, livestock produce thirteen times more solid waste than the human population does in the United States.55 To cope with the tens of millions of gallons of excreta they produce, farmers mix it with water and then pump it into untreated, multi-acre cesspools (“manure lagoons”). This wastewater is sprayed on crops, but since local croplands can’t absorb it all, it leaches into the groundwater and runs off into the surface waters.
