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Supreme Beef Manure
Supreme Beef LLC is an industrial meat production facility finishing 11,600 head of cattle per year. A byproduct of confined cattle production is manure. Lots of manure! The manure calculation in the Nutrient Management Plan (NMP) submitted by Supreme Beef LLC and approved by the DNR is based upon 6.5 gal/day/head. This is for cattle averaging 900 pounds and comes from the standard table found in DNR guidance and in the Iowa Administrative Code. This calculates to 6.5 x 365 x 11600 = 27.5 million gallons per year (MGY) of manure. Cow manure “as excreted” is 92% water.
The Table also lists 7.2 gal/day/head for cattle averaging 1000 lb. This was used in three previous NMPs submitted by Walz Energy aka Supreme Beef and calculates to 7.2 x 365 x 11600 = 30.5 MGY of manure. In the section about water withdrawal needs we provide data and calculations suggesting that the average weight per cow could be as high as 1150 lb; this would correlate with 8.3 gal/day/head and would calculate to 8.3 x 365 x 11600 = 35.1 MGY of manure. In the tables and charts we provide in “AFO Manure Within Five Mile Radius” we use the conservative table value of 7.2 gal/day/head. AFO locations were obtained from DNR Facility Explorer, and animal numbers from the DNR AFO database. Click here for the larger map.
In full operation, Supreme Beef LLC will increase the following within a five-mile radius:
AFO animal units times 2.1
AFO manure times 3.8
Manure N times 3.2
Manure P (P2O5) times 2.8
This manure will be used or disposed of on surrounding fields, predominantly slopes designated by NRCS as “highly erodible land” (HEL). Because animal manure is injected as a slurry, much of the organic content bound in suspended particles will be captured temporarily by the top few feet of soil. But the liquid component containing pathogens and all of the dissolved solids, salts, ammonia, nitrates, and water-soluble forms of phosphorous in the manure, will percolate through permeable soil to karst – fractured limestone and dolomite – directly into the shallow aquifer that still supplies many wells and is the primary source of recharge to streams. If it rains after spreading, much of the manure will runoff to surface waters or directly into sinkholes.
Supreme Beef LLC manure comparison with Monona
The average person excretes128 gms/day feces (74.6% water) and 1.42 L/day urine (96% water), totaling 1.548 L/day manure (94% water). This is 0.41 gallons of manure /day/person. (From Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology “The Characterization of Feces and Urine” Crit Rev Environ Sci Technol 2015 Sept 2; 45(17): 1827-1879)
Finishing cattle (1000 lb avg) produce 7.2 gallons of manure /day/head. Therefore cattle produce 17.5 times more manure per unit than people.
The average person uses 100 gpd of water. But from a disposal perspective, most of that is “grey water” from washing, flushing toilets, doing laundry; things cows don’t do. So it’s true from a water withdrawal perspective that if cows need 10 gpd, each human uses 10 times as much water as each cow. But the entire population of Monona (1500 people) produces only 225,000 gallons of manure per year. And Monona’s manure receives extensive treatment before being released into the environment. Supreme Beef LLC cattle will produce 30,500,000 gallons of manure per year; 135 times more than the City of Monona! None of it receives treatment before being released into the environment.