State and federal proposals to regulate and restrict medication abortion are expected to continue in 2026 as abortion opponents claim, without strong evidence, that abortion medication is dangerous to patients and the environment. (Getty Images)

Going into the fourth year without federal abortion rights protections, groups that helped overturn Roe v. Wade are focused on cutting off access to abortion pills. As multiple lawsuits over the abortion drug mifepristone unfold, state and federal proposals to regulate and restrict medication abortion are expected to continue in 2026. Abortion opponents argue that medication abortion, despite its strong safety record, is dangerous to patients and the environment.

Abortion bans are largely unpopular, but heading into a midterm election year, some lawmakers in states with strict abortion bans have already prefiled bills to add new restrictions. Here’s a look at early legislative trends emerging in abortion-related bills recently introduced or prefiled ahead of the new year.

Proposals to restrict abortion pill or study environmental effects

Over the last few years, the national anti-abortion group Students for Life of America has spread unfounded claims that mifepristone pollutes U.S. waterways and drinking water, drafted model legislation to regulate the disposal of medication abortions, and requested environmental studies at the federal and state level. 

In 2025, lawmakers in at least seven states introduced bills to create environmental restrictions for the abortion drug mifepristone or order environmental studies. Bills introduced this year in Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming would have required testing community water systems for traces of mifepristone. 

Bills in Maine, Montana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming would have required providers to give patients medical waste kits to collect and return the tissue following a medication abortion. Women commonly flush the tissue associated with medication abortion and miscarriages, which typically occur during the first trimester. 

These bills, except Pennsylvania’s, would have also mandated in-person dispensing of the medication and follow-ups, effectively banning telehealth abortion. 

None of these proposals passed, but they are likely to be reintroduced in 2026 as abortion opponents continue to push for environmental regulation of abortion pills, including at the federal level. 

In June, 25 congressional Republicans sent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a letter inquiring about potential avenues for regulating mifepristone, as the New York Times reported. And as Politico recently reported, Students For Life lobbied the agency to add mifepristone to its recently updated list of contaminants that utilities will have to track in drinking water. It’s too late to include a new drug on the list, which is updated every five years. 

But according to Politico, EPA staffers advised anti-abortion activists to use an upcoming public comment period to drum up requests that the agency include active metabolites in mifepristone. The EPA collects nationwide data on the chemicals on this list, which could be used to set future federal limits.  

Fetal wrongful death bills 

In Florida, where abortion is banned at six weeks’ gestation, lawmakers recently advanced HB 289 ahead of the 2026 session, which would allow parents to file wrongful death lawsuits for the loss of a developing fetus and to claim damages for mental pain and loss of support. Its companion bill, SB 164, filed for the third year in a row by Republican Sen. Erin Grall, faces an uphill battle in the Florida Senate, reported the Florida Phoenix, which noted that jurors could be asked to consider the salary the fetus could have earned over its life as part of damages to which parents could be entitled. 

Groups opposing the legislation as far-reaching and likely to increase liability exposure for OB-GYNs who specialize in high-risk pregnancies include the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the Florida Justice Reform Institute and the Doctors Company, the nation’s largest physician-owned medical malpractice carrier.

One of the bill’s leading champions, Andrew Shirvell, founder and executive director of Florida Voice for the Unborn, told state House Judiciary Committee members they should continue expanding “civil remedies afforded under Florida law to hold accountable those who continue to take the lives of unborn children illegally in our state.”

Another bill, HB 663, would allow a family member to sue someone for providing or attempting to provide an abortion up to two years after the fact with up to $100,000 in damages, even if the woman consented or if the abortion was performed in another state or country where the procedure is legal.

Attempts to overturn or skirt abortion rights ballot measures 

Even though Missouri voters in 2024 approved an amendment to protect abortion rights in the state constitution, broad access has not returned to the state. Between January and October, there were only 80 in-clinic abortion procedures in Missouri, according to state data, with an additional 79 abortions in hospitals and identified as medical emergencies.

A trial in January could determine whether Missouri’s anti-abortion laws violate the voter-approved amendment. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have put a new constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot that would ban nearly all abortions in the state with limited exceptions.   

In 2023, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights through fetal viability, and prohibiting the state from interfering with or penalizing someone for exercising that right. But Republicans have been advancing anti-abortion bills to create restrictions that make accessing abortion more difficult without directly flouting the amendment. 

During this legislative session, which ends Dec. 31, state Sen. Kyle Koehler introduced SB 309, which could add steps to accessing medication abortion and would require doctors to deliver a state-mandated script about the dangers of mifepristone. It would also allow patients, their parents if they’re underage, or the father of the fetus  to sue if they feel the patient was uninformed when taking the pill.

In November, the Ohio House passed HB 485, which would require students in fifth through 12th grade to watch either a “Meet Baby Oliva” fetal development video created by the national anti-abortion group Live Action, or a similar video. Live Action’s video has been criticized by reproductive health advocates for not being fully medically accurate or comprehensive. Similar bills have been introduced in dozens of states this year, and have been enacted in Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota and Tennessee. 

Abortion records privacy

Privacy concerns around reproductive health in the post-Roe era persist nationally. Lawmakers in states that protect abortion rights continue to try to shore up medical and data privacy protections for abortion, which is almost completely illegal in more than a dozen states. 

In Indiana, where the legislative session began in December, Sen. La Keisha Jackson introduced SB 109. Under the measure, a health care provider’s report about an abortion submitted to the Indiana health department as a medical record would be confidential and not subject to disclosure as a public record. In a state lawsuit brought by two OB-GYNs from Indianapolis, an appeals court in December upheld the privacy of these records, known as terminated pregnancy reports.

In Washington state, Democratic lawmakers are still drafting legislation that would regulate license plate readers following reports that authorities in Texas searched thousands of cameras, as far as Washington and Illinois, to find a woman they believed had a self-administered medication abortion. 

Calling for forced vasectomies for convicted rapists

State abortion restrictions typically hold health providers liable, but women have been jailed or prosecuted for their pregnancy outcomes. One Democratic lawmaker in Alabama, where abortion is banned throughout pregnancy except to save the pregnant person’s life, has introduced legislation that comes with steep penalties for men convicted of rape or incest that resulted in pregnancy. 

Democratic Rep. Juandalynn Givan’s prefiled HB 46 would authorize abortion to preserve the health of the mother or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. It would also require men convicted of rape or incest to pay for the abortion, and undergo either vasectomy or castration, as determined by the court. As the Alabama Reflector reported, the bill is unlikely to be considered, but for Givan it’s really about starting a broader conversation of bodily autonomy. 

“We have already set a double standard,” Givan said. “Have you seen a bill crafted that tells a man what he cannot … do with his body? You have not, outside of the standard laws that speaks to rape and incest, and we already know that that is definitely a crime.”

Anticipated federal policy decisions during Trump’s second year 

In his first year back in office, President Donald Trump rescinded many of the Biden-era policies intended to expand abortion access, including the previous administration’s interpretation that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act covers abortions necessary to save a pregnant person’s life even in a state that has banned abortion.

More major federal policy decisions around abortion are anticipated in 2026. The Food and Drug Administration agreed to review mifepristone’s safety, but abortion opponents recently called for FDA Commissioner Martin Makary to be fired, accusing him of slow-walking the review until after the midterm elections in November. 

Just a few months before that, in July, a controversial Medicaid policy effectively defunding Planned Parenthood clinics and other nonprofit clinics that provide abortions, is slated to expire. Whether Republicans will renew the funding restriction or let it lapse — allowing the nation’s largest network of reproductive health clinics to continue serving Medicaid patients for services unrelated to abortion — remains to be seen.

President George W. Bush holds an ear of corn during a 2004 campaign stop at a farmer’s market in Davenport, Iowa. America’s corn industry has become a political force, courted by presidential hopefuls and protected by both parties. Corn production has surged in recent decades. But the fertilizer used to grow it is warming the planet and contaminating water, researchers have found. (Tim Sloan / AFP via Getty Images)

This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here. 

For decades, corn has reigned over American agriculture. It sprawls across 90 million acres — about the size of Montana — and goes into everything from livestock feed and processed foods to the ethanol blended into most of the nation’s gasoline. 

But a growing body of research reveals that America’s obsession with corn has a steep price: The fertilizer used to grow it is warming the planet and contaminating water.

Corn is essential to the rural economy and to the world’s food supply, and researchers say the problem isn’t the corn itself. It’s how we grow it. 

Corn farmers rely on heavy fertilizer use to sustain today’s high yields. And when that nitrogen breaks down in the soil, it releases nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Producing nitrogen fertilizer also emits large amounts of carbon dioxide, adding to its climate footprint.

Agriculture accounts for more than 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and corn uses more than two-thirds of all nitrogen fertilizer nationwide — making it the leading driver of agricultural nitrous oxide emissions, studies show.

The corn and ethanol industries insist that rapid growth in ethanol — which now consumes more than 40% of the U.S. corn crop —  is a net environmental benefit, and they strongly dispute research suggesting otherwise.

Since 2000, U.S. corn production has surged almost 50%, further adding to the crop’s climate impact. 

Yet the environmental costs of corn rarely make headlines or factor into political debates. Much of the dynamic traces back to federal policy — and to the powerful corn and ethanol lobby that helped shape it. 

The Renewable Fuel Standard, passed in the mid 2000s, required that gasoline be blended with ethanol, a biofuel that in the United States comes almost entirely from corn. That mandate drove up demand and prices for corn, spurring farmers to plant more of it. 

Many plant corn year after year on the same land. The practice, called “continuous corn,” demands massive amounts of nitrogen fertilizer and drives especially high nitrous oxide emissions. 

At the same time, federal subsidies make it more lucrative to grow corn than to diversify. Taxpayers have covered more than $50 billion in corn insurance premiums over the past 30 years, according to federal data compiled by the Environmental Working Group.

Researchers say proven conservation steps — such as planting rows of trees, shrubs and grasses in corn fields — could sharply reduce these emissions. But the Trump administration has eliminated many of the incentives that helped farmers try such practices. 

Experts say it all raises a larger question: If America’s most widely planted crop is worsening climate change, shouldn’t we begin growing it a different way?

How corn took over America

Corn has been a staple of U.S. agriculture for centuries, first domesticated by Native Americans and later used by European immigrants as a versatile crop for food and animal feed. Its production really took off in the 2000s after federal mandates and incentives helped turn much of America’s corn crop into ethanol.

Corn’s dominance — and the emissions that come with it — didn’t happen by accident. It was built through a high-dollar lobbying campaign that continues today.

In the late 1990s, America’s corn farmers were in trouble. Prices had cratered amid a global grain glut and the Asian financial crisis. A 1999 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said crop prices had hit “rock bottom.”

In 2001 and 2002, the federal government gave corn farmers and ethanol producers a boost — first through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bioenergy Program, which paid ethanol producers to increase their use of farm commodities for fuel. Then the 2002 Farm Bill created programs that continue to support ethanol and other renewable energy.

Corn growers soon after mounted an all-out campaign in Washington. Their goal: persuade Congress to require gasoline to be blended with ethanol. State and national grower groups lobbied relentlessly, pitching ethanol as a way to cut greenhouse gasses, reduce oil dependence and revive rural economies.

“We got down to a couple of votes in Congress, and the corn growers were united like never before,” recalled Jon Doggett, then the industry’s chief lobbyist, in an article published by the National Corn Growers Association. “I started receiving calls from Capitol Hill saying, ‘Would you have your growers stop calling us? We are with you.’ I had not seen anything like it before and haven’t seen anything like it since.”

Their persistence paid off. In 2005, Congress created the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires that a certain amount of ethanol be blended into U.S. gasoline each year. Two years later, lawmakers expanded it further. The policy transformed the market: The amount of corn used for ethanol domestically has more than tripled in the past 20 years.

When demand for corn spiked as a result of the RFS, it pushed up prices worldwide, said Tim Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. The result, Searchinger said, is that more land around the world got cleared to grow corn. That, in turn, resulted in more emissions. 

That lobbying brought clout. “King Corn” became a political force, courted by presidential hopefuls and protected by both parties. Since 2010, national corn and ethanol trade groups have spent more than $55 million on lobbying and millions more on political donations, according to campaign finance records analyzed by Floodlight. 

In 2024 alone, those trade groups spent twice as much on lobbying as the National Rifle Association. Major industry players — Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and ethanol giant POET among them — have poured even more into Washington, ensuring the sector’s voice remains one of the loudest in U.S. agriculture.

Now those same groups are pushing for the next big prize: expanding higher-ethanol gasoline blends and positioning ethanol-based jet fuel as aviation’s “low-carbon” future.

Research undercuts ethanol’s clean-fuel claims

Corn and ethanol trade groups didn’t make their officials available for interviews.

But on their websites and in their literature, they have promoted corn ethanol as a climate-friendly fuel. 

The Renewable Fuels Association cites government and university research that finds burning ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 40-50% compared with gasoline. The ethanol industry says the climate critics have it wrong — and that most of the corn used for fuel comes from better yields and smarter farming, not from plowing up new land. The amount of fertilizer required to produce a bushel of corn has dropped sharply in recent decades, they say.

“Ethanol reduces carbon emissions, removing the carbon equivalent of 12 million cars from the road each year,” according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

Growth Energy, a major ethanol trade group, said in a written statement that U.S. farmers and biofuel producers are “constantly finding new ways to make their operations more efficient and more environmentally beneficial,” using things like cover crops to reduce their carbon footprint.

But some research tells a different story.

A recent Environmental Working Group report finds that the way corn is grown in much of the Midwest — with the same fields planted in corn year after year — carries a heavy climate cost.

Research in 2022 by agricultural land use expert Tyler Lark and colleagues links the Renewable Fuel Standard to expanded corn cultivation, heavier fertilizer use, worsening water pollution and increased emissions. Scientists typically convert greenhouse gasses like nitrous oxide and methane into their carbon-dioxide equivalents — or carbon intensity — so their warming impacts can be compared on the same scale.

“The carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher,” the authors concluded.

Lark’s research has been disputed by scientists at Argonne National Laboratory, Purdue University and the University of Illinois, who published a formal rebuttal arguing the study relied on “questionable assumptions” and faulty modeling — a charge Lark’s team has rejected.

A 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the RFS was unlikely to meet its greenhouse gas goals because the U.S. relies predominantly on corn ethanol and produces relatively little of the cleaner, advanced biofuels made from waste. 

The problem isn’t just emissions, researchers say. Corn ethanol requires millions of acres that could instead be used for food crops or more efficient energy sources. One recent study found that solar panels can generate as much energy as corn ethanol on roughly 3% of the land. 

“It’s just a terrible use of land,” Searchinger, the Princeton researcher, said of ethanol. “And you can’t solve climate change if you’re going to make such terrible use of land.”

Most of the country’s top crop isn’t feeding people. More than 40% of U.S. corn goes to ethanol. A similar amount is used to feed livestock, and just 12% ends up as food or in other uses.

As corn production rises, so have emissions 

Globally, corn production doubled from 2000 to 2021. 

That growth has been fueled by fertilizer, which emits nitrous oxide that can linger in the atmosphere for more than a century. That eats away at the ozone layer, which blocks most of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.

Global emissions have soared alongside corn production. Between 1980 and 2020, nitrous oxide emissions from human activity climbed 40%, the Global Carbon project found. 

In the United States, nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture in 2022 were equal to roughly 262 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA’s inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s equivalent to putting almost 56 million passenger cars on the road.

The biggest increases are coming straight from the Corn Belt.

Ethanol’s climate footprint isn’t the only concern. The nitrogen used to grow corn and other crops is also a key source of drinking water pollution.

According to a new report by the Alliance for the Great Lakes and Clean Wisconsin, more than 90% of nitrate contamination in Wisconsin’s groundwater is linked to agricultural sources — mostly synthetic fertilizer and manure. 

The same analysis estimates that in 2022, farmers applied more than 16 million pounds of nitrogen beyond what crops needed, sending runoff into wells, streams and other water systems.

For families like Tyler Frye’s, that hits close to home. In 2022, Frye and his wife moved into a new home in the rural village of Casco, Wisconsin, about 20 miles east of Green Bay. A free test soon afterward found their well water had nitrate levels more than twice the EPA’s safe limit. “We were pretty shocked,” he said. 

Frye installed a reverse-osmosis system in the basement and still buys bottled water for his wife, who is breastfeeding their daughter, born in July.

One likely culprit, he suspects, are the cornfields less than 200 yards from his home.

“Crops like corn require a lot of nitrogen,” he said. “A lot of that stuff, I assume, is getting into the well water and surface water.”

When he watches manure or fertilizer being spread on nearby fields, he said, one question nags him: “Where does that go?”

What cleaner corn could look like

Reducing corn’s climate footprint is possible — but the farmers trying to do it are swimming against the policy tide.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, backed by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, strips out the provisions of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that had rewarded farmers for climate-friendly practices.

And in April, Trump’s USDA canceled the $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative, a grant program designed to promote farming and forestry practices to improve soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The agency said that the program’s administrative costs meant too little money was reaching farmers, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins dismissed it as part of the “green new scam.” 

University of Iowa professor Silvia Secchi said the rollback of the Climate-Smart program has already given farmers “cold feet” about adopting conservation practices. “The impact of this has been devastating,” said Secchi, a natural resources economist who teaches at the university’s School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability.

Research shows what’s possible if farmers had support. In its recent report, the Environmental Working Group found that four proven conservation practices — including planting trees, shrubs and hedgerows in corn fields — could make a measurable difference. 

Implementing those practices on just 4% of continuous corn acres across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin would cut total greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking more than 850,000 gasoline cars off the road, EWG found.

Despite setbacks at the federal level, some farmers are already showing what a more climate-friendly Corn Belt could look like.

In northern Iowa, Wendy Johnson farms 1,200 acres of corn and soybeans with her father. On 130 of those acres, she’s trying something different: She’s planting fruit and nut trees, organic grains, shrubs and other plants that need little or no nitrogen fertilizer.

“The more perennials we can have on the ground, the better it is for the climate,” she said.

Across the rest of the farm, they enrich the soil by rotating crops and planting cover crops. They’ve also converted less productive parts of the fields into “prairie strips” — bands of prairie grass that store carbon and require no fertilizer.

Under the now-cancelled Climate-Smart grant program, they were supposed to receive technical assistance and about $20,000 a year to expand those practices. The grant program was terminated before they got any of the money.

“It’s hard to take risks on your own,” Johnson said. “That’s where federal support really helps. Because agriculture is a high-risk occupation.”

The economics still favor business as usual. Johnson knows that many Midwestern corn growers feel pressure to maximize yields, keeping them hooked on corn — and nitrogen fertilizer. 

“I think a lot of farmers around here are very allergic to trees,” she joked. 

In southeast Iowa, sixth-generation farmer Levi Lyle, who mixes organic and conventional methods across 290 acres, uses a three-year rotation, extensive cover crops and a technique called roller-crimping — flattening rye each spring to create a mulch that suppresses weeds, feeds the soil and reduces fertilizer needs. 

“The roller crimping of cover crops is a huge, huge opportunity to sequester more carbon, improve soil health, save money on chemicals and still get a similar yield,” he said.

But farmers get few government incentives to take such climate-friendly steps, Lyle said. “There is a lack of seriousness about supporting farmers to implement these new practices,” he said. 

And without federal programs to offset the risk, the innovations that Lyle and Johnson are trying remain exceptions — not the norm.

Many farmers still see prairie strips or patches of trees as a waste, said Luke Gran, whose company helps Iowa farmers establish perennials.

“My eyes do not lie,” Gran said. “I have not seen extensive change to cover cropping or tillage across the broad acreage of this state that I love.”

The next corn boom?

Despite mounting research about corn’s climate costs, industry groups are pushing for policies to  boost ethanol demand. 

One big priority: Pushing a bill to require that new cars are able to run on gas with more ethanol than what’s commonly sold today.

Corn and biofuel trade groups have also been pressing Democrats and Republicans in Congress for legislation to pave the way for ethanol-based jet fuel. While use of such “sustainable” aviation fuel is still in its early stages domestically, corn and biofuel associations have made developing a market for it a top policy priority. 

Secchi, the Iowa professor, says it’s easy to see why ethanol producers are trying to expand their market: The growth in electric vehicles threatens long-term gasoline sales.

Researchers warn that producing enough ethanol-based jet fuel could trigger major land-use shifts. A 2024 World Resources Institute analysis found that meeting the federal goal of 35 billion gallons of ethanol jet fuel would require about 114 million acres of corn — roughly 20% more corn acreage than the U.S. already plants for all purposes. That surge in demand, the authors concluded, would push up food prices and worsen hunger.

Secchi calls that scenario a climate and land-use “disaster.” Large-scale use of ethanol-based aviation fuel, she said, would mean clearing even more land and pouring on even more nitrogen fertilizer, driving up greenhouse gas emissions. 

“The result,” she said, “would be essentially to enshrine this dysfunctional system that we created.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. 

The shore of Lake Superior near Ashland. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

A rule to protect Wisconsin’s cleanest waterways from being harmed was finalized last week over the objections of Republican legislators and allied lobbying groups. 

The rule highlights the ongoing dispute between the Legislature and the administration of Gov. Tony Evers over the level of oversight legislators are allowed to have over the administrative rulemaking process. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling that curtailed the ability of the Legislature to kill administrative rules. 

The new rule, which was published in the state’s administrative register Nov. 24 and is set to go into effect July 1, is the result of a decade of wrangling. 

In 2015, the U.S. EPA updated the Clean Water Act’s antidegradation regulations — which guide how states are required to protect high quality lakes and rivers from pollution. 

Dozens of creeks, rivers and lakes are classified as outstanding resource waters and exceptional resource waters under Wisconsin’s administrative code and will be protected as “high quality waters” under the new rule. Additionally, a body of water can be considered a high quality water if it has contaminant levels that are better than an established statewide standard. 

“This means that a waterbody can be high quality for one or more parameters, even if it is impaired for a different parameter,” Laura Dietrich, manager of the Department of Natural Resources’ water evaluation section, said in an email. “For example, a waterbody may be impaired for phosphorus, but chloride levels are better than the chloride water quality criterion. The waterbody would be considered high quality for the purposes of considering new or increased discharges of chloride, but would not be high quality for phosphorus.” 

Under the new rule, the DNR will be required to conduct a review before regulated entities are allowed to discharge new or increased levels of contaminants into the water body. Discharges may be allowed if found to be necessary through a “social or economic analysis.”

The rule’s finalization is the end of a process that began in 2023 and has included multiple public hearings and the input of several legislative committees. 

Last month, the Assembly committee on the environment voted 4-2 to request modifications to the rule, but the DNR and the Evers administration moved forward with finalizing the rule anyway. 

That action has angered Republicans who want more say in the process. 

“Representative government has been taken away and we now have rule by king,” Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) said in a statement. “We don’t want a king and the current path forward is dangerous.”

Lobbying groups have also complained about the rule’s finalization. 

Scott Manley, a lobbyist for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business group, told Wisconsin Public Radio that the rule going into effect is “terrible from a representative government standpoint.” 

Erik Kanter, government relations director with Clean Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner that he thinks the rule represents the DNR finding a solid compromise between environmental and business concerns and that WMC was involved in the entire process through an advisory committee. 

“DNR engaged the stakeholder group regularly over the 30-month process it took to put the rule together at the DNR, and so WMC, along the way, had all the opportunity, and certainly took the opportunity, to make their thoughts [known] on how to put this rule together,” Kanter said. “It almost feels like it was never going to be enough for WMC.” 

Kanter also said that because the rule aligns the state with the EPA regulations, the state doesn’t have a choice if it wants to retain regulatory authority over its own water. 

“Wisconsin has to do this. We have to update our own rules to comply with federal changes to the Clean Water Act,” he said. “There’s no two ways about it if we want to maintain our delegation authority and have state regulators in charge of administering the Clean Water Act. It’s something we have to do.”

The alternative would be for the federal EPA to administer the act in Wisconsin, he said. 

“I think a lot of folks in the business community wouldn’t want EPA and the federal government breathing down their neck,” Kanter said. “And so this delegated authority situation is, I think, better for everybody.”

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State environmental regulators can require large livestock farms to obtain permits that seek to prevent manure spills and protect state waters, a state appeals court has ruled. 

Last year, a Calumet County judge ruled in favor of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in a case challenging the agency’s authority to require permits for concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs. Those farms have at least 1,000 animal units or the equivalent of 700 milking cows.

In 2023, the WMC Litigation Center sued the DNR on behalf of the Wisconsin Dairy Alliance and Venture Dairy Cooperative. They argued that agency rules that require CAFO permits and regulate stormwater runoff from farms can’t be legally enforced because they’re inconsistent with state and federal law.

In a decision Wednesday, a three-judge panel upheld the lower court’s decision.

“Because we conclude the two challenged rules do not conflict with state statutes and do not exceed the DNR’s statutory authority, we affirm the circuit court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of the DNR,” the panel wrote.

A DNR spokesperson said it’s reviewing the decision and unable to comment further at this time.

An attorney for farm groups had argued the DNR can’t go beyond federal requirements under state law, adding that state and federal laws exempt farms from regulation of their stormwater runoff.

Federal appeals court rulings in 2005 and 2011 found the Clean Water Act doesn’t allow the Environmental Protection Agency to require CAFOs to get wastewater discharge permits until they actually release waste into waterways. The three-judge panel noted state permitting programs may impose more stringent requirements than the EPA’s permitting program.

In a joint statement, Wisconsin Dairy Alliance and Venture Dairy Cooperative said the decision is disappointing for Wisconsin’s ag community.

“We believe that there is no place for bad actors and that polluters should face penalties, but this case had nothing to do with weakening environmental laws. Our sole mission in challenging the DNR’s authority was to ensure that Wisconsin farmers are held to standards consistent with federal law,” the groups wrote.

“We continue to believe that a ‘presumption of guilt’ runs contrary to the very fundamentals of the American justice system. We are disappointed with today’s outcome and will continue to fight for Wisconsin farmers regardless of the size of their farm,” the groups continued.

The ruling affects the state’s 344 CAFOs. Under permits, large farms must take steps to prevent manure spills and runoff that include developing response plans, nutrient management plans and restricting manure spreading when there’s high risk of runoff from storms.

Midwest Environmental Advocates is among environmental groups that intervened in the case. They said the legal challenge could have severely limited the DNR’s ability to protect state waters from manure pollution, noting CAFOs can house thousands of cows that produce more waste than small cities.

Adam Voskuil, an MEA attorney, said the ruling affirms environmental regulations.

“We’re continuing to protect water resources in the state, and (it’s) a prevention of rolling back really important, necessary regulations,” Voskuil said.

Without them, Voskuil said the DNR would be responsible for proving whether each individual CAFO has discharged pollutants to surface water or groundwater. He said it’s likely the agency wouldn’t have the resources to do that work, meaning many farms wouldn’t be permitted or taking required steps to prevent pollution.

Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, said there has to be oversight of any industry.

“There needs to be some kind of authority that can call out the bad actors and make sure our water supply is safe,” Von Ruden said.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice has been defending DNR in the case. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has previously said the state should be strengthening protections for state waterways, not weakening them.

Manure has been linked to nitrate contamination of private wells. Nitrate contamination can lead to blue-baby syndrome, thyroid disease and colon cancer. Around 90 percent of nitrate in groundwater can be traced back to agriculture.

The lawsuit is not the first to challenge DNR’s authority to require permits for CAFOs. In 2017, the Dairy Business Association sued the agency in part over its permit requirements, dropping that claim as part of a settlement with the DNR. Large farms have also challenged the agency’s authority to impose permit conditions on their operations. In 2021, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the DNR had authority to impose permit requirements on large farms to protect water quality.

This story was originally published by WPR.

Wisconsin DNR can require CAFO permits to protect water, appeals court rules is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.