LANSING, Mich. – The Michigan supreme court is set to decide on a multi-year case that has pitted farm groups against state regulators over requirements that farmers must abide by regarding the handling of manure on their farms.

The permit in question is part of a federal program called National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and requires farmers to do a lot of things to help protect the environment against excessive amounts of manure runoff, which can pollute waterways and cause problematic algal blooms in places like the Western Lake Erie Basin, a real focal point for this problem in recent years.

The state’s department of the Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) wants to issue licenses, not permits. According to a legal brief filed by the state, the Michigan court of appeals wrongly reached the merits of the contested case. “Its ruling was wrong as a matter of administrative procedure, harmful to the Department’s ability to control water pollution, and risks undermining state agencies’ permitting authority,” the brief says. “If left alone, the court of appeals’ decision will have drastic and permeating consequences with respect to matters of significant public interest.”

Michigan Farm Bureau is one of the parties in the case. Laura Campbell with MFB said, “It’s the argument over whether or not the state has the legal authority to make these changes to the regulations without going through the formal rulemaking process, which includes public comment, an environmental assessment and an economic analysis,” she said.

“It is a huge change to these permitted farmers and it could put some of them out of business,” she added. “This has been going on for some time now, since the spring of 2020. This is proving a burden to farmers who are trying to get a permit for the first time. It’s very difficult to get this new permit.”

According to Campbell, the new permit’s requirements include lower phosphorus application limits, hampering farmers’ ability to provide sufficient nitrogen to crops that need it, mandates 15 days notice before applying additional nitrogen to farm fields beyond Michigan State University recommendations in the case of crop stress or additional need, which she says makes the timeline too long to save a nutrient deficient crop.

The permit also bans the transfer of manure to other farms from January through March, a common time for farms to receive manure to prepare for spring planting. The new permit also requires permitted farmers to collect private business information from the manure recipient for reporting to EGLE, even for recipients not subject to the permit requirements. According to Campbell, the new permit also increases reporting requirements, proposes to replace existing annual reports with a monthly schedule to monitor transfer and application dates of manure and imposes new construction standards for poultry litter storage and new calculation requirements for liquid storage.

During the January hearing before the state’s high court, one of the judges, Richard Bernstein, expressed his concerns about the new requirements. “I just want to focus on one key concern that I have here, which is ultimately that when you’re dealing with the rule versus the license, people have the opportunity to come, they have the opportunity to explain, they can do a cost benefit, they have the opportunity to be heard,” Bernstein said. “The concern that I have here is under your argument does that allow for folks the opportunity to be heard in the standard process that would normally be done?”

EGLE spokesman Jeff Johnston said he could not comment on this case due to the ongoing litigation. A decision in this case is expected by the spring or summer of this year.