Michigan Gets Latitude to Regulate Large Farms’ Manure Runoffs

The Michigan Supreme Court blessed the broad powers that state environmental regulators have exercised to limit water pollution, saying new conditions they placed on large farms’ permits regulating manure runoff don’t need to go through a process by which the legislature can object.

The court said Wednesday that the conditions that the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy in 2020 put on waste-disposal permits for so-called concentrated animal feeding operations—large farms where hundreds or thousands of animals either awaiting slaughter or use in the dairy industry live in tight quarters—weren’t considered rules under the state’s Administrative Procedures Act. ...