MANURE BUBBLES.

MANURE BUBBLES. Lauren Etter has an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about some environmental and safety risks posed by manure ponds. Manure from cows and hogs is normally kept in large lagoons. Environmental laws regulate how the lagoons are maintained. Etter presents the issues by describing the situation at a dairy farm in Indiana with over 1500 cows. The farm has a lagoon containing over 20 million gallons of cow manure. The manure has released methane which has created bubbles “the size of small houses.” Some bubbles are over 20 feet high. (There is a photograph in the article of one of the bubbles.) The farmer has asked state regulators for permission to slice the bubbles open with a knife. There is some risk to popping the bubbles. The article notes that: “Last year, a hog farmer in Hayfield, Minn., was launched 40 feet into the air in an explosion caused by methane gas from a manure pit on his farm. He sustained burns and singed hair.”