From Hog Barns to Algae Blooms: The Deadly Connection to Lake Winnipeg’s Algae Crisis - Winnipeg Free Press
Posted: Jun. 21, 2024 SPONSORED BY: Over 30 years ago, large factory style barns, used for raising pigs, started dotting the landscape across southern Manitoba. Not surprisingly, within just a few years, smelly and sometimes toxic bluegreen algae blooms began to dominate Lake Winnipeg, and other southern Manitoba lakes. Was this just a coincidence? Not quite. In these factory style barns, often thousands of pigs are kept confined together on slatted floors through which their urine and feces fall, collecting in pits underneath. Toxic fumes of hydrogen sulphide, methane, ammonia and carbon dioxide rise from these pits and are blown out into the neighbouring communities by large industrial fans. Should those fans fail, the fumes are so poisonous that the pigs will suffocate within a few hours. Factory hog barn. These waste pits are routinely emptied into open lagoons near the barns, once again causing nauseating odours for neighbours. Those lagoons are then emptied twice a year when that