Water You Love Hides a Dark Secret.

How to keep water safe for recreation and wildlife.

Ducklings Delight — artwork courtesy of the artist author

I live by lakes in northern Colorado, USA. Ducklings floating in the lake are my favorite, but I also love seeing pelicans, eagles, herons, muskrats, fox, seagulls, raccoons, hawks, owls, coyotes, Canada geese, mallard ducks and a moose at local lakes. Water is essential to life, so it brings many different species together. For animal lovers like me, this is heaven.

Floating along in a canoe can be a magical, soul-soothing experience. On the west side of the lakes, you see the majestic Rocky Mountains kiss the sky. We would quietly row into narrow stretches close to banks and observe great blue herons. When white pelicans circle above, they flash brightly with reflected sunlight and then mysteriously disappear as they turn away from the sun. I never tire of watching them perform this magic act.

I remember when a double rainbow was reflected on the surface of the water. The glowing light came right up to our canoe. We stopped rowing and just soaked in the serenity until the rainbow and its reflection faded away. Mountains, water, wildlife, and rainbows make beautiful harmony.

We stopped canoeing and swimming after the Center for Food Safety reached out for people to join their lawsuit. They were suing over ractopamine. I’d never heard of it, but it is common in lakes where I live, so I submitted my statement of why I wanted water free of ractopamine.

Ractopamine (RAC) is the most controversial food additive in the world.

Evidence links RAC to human heart and respiratory issues in meat eaters and farm workers. RAC causes animals to suffer tremors, lesions, and deterioration. It is banned or severely restricted in more than 160 countries, but not in the USA or about 21 other countries.

This drug is added to the food of 80% of the cows, pigs and turkeys killed for meat in the USA to make them grow abnormally fast. RAC also harms aquatic species by running off and seeping into ground and surface water. That’s how it got into the lakes near home.

The meat industry is the largest polluter of fresh water in the USA.

More than 60 million people here, disproportionately low-income and people of color, live within a mile of water polluted by a slaughterhouse, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA found that nearly 75% of slaughterhouse wastewater discharges are within a mile of disadvantaged communities, but the biggest meat corporation on Earth, JBS, slaughters animals in Colorado, where homes have become very expensive.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Food & Water Watch, represented by Public Justice / FarmSTAND, sued to stop JBS violations of the Clean Water Act.

The JBS Wastewater Treatment Plant in Colorado exceeded discharge limits for toxic ammonia nitrogen, salt, and animal waste dumped into the South Platte River. The wastewater containing animal fat, blood, and E. coli violated water testing limits for five years. JBS was also charged $1.25 million in Nebraska for a massive wastewater spill into the Wood and Platte Rivers.

Residents in Delaware settled a lawsuit with Mountaire Farms for over $200 million after a poultry slaughterhouse contaminated well water with dangerous bacteria and nitrate levels. Residents suffered gastrointestinal illness.

Cargill Meat Solutions spilled 29 million gallons of pig waste and killed 64,000 fish in Muscooten Bay and other waterways.

“There is an enormous volume of waste going straight into waterways, and contaminating drinking water. It’s desperately overdue for regulation.” Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School

The EPA scrapped rules to stop slaughterhouses polluting water.

August 28, 2025, the EPA threw out Biden administration rules meant to stop millions of pounds of pollutants from being dumped into waterways by slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants. Some EPA slaughterhouse pollution standards have not been updated since the 1970s, but we are well past the 1970s now.

John Robbins, the only son of Baskin-Robbins cofounder Irv Robbins, was troubled by ethical, environmental, and health problems linked to animal agribusiness. In 1987, he published his first bestseller — Diet for a New America — to share the personal health and global environmental benefits of plant-based food. The family business he left behind became the first major chain to sell vegan oat milk ice cream in 2021.

In Boulder, Colorado, John Robbins spoke as we enjoyed a vegan dinner. That’s a memory I cherish as much as the double rainbow reflected on the lake surface beside our canoe. I treasure it because of the compassion he shared — like his compassion for farmers raising animals to be killed. My grandmother used to cry when the baby cows were sold to be slaughtered.

John also spoke with compassion for people starving while rich countries grow crops to feed animals killed for meat. He spoke with compassion for the people with cancer, dementia, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other disabling diseases linked to animal agribusiness. My mom died of colon cancer, directly linked to meat, after enduring chemo and two surgeries.

Doctors are backing plant-based food.

John was not alone in his compassion. Descended from a long line of North Dakota cattle ranchers, Dr. Neal Barnard founded Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. With National Institutes of Health funding, Neal found that a low-fat plant-based diet was three times more effective at improving blood sugar control than standard diets for diabetes.

Along with Yale University research colleagues, Neal said that “we were able to help people improve dramatically and sometimes make diabetes disappear through diet alone.”

The Physicians Committee has provided grants to farmers to leave animal agribusiness and grow health-promoting fruits and veggies. Their Convert to Crops Campaign provides practical help farmers need to feed people safely and save the environment. The Physicians Committee also helps schools, hospitals, and the public switch to plant-based foods.

Like John, Neal has compassion for his family: “They were good, honest people making a living. We simply didn’t realize that our food product was causing people to become sick,” he said.

Today, people do understand food impacts our health. A coalition of ten groups working to protect animals, human communities, and the environment has sued the EPA for abandoning requirements to control slaughterhouse pollution, saying the EPA is violating the Clean Water Act.