‘Sad and debilitating’: rural midwesterners contend with well water tainted by livestock waste

Manure from livestock is often used as fertilizer, but it also contaminates groundwater on which nearby residents depend. Photograph: Kerem Yücel/AFP/Getty Images

For nearly three decades, Jeff Broberg couldn’t drink water from his tap.

He lives on a sprawling, 170-acre grain and legume farm in Winona county, a rural part of south-east Minnesota saturated with animal agriculture. Like most properties in the area, Broberg’s has a well connected to his faucet. On a whim, when Broberg first moved in in 1986, the now 69-year-old retired geologist started testing his water for nitrate – an invisible, odorless and tasteless compound found in animal manure and commercial fertilizer. Consuming it in high quantities has been linked to a variety of health risks.