This story is about sprawling industrial dairies that have brought pollution to a rural Texas county, the state's slow-footed environmental regulatory agency that let the pollution go unchecked, and the fight to save waterways in central Texas, including drinking water for nearly 150,000 residents of Waco.

But basically it's about dung.

Texas is suffused with the stuff, producing roughly 280 billion pounds of pig, chicken, and cow flop each year, far more than any other state. And nowhere in Texas is the production of it more concentrated than in rural Erath County, about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth. During the past 15 years, as many as 200 industrial dairies descended on Erath County, making it Texas' leading producer of two things -- milk and manure. The milk is processed, packaged, and shipped all over Texas; the 180 million tons of dung compiled annually stick around. Of course, it's supposed to be contained in lagoons or recycled as fertilizer or hauled off as compost. But this being Texas -- where preventable environmental disasters are as much a part of the state heritage as cattle drives -- the manure invariably seeps into the water. It isn't hard to find.

Chuck Markham lives on 200 acres about 15 miles southeast of Stephenville, the county seat, and just downstream from three large dairies. He grew up on a West Texas ranch and spent 15 years in the military, including two tours in Vietnam. His neighbor Fred Parker describes him as an "old soldier who'll tell you exactly what he thinks." While Markham isn't particularly progressive, and you wouldn't label him an environmentalist, he cares about the land, especially his land.

On a warm February afternoon, Markham answers the door to his log-cabin-style home wearing an old white undershirt that barely covers his wide shoulders and gut, and a net-backed baseball cap so stained it looks like it's been through an apocalyptic paintball game. He doesn't linger with formalities: He wants to show his visitor a creek that skirts the edge of his property, a creek that he says two dairies upstream are killing. He slides into his pickup and steers the truck through a series of pastures until he reaches a little dip in the land, a no-name trickle of stagnant water no more than eight feet across that will run dry come summer. It's known on maps and in documents as Unnamed Tributary to the Little Daffau Creek. It's no garden spot. The water is thick and brown, a green layer of unseasonable algae forming psychedelic designs on the surface. Brown bubbles congregate along the algae's surface like a skin disease. Last year, a team of scientists and city officials from Waco inspected the creek and found no life save for some bloodworms. When they stepped into the water to take samples, methane bubbled up from the bottom. "You could've lit the creek if you wanted," said Waco mayor Linda Ethridge. NEXT »

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