Michigan Dept. of Environment, Great Lakes, and EnergyConcentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are large-scale industrial facilities for raising and feeding livestock. State and federal environmental rules and regulations require CAFOs to obtain permits regulating the handling and disposal of CAFO waste. These permits are under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting program. The NPDES permitting program regulates discharges from point sources to surface waters, and under the Clean Water Act, CAFOs are considered point sources of pollution. CAFO facilities are required to conduct assessments of all agricultural fields where CAFO waste is land applied. As part of these assessments, CAFO facilities provide maps of land application fields as pdfs or picture files . M ap s of these land application fields have long been available in Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan (CNMP) reports, but they have not been easily accessible. From 2020 to 2024, EGLE staff digitized the boundaries of these fields using maps provided in the CNMP reports. There are several limitations with the CAFO Land Application Fields layer . First, there may be inconsistencies in the accuracy of the spatial data because the digitizing effort was conducted by various staff and interns across several years . For example, some digitized fields may include rivers, roads, and wetlands within their boundaries, while other fields may ha ve been digitized in a way that excludes such features . Additionally, the acreages listed in the attribute table of the field polygon layer are the acres provided in the CNMP reports and reflect the areas of the fields where CAFO waste is applied , rather than the exact dimensions of the fields . Thus, the Department would caution users on making management decisions based on this information . For questions regarding the limitations and usages of this layer, please contact Amanda Bosak, supervisor of the Water Quality and Aquatic Nuisance Control Unit, at BosakA@Michigan.gov . EGLE will periodically add more data as it is received . Data will be added through manual updates . Additionally, individual permittees will be responsible for updating their own field layers in MiEnviro Portal, and these updates are periodically incorporated into the CAFO Land Application Fields Layer. For more information regarding EGLE's CAFO permitting program, please visit this webpage: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) . Field Name Field Description Permittee Name of the permitted CAFO facility PermitNum Number of the CAFO permit held by the facility FieldName Name of the land application fieldArcGIS FeatureLayerhttps://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/f6c9d599a6fa4204a1ffc038e78ec6a2_0engState of Michigan Open Data PortalPublicConcentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) Land Application Fields [Michigan]Web servicesMichiganLast Modified: 2025-11-18