Mega Barns Along the US Border Cause a Big Stink in Manitoba

To be a “good neighbor and a responsible steward of shared resources” is a noble aspiration for anyone, though a claim that sits awkwardly near the border between North Dakota and Manitoba. Riverview, the Minnesota-based agricultural company that made the statement, is set to test the goal as it adds to its network of mega dairies by building two facilities along the North Dakotan stretch of the Red River before it flows north into Canada. One barn, near Hillsboro, will contain 25,000 head of cattle; the other, outside Abercrombie, will house 12,500. Together, the two will contain nearly the same number of producing dairy cows as the entire province of Manitoba (and will more than quadruple North Dakota’s quantity).

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The construction of these barns, slated to open in 2027, is of great concern on both sides of the Canada–United States border, particularly with regard to manure and where to put it. Activists say the barns are expected to produce the equivalent surface area of fifty Canadian football fields in waste—some 1,179,295 cubic metres of slurry. Riverview’s official disposal proposal for the effluent—to use it as fertilizer for the fields surrounding the barns—has been met with skepticism from environmental groups in Manitoba and North Dakota alike.

“We’re certain that there’s going to be a fair amount of phosphorus and nitrogen, as well as other contaminants, that run off and get into the Red River and get into Lake Winnipeg,” says Vicki Burns, a volunteer with the Manitoba Eco-Network (MbEN) and director of the Save Lake Winnipeg Project, who is working in opposition to Riverview’s mega barns. The phosphorus and nitrogen provide food for blue-green algae, which produces deadly toxins. “It is a serious health threat to any living things that are reliant on that water,” she says.

The Red flows north, demarcating the border between North Dakota and Minnesota before entering Manitoba. Within the province, the river has an irascible reputation: it is turbid and swift and largely unswimmable; it regularly floods cities and prime farmland; it is burdened with invasive species, sewage, and human bodies. Many of these problems are borne into Lake Winnipeg, which, due to nutrient-fed algal blooms, has at times held the dubious title of “Canada’s sickest lake.”

“Water doesn’t respect any political boundaries,” says Burns. “It’s a great example of how nature rules itself. It’s not ruled by man-made actions. In this case, it’s terribly important that we try to work together with our American neighbours to stop something that will harm people living around those dairies, as well as anything relying on Lake Winnipeg.”

Bilateral coordination over transboundary waters between the US and Canada has, in the past, largely met with great success. One study has shown that for every US dollar invested in the shared Great Lakes projects, over three dollars is generated. This coordination, though, is inseparably reliant on predictable and co-operative conduct. Cycles of floods and droughts have tightened their grip; potable water has grown more valuable, as has industrial autonomy; treaties have begun to look like obligations rather than achievements.

In 2024, the Columbia Basin, which flows from British Columbia into Washington and Oregon states, received attention when then presidential nominee Donald Trump floated the notion of diverting the Columbia River to slake an arid California. In 2025, a scheduled review of the Columbia River Treaty—which has been largely beneficial to both countries, providing flood protection and hydroelectric generation—was paused after the Trump administration ordered a broad reappraisal of international engagements and treaty commitments, putting future assurances on water sharing, ecosystems, hydroelectric payments, and salmon restoration in the Columbia Basin in limbo.

Standing between the federal, provincial/state, and local governments that manage the thirteen US–Canadian transboundary waters is the International Joint Commission (IJC), a kind of binational referee with advisory but no regulatory power. After pressure from groups, including the MbEN and the North Dakota–based nonprofit Dakota Resource Council (DRC), the Manitoba government referred the case to the IJC, which is currently reviewing the potential effects of the Riverview barns. According to Mike Moyes, the provincial minister of environment and climate change, the IJC report is expected to be released in April. “I hope that they recognize just how important our watershed is—and the potential impacts [the barns] could have on Lake Winnipeg,” says Moyes.

With regard to the Red River, the IJC, through its subsidiary the International Red River Watershed Board, recommends that Canada and the US divide the ideal phosphorus and nitrogen quotient equally: 1,400 and 9,525 tons respectively. Both countries regularly and considerably surpass these parameters. “There’s an exceedance already,” says Glen Koroluk, co-founder of Beyond Factory Farming Coalition, who, until 2024, was the director of MbEN. “We can’t imagine, by increasing the manure load in the watershed, how they expect to reduce to the levels it should be.”

Meanwhile, both of Riverview’s projects have received approval from the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality (NDDEQ) and have proceeded with development. In a statement sent to The Walrus, Riverview asserted that “both the proposed North Dakota dairies underwent a thorough, science-based review by the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.” The company went on to add that “discharges to surface waters (including the Red River) are prohibited by state and federal law, and our farms are designed and operated to prevent such discharges.”

Prohibitions, of course, only deter accidents and do not prevent them. As per their proclamation of neighbourliness and resource stewardship, in early January, Riverview announced an $11 million (US) settlement with an Arizona community after one of its large-scale agriculture operations disrupted local water systems.

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High-level geopolitics may determine the comity of shared waters, but they are the downstream consequences of how diverse localized interests are handled. Various stakeholder groups that constitute the acronym soup of the Red River basin have been busily working together over the border, sharing data, insight, and resources on Riverview’s plans. The MbEN has been actively working with the DRC, which is currently in litigation with the NDDEQ, appealing the approval of the barns. Members of the DRC have also travelled to Winnipeg to raise their concerns over the barns. “At the grassroots level,” Burns says, “we’re not letting those political hostilities interfere.”

“I don’t think that there are any North Dakotans or Minnesotans who would say that water quality isn’t important,” says Ted Preister, the Fargo-based executive director of the Red River Basin Commission. “It’s just not as important as flooding. We could have a very detailed conversation about activities happening just north of the border that wildly exacerbate the flooding all through Pembina County and North Dakota.”

Flood protection measures around Winnipeg—the Red River Floodway and the West Dike system—have raised upstream water levels, pushing the Red River over its banks south of the city. North Dakota’s own flood protection measure, the Fargo–Moorhead Area Diversion Project, is estimated to be completed for 2027.

Similar mutuality could be applied to Manitoba’s approach to concentrated livestock operations. Recent legislative rollbacks in North Dakota that loosen corporate farming restrictions can sound like an echo of Manitoba’s Red Tape Reduction and Government Efficiency Act of 2017, which ended a moratorium on new or expanded hog barns. The province’s pig population has since grown so exponentially that the southwest region—within the Red River basin—has come to be known as Hog Alley. (Like dairies, the manure from hog barns is often used as fertilizer.)

“Even if North Dakota could turn off the spigot tomorrow,” says Preister, “no more phosphorus crossing the border from new sources—there is still twenty years of phosphorus on the move, heading there from North Dakota already. And that applies to Minnesota as well. That applies to the Assiniboine River. That applies to the Churchill River.”

While Koroluk admits the barns push the Red River basin into uncharted territory, the only way through to the other side is co-operation. “There’s got to be some reciprocity,” he says. “If we’re expecting the US to reduce pollution, Manitoba and Canada have to reduce pollution too. If you put too much shit in one pile, it causes problems.”