More than five years after first announcing stricter controls on industrial farm pollution in Michigan, state environmental regulators will finally start enforcing them.

Regulations issued Wednesday by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy require the state’s largest “confined animal feeding operations” — or CAFOs, facilities where cows, pigs and chickens are raised by the hundreds or thousands in confined conditions — to get more aggressive about keeping manure and urine out of Michigan’s water.

Under the updated terms of EGLE’s general pollution discharge permit, covered facilities are prohibited from spreading manure on farm fields in January through most of March, when it could seep off frozen ground and into nearby waterways. Grassy buffers are required near

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