EPA is launching a study of pollution generated by confined animal feeding operations after the agency rejected two petitions by environmental groups from 2017 and 2022 to make wholesale changes to CAFO regulations.
The EPA announced plans to form a federal advisory subcommittee to study CAFOs sometime in 2024. The process is expected to take 12 to 18 months, according to a letter sent to the environmental groups that petitioned EPA in 2017.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association issued a statement on Wednesday lauding the EPA's decision.
"NCBA appreciates the EPA recognizing that America's farmers and ranchers are committed to ensuring clean water and investing in a sustainable future," NCBA Chief Counsel Mary-Thomas Hart, said in a statement.
"By rejecting these two petitions that sought to directly attack animal agriculture, the EPA is protecting cattle producers from frivolous distractions and allowing them to return to the important job of stewarding our natural resources and feeding the nation."
The 2022 petition filed by numerous state-level clean water advocacy groups as well as Friends of the Earth, Earthjustice, Humane Society of the United States and others, asked the EPA to adopt a presumption that large CAFOs using wet manure management systems discharge pollutants.
The 2017 petition filed by Food and Water Watch, Center for Food Safety and others asked the agency to change CAFO regulations to assume a number of things.
That includes CAFOs with certain production-area characteristics actually discharge; that regulations should assume CAFOs applying manure to land as fertilizer actually discharge; to revise EPA interpretation of the agricultural stormwater exemption to clarify that it does not include any CAFO related discharges, among other requests.
Back in April, the EPA committed to answering the 2017 petition. In January 2023, the agency announced a plan to determine ways of strengthening the Clean Water Act in its effluent limitation guidelines, in response to a 2021 lawsuit.
Another lawsuit filed in 2022 was stayed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The environmental groups agreed to drop that lawsuit by Aug. 29, 2023, if EPA responded by Aug. 15.
LETTER TO GROUPS
In a letter to Food and Water Watch on Tuesday, EPA said the 2017 petition asked for a number of CAFO regulation changes that were already rejected by courts.
In 2003, EPA proposed a major revision to its CAFO regulations.
Among other provisions, the rule required "all CAFO owners or operators to seek coverage under an NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) permit," unless they affirmatively demonstrate that they have "no potential to discharge."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated that aspect of the 2003 rule, holding it unlawfully "imposes obligations on all CAFOs regardless of whether or not they have, in fact, added any pollutants to the navigable waters, i.e., discharged any pollutants."
In 2008, EPA revised its regulations to try to require a permit for any CAFO with a "potential to discharge" and the revised rule called for a "case-by-case evaluation by the CAFO owner or operator as to whether the CAFO discharges or proposes to discharge from its production area or land application area."
Source: iowacorn.org
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Categories: Iowa, Government & Policy