FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                   CONTACT:
March 10, 2003                                      Erin Jordahl,
515-277-8868
                                                  Barclay Rogers, (415)
977-5646

EPA Factory Farm Rule Challenged for Lacking Environmental Protections
Bush Administration Proposal Favors Industry at Expense of Iowa Communities

Des Moines, IA- Filled with loopholes that shield the factory farm industry
from responsibility for the environmental damage they cause, the Bush
Administration's recent rule regulating factory-style animal farms weakens
current safeguards on animal factory pollution.  Citing concerns over
weakening environmental protections like the Clean Water Act, a coalition
that includes Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the
Waterkeeper Alliance has filed a challenge to the Bush Administration
proposal in federal court.  The Sierra Club filed suit in San Francisco's
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, arguing that the Bush
Administration rule illegally allows animal factories to pollute streams and
rivers with animal waste, without the limits required under the Clean Water
Act.

"The Bush Administration's rule doesn't make polluting factory farms clean up
the waste that their animals produce," said Sierra Club attorney Barclay
Rogers.  "That contradicts our belief in cleaning up the messes you make, and
violates the protections that are responsible for keeping our rivers and
lakes clean.  When technology and existing law can keep animal waste out of
our rivers, why should Iowans have to settle for a Bush administration plan
that allows meat companies to pollute more?"

Waste from animal factories has become a major environmental and public
health problem in Iowa, in large part due to the consolidating trend towards
massive animal factories, which generate 500 million tons of manure per year
according to the EPA.  Just last fall, a hog facility in Northeast Iowa
spilled manure into an unnamed tributary of the Little Volga River in Fayette
County, killing 1.2 miles of stream and 12,700 fish.  And water quality
testing by volunteers in the Upper Iowa River basin has found fecal bacteria
levels at 1,800 times the swimming standard.

"We can do better than the Bush Administration's plan.  The new regulations
authorize discharges from fields upon which raw waste has been applied in a
manner that is unlawful under the Clean Water Act," said Erin Jordahl,
Director, Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club.  "What looks like de-regulation
upstream looks like raw sewage downstream."

Under the Clean Water Act, industrial animal factories are required to obtain
Clean Water Act permits before discharging animal waste into waterways.  But
the Bush Administration rule allows animal factories to dump millions of
gallons of liquefied manure into open pits, known as lagoons, and then spray
the liquid over fields where it often runs off into nearby streams or seeps
into underground water supplies, polluting the water with ammonia, pathogens,
pesticides, antibiotics and hormones.

Other complaints regarding the final rule that will likely be raised in the
lawsuit include:
"   Allowing factory farms to write their own pollution management plans
without state or federal review;
"   Keeping these pollution management plans secret, thereby reducing the
public's ability to hold polluters accountable;
"   Shielding corporations that own animals from liability for the pollution
they create.

In writing the rule, the Bush Administration sided with corporations and
eliminated environmental protections in the rule proposed by the Clinton
Administration. Chief among these were safeguards requiring the corporate
owners of large animal factories to be legally responsible for the waste
pollution.  According to comments filed with the EPA, the meat industry had
opposed these provisions because "the likelihood of civil or criminal
litigation would increase," (Cargill Turkey Products), and it "would confuse
the public" (Tyson Foods).

The Bush Administration also sided with corporations in allowing animal
factories to write part of their own permits or "permit nutrient plans,"
which, under the new Bush rule will not be available to the public. According
to comments filed with the EPA, meat companies oppose permits being publicly
available because they "could damage producers' business interests and cause
neighbors desiring privacy to make their land unavailable for the application
of manure" (Premium Standard Farms).


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Erin E. Jordahl
Director, Iowa Chapter Sierra Club
3839 Merle Hay Road, Suite 280
Des Moines, IA 50310
515-277-8868
[log in to unmask]
www.iowa.sierraclub.org

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