EQIP final rule is illegal, say green groups

By Cheryl Rainford
News Editor
Agriculture Online

The final rule USDA issued last week for the Environmental Quality
Incentive Program (EQIP) is being challenged by a collection of eleven
national sustainable ag, conservation and environmental groups. The
groups say the rule is illegal because it's missing an Environmental
Impact Statement on the proposed use of EQIP payments to "subsidize
expansion of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations" (CAFOs) and other
technologies they say USDA admits could be at odds with the Clean Water
Act.

Under the 2002 Farm Bill, the Natural Resources Conservation Service
(NRCS) is to target 60% of each year's EQIP funds for cost-share and
incentive payments to livestock production practices. This is up from
50% previously. The new farm bill also makes livestock operations with
1,000 or more head eligible for cost-share payments for structural
practices related to manure management, for the first time. It also
raises the limit on payments substantially through 2008.

Under the final EQIP rule, each person is eligible for grants of
$450,000 - a limit nine times the size of the pre-2002 Farm Bill, says
Ferd Hoefner, of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Knight told Reuters last week there will be multiple reviews of requests
for large amounts of aid.

NRCS has concluded, in information released with USDA's final rule, that
allowing EQIP funds to be used by CAFOs for structural practices will
increase the conservation benefits of the program, even if the funds go
to new and expanding CAFOs or CAFOs located in floodplains, the groups
say.

"We cannot agree that providing funding for manure management at CAFOs
will, by itself, ensure conservation benefits. To the contrary, the
substantial environmental and public health risks associated with CAFOs
are well documented and increasingly widespread," the groups today wrote
in a letter to Bruce Knight, chief of the NRCS.

In light of the large investment of taxpayer dollars in EQIP, the NRCS
should "correct the procedural and substantive problems with its Final
EQIP Rule by conducting an adequate Environmental Impact Statement
(EIS)" and by withholding funding from other areas until an EIS is
completed, said the groups.

"It is essential for the national NRCS office to ensure that taxpayer
dollars are not used to perpetuate the status quo and that funds meant
to protect and enhance the environment are not diverted into
technologies and practices that actually degrade natural resources and
pose significant public health risks," they wrote in the four-page
letter.

Hoefner told Agriculture Online today that during the public comment
period, USDA received 518 responses backing the position stated in their
letter, more comments then were generated on any other EQIP rulemaking
issue. "Yet USDA decided to ignore this outpouring of public comment in
issuing its final rule," he said.

The groups signing the letter include the Sierra Club, National Audubon
Society, Waterkeeper Alliance, Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and
the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.

A similar collection of organizations had submitted an eleven-page
letter in August of 2002 raising these issues and encouraging USDA to
avoid turning the EQIP program into a production incentive program or
"commodity program for livestock groups.

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