This message, composed by Lon Crosby, does a much better job of pulling together the core message of Waterkeepers than my summary of the Iowa City CAFO Conference.  I forward it with permission.

Peggy Murdock

Nicolette Hahn's message at the CAFO Whistle Stop Tour was quite succinct - but one had to listen in a "different way".
 
    1. All of the laws needed to protect the environment and individual quality of life already exist at the federal level. The issue is enforcement of regulations. One has the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Rivers & Harbors Act and RICO statutes to work with. By law, state laws can not be any less stringent than Federal law. From an environmental perspective, this is not a state issue. This is a Federal issue since Iowa law is substantially weaker than Federal law.
 
    2. Under the Clean Water Act, CAFO's (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) must be regulated as point sources of pollution, byproducts coming from those facilities must be regulated as solid waste (meaning that land application of manure has the same requirements as sludge from a sewage treatment plant) and that there is no such thing as an "agricultural exemption". NPDES statutes apply to CAFO's.
 
    3. RICO statutes automatically pierce the "corporate veil" making "responsible individuals" personally and criminally liable for systematically evading the law.
 
    4. The environmental statutes (water & air) have "citizen action bypass procedures" which allows citizens to seek legal redress for regulatory infractions. These provisions were specifically included to provide legal recourse for regulatory food dragging. In a successful suit, the polluter pays legal expenses and civil penalties can be (and typically are) levied. There are now law firms which will take CAFO suits on a contingency basis.
 
To this point, suits have been filed under the Clean Water Act because it is easier to collect the data. (Note: Iowa may be different because the Clean Air Act regulates "plant" emissions and air quality at the property line. Many CAFO's in Iowa are built close to roads. In addition, technology advances will make it easier for citizens to collect "legal quality" air quality data.) The first RICO suit has been filed and they believe it will be successful.
 
    5. "Point sources" must collect environmental data to prove that they are not polluting the environment. This data must be made available to the public.
 
    6. Existing federal regulations provide a uniform nationwide set of standards which is exactly what the animal industry has been requesting.
 
    7. This is not a "political" issue. The explicit incorporation of CAFO's in the Clean Water Act was proposed by Bob Dole. He recognized that CAFO's represented a potential major problem. (You also have to recognize that many of the CAFO's that existed when the Clean Water Act was passed were large beef feedlots in Kansas.)
 
Lon
 
Lon Crosby, Ph.D.
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