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
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www.iowa.sierraclub.org
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