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. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To get off the IOWA-TOPICS list, send any message to: [log in to unmask]