This action alert just came in from the Clean Water Network.  I apologize for any cross-postings.

 

 

 

TELL YOUR SENATORS

TO OPPOSE EXEMPTING FACTORY FARMS

FROM POLLUTER-PAYS AND COMMUNITY RIGHT-TO-KNOW LAWS

 

The animal factory industry wants to amend an Energy Bill (H.R. 6), currently in the Senate, to exempt all the wastes and air emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) from the protections of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or "Superfund") and the Community Right-to-Know Laws (EPCRA).

 

TAKE ACTION - CALL YOUR SENATORS TODAY

 

PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS TODAY AND URGE THEM TO OPPOSE ANY LEGISLATION TO EXEMPT FACTORY FARMS FROM CERCLA AND EPCRA. THE CURRENT EXEMPTION PROPOSAL WILL LIKELY BE OFFERED AS AMENDMENT NO. 1556 TO THE ENERGY BILL (H.R. 6). CALL THE CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD AT 202-224-3121 AND ASK TO BE CONNECTED TO YOUR SENATORS' OFFICES. TELL THE RECEPTIONIST THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH THE LEGISLATIVE STAFF MEMBER HANDLING ENERGY ISSUES.

 

TALKING POINTS:

 

* Please oppose the amendment to H.R. 6 or any other legislation that would exempt livestock and poultry operations from the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Emergency Planning Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).

 

* Large-scale livestock and poultry operations are often major sources of water and air pollution.  EPA and most states have failed to control their pollution using the Clean Water Act.  In 2003, when EPA published its CAFO permitting rules, it said that 29 states had specifically cited livestock and poultry operations as contributing to water quality impairments

 

* If large-scale CAFOs are mismanaging their manure and polluting downstream water supplies, they should continue to be responsible for any cleanup costs.  It's unfair to force cities and states to bear the costs of the livestock and poultry industry's pollution.

 

* Livestock and poultry operations that manage manure properly - by applying no more nutrients than crops can use - are already exempt from any potential liability under CERCLA and EPCRA.

 

* CAFOs may be exempt from CERCLA to the extent that its releases are permitted by its Clean Water Act permit.

 

* Potential CERCLA liability provides a strong incentive for factory farms to obtain a Clean Water Act permit, which can provide a framework to help ensure that their waste does pollute our waters, as well as incentives for all livestock and poutry producers to manage manure and other animal waste in an environmentally sound manner. 

 

*CERCLA provides a unique safety net for cities and states to protect water resources which communities depend on for drinking water, recreation, and economic development.

 

TAKE MORE ACTION:  Please forward this alert to other groups who are concerned with environment health and safety issues, and to your group's members, friends, and volunteers.  Consider sending this action alert to your list of e-activists and ask them to contact their Senators and Representatives, too.

Additional Background: The Clean Water Act regulations for CAFOs offer absolutely no protection when CAFO waste is taken away from the CAFO's land and dumped any where on the land to run off into surface waters. There is no federal law with adequate protection from CAFO pollution of groundwater sources of drinking water. EPA has spent years dragging its feet to avoid any effective protection from CAFO air emissions, including ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and volatile organic chemicals that pollute the air and can lead to asthma and other severe health problems in children and adults.

 

In the last few years, only CERCLA and EPCRA have provided the public with tools to get an accounting, control and clean-up of CAFO waste. For example, Waco, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma each experienced millions of dollars in higher drinking water treatment costs because large livestock and poultry operations had polluted their sources of drinking water.  Because their ratepayers should not have to absorb these extra treatment costs, the cities sued livestock and poultry operations under the CERCLA and eventually won better manure management practices. More recently, Oklahoma Attorney General W.A. Drew Edmondson sued large poultry companies in Arkansas to stop the pollution of the Illinois River Watershed and to recover cleanup costs. Environmental organizations in Idaho used these laws to make large-scale CAFO dairies measure the air pollutants and found the dairies to be major sources of air pollution.

 

Because of the success of these lawsuits in protecting public health and the environment and imposing costs for clean-up and control where they belong, the confined livestock and poultry industry is targeting CERCLA and EPCRA to escape responsibility for dealing with their pollution. Congress should reject any legislation that would reverse CERCLA's polluter-pays principle and exempt livestock and poultry operations from the responsibility for paying to clean up waters, including drinking water supplies, they pollute.

 

The livestock and poultry industry argues that the CERCLA and EPCRA threaten the nation's small family farmers with lawsuits.  But farmers who are applying manure containing nutrients in quantities their crops can take up are protected under the law.  CERCLA includes a specific exception for the "normal field application of fertilizer."  Only those factory farm operators who have so much manure that they have to dump it on the land to get rid of it, rather than use it to fertilize crops, have potential liability.  In addition, any animal feeding operation whose releases are covered by its Clean Water Act permit may be exempt.


If you need additional information or have further questions please email Ed Hopkins from Sierra Club at [log in to unmask]  or Martha Noble of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition at [log in to unmask].