EPA WATCH Control strategy proposed for animal feeding lots EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have unveiled a draft strategy to control pollution from animal farms that for the first time will address nutrient pollution from land application of manure. Representatives of the beef, hog, and poultry industries expressed concern over the plan's impacts on small producers, while environmentalists called for a moratorium on new and expanded animal feedlots. The Draft Unified National Strategy for Animal Feeding Operations (Federal Register, 1998, 63(182), 50,192), announced in September, is one of the key steps in President Clinton's Clean Water Action Plan. The strategy "addresses the consolidation and increase in numbers of large operations over the last 20 years," said Mike Cook, director of EPA's Office of Waste Water Management. Manure lagoon spills and runoff from animal feeding operations (AFOs) are blamed for causing contamination of drinking water toxic algal blooms and fish kills EPA and USDA officials said The draft strategy proposes that all 450,000 AFOs develop and implement comprehensive nutrient management plans by 2008. For the first time, the plans will specify how, when, and in what quantity waste can be applied to farm fields. The plans will be voluntary for all but the 15,000 to 20,000 largest operations with more than 1000 animal units, which equal 1000 beef cattle, 2500 hogs, or 100,000 chickens. This means that roughly 95% of the producers would be volunteer participants according to the draft plan. EPA would draft new guidance for state regulators so that the largest operations will implement nutrient management plans as part of their water pollution permits by 2003. Smaller farms could be brought into watershed general permits in areas
where water quality standards aren't being met. A general permit covers several facilities that share a specific geographic area. EPA officials have pledged to revise guidelines for effluent limitations for wastewater from feedlots, such as source lagoons and other storage areas at poultry and swine facilities by December 2001, and at beef and dairy facilities by December 2002. But smaller producers may not be able to afford the new plans and record keeping outlined by the strategy, said John Pemberton, associate director of environmental issues for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. He questioned whether EPA and USDA's review program, which has issued only 2000 permits to date, has the budget and staffing to implement the strategy. Ken Midkiff, director of the Missouri Sierra Club, said that his organization hopes the strategy will provide a level playing field to "prevent corporate farms from pollution shopping for states that don't regulate animal waste." But he blasted the permitting schedule and effluent guidelines as being "too little, too late." Meanwhile, two other environmental groups, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council have joined the Sierra Club and called on federal agencies to place a moratorium on new and expanding operations The agencies will accept public comment on the draft strategy until mid-January.
Ecosystem research strategy takes proactive approach EPA has targeted ecosystem risk assessment and risk management as one of its "highest priority research areas for investment over the next ten years," according to the ecological research strategy released by the agency's Office of Research and Development in September. In studying key environmental
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EPA will give high priority to assessing the ecological risks imposed on complex natural environments.
risks, EPA plans to follow a more integrated approach than the piecemeal assessments conducted in the past. The significance of this change in strategy is that it will allow the agency to look ahead and make projections rather than merely react to problems, said Virginia Dale, a researcher in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Environmental Sciences Division who helped peer review EPA's report. The report lists acid rain, tropospheric ozone, mercury pollution, ultraviolet B radiation, nitrogen pollution, global climate change, contaminated sediments, stormwater flow, toxic algal blooms, ecological criteria, and total maximum daily loading to water bodies as the agency's primary focal points. Included in EPA's approach are ecosystem monitoring; biological, chemical, and physical process and modeling research; risk assessment; and risk management and restoration. "You don't always know what works because ecosystems are so complicated," Dale said. "So you manage them as experiments, collecting data to make sure management is appropriate to the questions you're addressing. Monitoring allows
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