Greenwire

Audit slams flagging EPA bid to curb farm emissions  

Sean Reilly, E&E News reporter

Published: Wednesday, September 20, 2017

More than a decade after agreeing to keep tabs on emissions from large-scale animal feedlots, U.S. EPA isn't close to getting the job done, the agency's inspector general said in a new report, which found the delay is undercutting the broader effort to regulate pollution from that sector.

As of this spring, EPA had not published any emissions estimating methodologies for such "animal feeding operations" and still had no work plan or timetable for completing them, according to the report, released yesterday by Inspector General Arthur Elkins' office.

The result: Individual operations, which can produce significant amounts of ammonia and other hazardous air pollutants, haven't come up with the data needed to determine whether they should put pollution controls in place or report their emissions to emergency responders, the report said. And until EPA officials finish work on the estimating methods, they are refusing to act on citizen petitions to regulate emissions from animal feeding operations, often known as AFOs, on the grounds that the methods "are needed to inform the agency's decision-making," the report said.

Among other recommendations, Elkins' office urged EPA to launch "comprehensive systematic planning" for developing the needed estimating methods and then publicly release a schedule for issuing them.

In a written response attached to the report, acting EPA air chief Sarah Dunham agreed with the recommendations and said the agency expects to set the schedules next spring.

While most feed operations are relatively small, the Agriculture Department estimates there are about 18,000 that may raise thousands of cattle, hogs and other animals in tightly confined quarters. Air pollution can come from decaying manure and animal feed, potentially posing health risks to nearby communities.

Unlike with industrial sources, however, there's not necessarily a straightforward way of keeping track of the resulting emissions. In 2003, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that accurate estimates were needed to determine how much pollution such agriculture operations were putting out and what kind of controls might be needed.

After more than two years of talks with producer groups, EPA in 2005 agreed to use monitoring data from an industry-funded study to develop the emissions estimating methods. At that point, agency officials expected to start publishing the final methods in 2009, with individual AFOs soon after following up to calculate their emissions, apply for applicable Clean Air Act permits and install any necessary pollution controls.

That timetable turned out to be wildly optimistic, the inspector general report indicated. The industry monitoring study took two years longer than originally expected; EPA had also not accounted for the time needed to get approval from an in-house board for agreements to protect individual producers from lawsuits or other enforcement actions for alleged violations until the new system was in place.

Yet another hang-up emerged when EPA's Science Advisory Board, a body of independent experts, found in 2013 that a draft version of the estimating methods for some pollutants and sources wouldn't provide an accurate gauge of overall emissions. The board urged more work.

Since then, the entire enterprise has essentially been dead in the water, the inspector general's report suggested.

EPA has not revised the draft estimating methods or come up with additional approaches for other pollutant combinations. After key employees retired, moreover, "the agency in recent years did not have staff with combined expertise in agricultural emissions, air quality and statistical analysis," the report said.

Not only does EPA still lack a good handle of the amount of pollution the sector is producing, but the enforcement protections for about 14,000 feeding operations that participated in the original agreement remain in force more than six years after they were intended to expire. Given that EPA still lacks reliable methods, the report said that "it was difficult to estimate how many facilities could be exceeding" emissions benchmarks for the Clean Air Act and other laws.

But in monitoring conducted as part of one 2003 enforcement case, EPA found that two large egg-laying operations were producing annual particulate matter emissions of 700 tons and 550 tons, respectively, far above the 250-ton-per-year permitting threshold, the inspector general found.

Twitter: @SeanatGreenwire Email: sreilly@eenews.net

GREENWIRE HEADLINES — Wednesday, September 20, 2017