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Environmental notebook

By Emily Walkenhorst
This article was published February 17, 2015 at 2:42 a.m.

Agencies appeal ruling on hog farm

The federal agencies that backed loans made to C&H Hog Farms in Newton County formally filed an appeal in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday against a judgment that suspended those loan guarantees.

Environmental groups sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Farm Service Agency and the Small Business Administration in August 2013, arguing that the latter two agencies failed to properly consult with other agencies, including the National Park Service, in conducting an environmental assessment of the farm while considering the loan guarantees.
The environmental assessment carried a "finding of no significant impact."

In October, U.S District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. ruled that the assessment was insufficient and violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

The U.S. Small Business Administration and the Farm Service Agency had agreed to back $3.4 million in private loans made to C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea after the farm was found to have insufficient collateral, meaning that the agencies would foot the bill for the farm's loans if the farm defaulted.

The agencies have not made any payments on the loans.
C&H Hog Farms is on Big Creek, 6 miles from where it meets the Buffalo National River. Environmental activists and others have been concerned about the amount of animal waste generated in the environmentally sensitive area.

Attorneys for the agencies filed a notice of appeal in federal court Jan. 30. Wednesday's filings included a schedule and rules for the appeal process.

Water, air quality concerns heighten conflict with pig farms

Emery Dalesio

Posted: Monday, February 16, 2015 9:47 am | Updated: 1:05 pm, Mon Feb 16, 2015.
Associated Press |

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Modern meat production, in which thousands of animals are packed into barns for concentrated feeding operations, has proven to be efficient and profitable, but comes with its own set of problems.

From Washington state to North Carolina, federal lawsuits are challenging the livestock industry to change its ways, basing arguments on studies that increasingly show the impact that phosphorous, nitrates and bacteria from fertilizer and accumulated manure have on lakes and rivers, as well as air pollution that can be harmful to respiratory health.

Livestock farmers insist they're trying to ameliorate the problem by installing grass strips, tilling less and using other techniques to keep manure and fertilizer from draining into waterways.

"I have a general care and concern for the state's water quality and I've personally invested my own dollars to install conservation nutrient retention practices on my farm," said Bill Couser, a fifth-generation Iowa farmer with 5,200 cows. "We realize this is not going to happen overnight or in two years. This could take up to 10 years as this technology comes along."

However, those who rely on rivers and lakes for drinking water or live near the large-scale operations — especially in the top two hog-producing states of Iowa and North Carolina — are growing impatient. Joined by environmental and animal rights groups in a growing number of lawsuits, they're highlighting the debate between the right to raise livestock and the right to clean water and air.

Des Moines' water utility, which serves a half-million people, recently filed a notice of intent to sue farmers in three counties populated by 1.2 million pigs and a million turkeys because it must run water sourced from two central Iowa rivers through a costly system to strip out nitrate, which at levels above a federal limit can reduce the amount of oxygen carried in the blood of children younger than 6.

A federal judge in eastern Washington ruled last month that an industrial dairy farm's manure management practices posed an "imminent and substantial endangerment" to the environment and thousands in the lower Yakima Valley who rely on well water. And on Jan. 28, a coalition of groups sued the EPA for what they said is a failure to address air pollution from cattle, hog and poultry farms in California, Wisconsin and Iowa.

"Pork is cheap and cheap to produce in large factories because they don't pay for cleaning up the Des Moines water supply and they don't pay for the asthma neighbors get, they don't pay for polluting downstream water that used to be potable and they don't pay for the loss of property values," said Steve Wing, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill epidemiologist.

About 68 percent of the nation's lakes, reservoirs and ponds and more than half of its rivers and streams are impaired, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says, meaning they don't meet one or more water-quality standards and are considered too polluted for the intended use. The main culprit: agriculture, including poorly located or poorly managed animal-feeding operations and misapplication of chemicals and fertilizer, EPA reports show.

The hog industry's shift from small family farms to large-scale farms is dramatic, going from more than 200,000 in the early 1990s to just over 21,600 in 2012.

A driving force behind some of the large-scale hog farms is Murphy-Brown LLC, which became part of the world's largest pork producer when China-based WH Group bought corporate parent Smithfield Foods in 2013. WH Group aims to feed China's appetite for meat with cheaper hogs from the United States, and that foreshadows increased production in the U.S., according to lawsuits filed in eastern North Carolina.

The water- and air-quality lawsuits are mostly driven by advocates of locally grown food as well as animal-rights and environmental activists. But in some cases, farmers are going after farmers.

Barb Kalbach has fought for more than a decade against the construction of huge hog operations, and joined a statewide nonprofit that argues such enterprises are ruining Iowa's waterways.

Pork is a $7 billion industry in Iowa, which is the nation's largest pork producer with about 21 million pigs — seven times the number of human residents — that create about 9 billion gallons of manure annually.

"I have in the back of my mind this idea that we have thousands of miles of clean water, which is a gift in this state and we just throw manure in it," the 64-year-old said. She and her husband, who live about 40 miles west of Des Moines, once raised a few hogs, cattle and sheep, but quit primarily because it's difficult to compete with large-scale operations that have corporate meatpacking contracts.

About 200 miles north, Matt Schuiteman raises about 3,000 hogs plus some cattle. Since 2008, the 40-year-old farmer has worked with the city of Sioux Center, Dordt College and others to research how to keep nitrogen on the farmland and out of waterways.

Farmers care about the environment and are willing to work on improvements that will minimize impact, he said, adding that lawsuits aren't the course of action.

"Maybe we can all get to where we want to be together instead of drawing the battle lines ... You want to force some action but there are ways to do it and ways that don't work," he said.

In North Carolina, 10 million hogs produce as much fecal waste in a day as 100 million people, much of it stored in ponds as large as three football fields. The treated, liquefied manure and urine is then pumped to large sprinkler systems and flung on fields for fertilizer.

For people like Richard Brown, whose trailer is surrounded on three sides by fields that soak up effluent from 2,500 nearby hogs, the smell is a daily drag.

"It just stinks like the devil," said Brown, who lives in Duplin County — the nation's top county for hog production, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department's 2012 census.

Brown is one of about 500 who've joined the federal lawsuits against Murphy-Brown, alleging the farms deprive them of enjoying their property because of the strong odor — complaints first raised two decades ago that plaintiffs say have gone unanswered by legislators and regulators.

Gases and air particles from the manure affect residents' mental and physical health, Wing says, including breathing difficulty, sore throat, nausea, eye irritations and high blood pressure.

The putrid liquid rains down on 66-year-old Elsie Herring's property in nearby Wallace, and the odor makes her cough and her eyes burn. "Whenever they start spraying, we're held prisoners inside. ... If you're outside it will blow down on you," she said.

Murphy-Brown encourages residents to express concerns about operations, but only a handful do in any given year, the company said in a statement. "We take these complaints seriously and seek swift resolution as part of our environmental management system," the company said. "We have a vested interest in the health and well-being of these communities and we work to maintain positive relationships with our neighbors."

The choice, according to Iowa State University economist Catherine King, may come down to consumers: Does the public pay to remove contaminants or shell out more for meat?

"We don't know how to produce food and fuel from this incredibly rich land without having nitrogen and nutrient pollution, so society has to figure out what balance it wants," Kling said. "Society needs to be engaged in a conversation about what trade-offs we are willing to make and who is going to bear the cost."

___

Associated Press writer Emery P. Dalesio in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

Newton County Times

Big Creek Research and Extension Team releases 4th quarterly report
 

Posted: Saturday, February 14, 2015 2:00 pm
Arkansas Extension Service | 0 comments

Fast Facts:
• Big Creek team releases its four quarterly report
• Bacterial spikes reported upstream, downstream from farm
• Researchers say longer term monitoring is needed
• Report can be found at www.bigcreekresearch.org

LITTLE ROCK — The Big Creek Research and Extension Team has released its fourth quarterly report for 2014 on water and soil conditions near Big Creek, a major tributary to the Buffalo National River in Newton County.
The team was originally commissioned by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe in late 2013 to monitor the area surrounding C&H Hog Farms, a large-scale swine concentrated feeding operation near Mount Judea.
In September 2013, the team led by Andrew Sharpley, professor of Crop, Soil and Environmental Science for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, began collecting water samples from Big Creek both upstream and downstream from the hog farm, and soil samples from several fields near the facility.
The team has analyzed the samples for E. coli, nitrates, phosphorus, suspended solids and other constituents, in an effort to discern if the farm poses an environmental or health risk to the Buffalo National River, Big Creek or other surrounding areas.
According to the report, there has not been a notable or sustained change in bacterial concentrations during the monitoring period. Both E. coli and total coliform counts were found to spike after heavy rain events, but levels quickly dissipated in the days following such events. E. coli spikes were recorded both upstream and downstream from the farm.
However, Sharpley said that “a longer period of monitoring is needed for a more reliable assessment of the farm’s impact on the water quality in Big Creek.”
Building on earlier work that used ground-penetrating radar and supplementing dye-tracing work done by an unrelated research team to help “see” the underlying geology, Sharpley added that “in December we contracted with Dr. Halihan from Oklahoma State to conduct Electrical Resistivity Analysis Imaging of two near-stream application fields.
“This should give us an accurate 3-D picture of what formations are below the surface down to nearly 100 feet,” he said, adding that the results of this analysis will be released as soon as possible.
Todd Halihan is a professor in Boone Pickens School of Geology at Oklahoma State. The report can be found at www.bigcreekresearch.org.

 PRweb


US FEDERAL CONTRACTOR REGISTRATION
US Federal Contractor Registration
Washington D.C. (PRWEB) February 11, 2015

The United States Federal Government as of 02/9/2015 has 111 open solicitations in Arkansas where they are currently seeking out properly registered government contractors. According to FedBizOpps (FBO) and USASpending, the Federal Government awarded 8,726 contracts in Arkansas for over 1.3 billion dollars in 2014 alone. Please see the below available contract released by US Federal Contractor Registration, additional Arkansas contracts can be found at https://www.uscontractorregistration.com.
US Federal Contractor Registration is reporting the release of the C&H Hog Farms Biological and Environmental Assessment RFQ in Newton, Arkansas posted to FedBizOpps (FBO) on February 9, 2015. The C&H Hog Farms Biological and Environmental Assessment RFQ has a response date of February 26, 2015 for any vendors looking to respond. Every business interested in bidding on C&H Hog Farms Biological and Environmental Assessment RFQ must be properly registered in System for Award Management (SAM), as well as have the North American Industry Classification System codes 541620 - Environmental Consulting Services, and 541 - Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services filed in their SAM account/vendor profile.
Below is a Statement of Work for the Department of Agriculture’s C&H Hog Farms Biological and Environmental Assessment RFQ as posted to FedBizOpps (FBO):
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) are seeking professional services to prepare a Biological Assessment (BA), provide support for formal consultation with USFWS, conduct public meetings, and prepare an Environmental Assessment (EA) to address potential impacts associated with the C&H Hog Farms facility located in Newton County, Arkansas. The contractor shall organize, support, and coordinate a conference call kickoff meeting with FSA National Office staff. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the Proposed Action details, data needs, and establish project team Points of Contact. Contractor attendance shall include at a minimum the Program Manager and a project team member.
If sufficient details of the proposed action and existing environment are not available, two contract personnel may be required to travel to the site to collect information from the facility and surrounding area. It is expected that three days would be required. The contractor shall prepare a Description of Proposed Action and Alternatives (DOPAA), which will provide the basis for the assessment of potential impacts in the BA and will serve as Chapters 1 and 2 of the EA. Electronic copies will be provided to FSA National Office for review, comment, and approval before impacts assessments begin.
This contract will be a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contract. The contractor will be allowed to invoice monthly for percent complete by Task. Payment will be issued within 30 days of receipt of payment from the government under the Prime contract (i.e., pay when paid). The schedule of services will be determined at the Kickoff meeting with FSA National Office. It is anticipated that the Kickoff meeting will occur within 10 days of prime contract award. The project should take no more than 9 months to complete. Schedule is dependent on timely production of BA and receiving USFWS concurrence through formal consultation (90 days).
Businesses that would like to learn how to respond to RFQs on FBO and bid on available opportunities can call Acquisition Specialist Robert Renzella at 1(877) 252-2700 Ext 767. Vendors have been enrolling in the Simplified Acquisition Program to win available government contracts, network with procurement officers across the nation, and qualify their business for government contracting. Businesses that would like to learn more about the Simplified Acquisition Program can visit http://www.simplifiedacquisitionprogram.org/.

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Bad news for river
By Mike Masterson

National Park Service scientists and UA geosciences professor emeritus John Van Brahana have collaborated on a revealing report that details reason for concern over increasing water contamination in the Buffalo National River watershed.
The extensive report goes into detail about declining oxygen levels and rising bacterial contamination in the watershed since the hog factory at Mount Judea began spraying millions of gallons onto fields around Big Creek, a major tributary of the country's first national river flowing six miles downstream.
I believe this report alone further proves the need for Gov. Asa Hutchinson to schedule a fact-finding conference involving every interested party from special interests to the state's environmental regulators to determine through facts and science what already is being discovered in our precious river's watershed as a result of this factory's wrongheaded location.
Yes, I've heard the arguments about private-property rights, the right to farm (this isn't really a farm as we know them), the karst formations and caves that underlie this factory's spray field and the more than 5,000 gallons a day our state allows to leak from two massive waste lagoons.
Created by Brahana and Chuck Bitting and Faron Usrey of the National Park Service, the report was presented to the Ozark Society. It lays out data they've collected and analyzed from streams, wells and springs, including Brahana's groundwater dye-testing of property around the factory.
Their findings present an ominous picture of changing water quality in the fragile watershed during the two-plus years since the factory (supplied and supported by Cargill Inc. of Minnesota) brought in 6,500 swine and the mountain of potent, untreated waste they generate.
The study begins by saying the national river was established by Congress in 1972 in order "to conserve and interpret the unique scenic and scientific features and to preserve as a free-flowing stream an important segment of the Buffalo River in Arkansas for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations."
It notes that on Nov. 1, 2011, the state Department of Environmental Quality created a class of General Permits under control of the state's Pollution Control and Ecology Commission to allow confined animal feeding operations. I prefer to call them domestic edible animal factories.
The agency received 87 comments from 13 individuals or businesses, mostly from agribusiness companies or those involved in factory farms, so the new permitting plan slipped through mostly unnoticed by the public.
It was the science, as Brahana explained, that most interested me. Studies showed the dissolved oxygen concentrations in Big Creek reveals a daily pattern of high dissolved oxygen concentrations during daylight hours and low concentrations at night.
During the day, algae in Big Creek generates oxygen, which is added to the water as it absorbs sunlight. At night this algae absorbs oxygen from the water, thus reducing oxygen available for fish and other aquatic life.
This is a natural variation observed in most streams and rivers. However, if measurements show a stream falls lower than the critical dissolved oxygen level, it's said to be in an impaired state. The critical level determined in this part of the Ozarks is 6 parts per million. Big Creek fell below the level for 120 nighttime hours last summer.
While not the first time low dissolved oxygen values have been observed in Big Creek, the findings indicate the Buffalo River valley already was approaching capacity to accommodate nutrients from all animal wastes, which causes algae to proliferate, even before the state permitted the factory.
"Our sampling of wells, springs and streams in the valley during the summer of 2013 (before waste spreading) reinforce the idea that the natural system was already near saturation, one of many facts ADEQ failed to note when they issued the permit," said Brahana.
He said the duration lower nighttime dissolved oxygen finding last summer "is consistent with an added burden of waste from 6,500 pigs. Local landowners along the creek noticed the algae was particularly luxuriant last summer after about six months of waste spreading on nearby fields."
Concentrations of E. coli bacteria (from the guts of warm-blooded animals) in Big Creek and upstream and downstream from its confluence with the Buffalo also were disturbing. The report says prior to spreading in 2013, the "average" E. coli contribution from Big Creek increased in the Buffalo by more than 37 percent. "Values of E. coli from 2014 taken as grab samples (randomly) show a marked increase from 2013," Brahana said.
"These observations are consistent and indicate Big Creek and its ecosystem are being stressed, not necessarily by the hog factory alone, but by total agricultural loading from this valley. This impaired water is flowing directly into the Buffalo National River," added Brahana, who said even more exacting water-quality studies remain under way.
------------v------------
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 02/10/2015

Note: See the PowerPoint presentation of this meeting linked on the BRWA Home Page.

Arkansas Times

* ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY: Becky Keogh will take over for an interim director who succeeded Teresa Marks. A former deputy director of the department, she recently has been regulatory and environment manager for BHP Billiton, the energy giant, in Houston. Hutchinson noted her experience as both a regulator and industry veteran.

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Nutrient trading' for watersheds proposed in House bill
 
By Emily Walkenhorst
 
A bill in the Arkansas House of Representatives would enable organizations to trade nutrients they discharge into a watershed with another organization in exchange for money or some other service.
Springdale Water Utilities Director Heath Ward, a supporter of the bill, said a wastewater utility that's having trouble meeting compliance standards, for instance, could send excess nutrients to another portion of a watershed that's well under permit limits.
Or the entity struggling to meet compliance standards could spend money on another, cheaper method of reducing pollution instead of updating its facilities or equipment, proponents said.
Such moves would be legal under House Bill 1067, as long as the organization stays below its maximum level of nutrients allowed under its permit. The bill has been sponsored by Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville, and co-sponsored Rep. Andy Davis, R-Little Rock.
Skeptics of the bill have questioned how the trades would be tracked and measured to ensure compliance.
Ward, who is chairman of the Arkansas Wastewater Managers Association -- which has been drafting the bill since July -- said trades would be done with the supervision of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality's appellate body, the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission.
How any arrangements would be made and measured would be up to the agreeing parties, Ward said.
"Shutting down or curtailing wastewater alone is not going to fix a problem if nutrients are an issue," Ward said.
He added, "When you have a bunch of people finger-pointing, they spend a bunch of money and end up going to court."
Nutrient-trading programs already exist in some states to address specific bodies of water that have had pollution issues, including in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky -- with a focus on the Ohio River Basin -- and Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, with a focus on addressing the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
North Carolina has established the Neuse River Compliance Association, which is a nutrient-trading group designed to meet standards on nitrogen. The Neuse River has been noted for its pollution by environmentalists opposed to hog-farm waste-disposal methods in the eastern portion of the state that they say have contributed to the problem.
Ward said no other state in Arkansas' region of the Environmental Protection Agency, which includes Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, has a nutrient-trading program.
He said that nutrient trading would be done without the same crisis situation or pressure to comply that's existed in other states, although he acknowledges a rocky history between Northwest Arkansas and Oklahoma in regard to the Illinois River Watershed.
Beaver Watershed Alliance officials are already considering ways to use the bill, if passed, to get utilities or other entities to agree to restore stream banks, the degradation of which Executive Director John Pennington said is the biggest contributor to sediment and phosphorous pollution in Beaver Lake.
As the bill is now, Pennington said it was "innovative."
Collins said the bill would allow partnerships that should be mutually beneficial as an alternative to creating regulations and "rather than a hammer being the only thing we have and a nail being the only thing we pound."
"Maybe there's a win-win-win where there's less phosphorus in the watershed, where the regulated person is spending less money ... and the landowner is benefiting because of [lower pollution]," Collins said.
At the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission meeting in January, commission members questioned elements of nutrient trading, including how trades would be monitored and measured to ensure that they were in compliance with allowed levels.
"How in the world are you going to measure ... just look up at the sky and guess?" asked Joseph Bates, an appointee from the Arkansas Department of Health, where he is deputy state health officer and chief science officer.
Allan Gates, representing Springdale Water Utilities at the meeting, told Bates that measuring would be "do-able" and that a person would likely be delegated to do it.
Randy Young, executive director of the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, asked if the "advisory panel" mentioned in the bill would limit the pollution commission's authority.
Ward said the advisory panel would help establish the trading program.
Collins said the panel would give recommendations to the Environmental Quality Department and that the department would have final say.
Ryan Benefield, interim director of the Environmental Quality Department, did not speak for or against the bill at the meeting and was not available for an interview Friday.
Collins said the bill could go to the House public health committee as early as Thursday.
Ward said the bill is an attempt to do something "new and different" to address an old issue between environmental groups and the utilities and businesses that they want to be cleaner.
"Everybody's under pressure to clean up their act," Ward said.
Metro on 02/09/2015

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http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060012454

Court backs EPA, greens in CAFO privacy lawsuit
Tiffany Stecker, E&E reporter
Greenwire: Wednesday, January 28, 2015
 

A federal judge ruled for U.S. EPA yesterday in a lawsuit filed by agribusinesses angry about the agency providing information on large livestock farms to environmentalists.

U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery for the District of Minnesota denied the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Pork Producers Council's motion for summary judgment, saying they lacked standing because the information's release didn't cause "actual or imminent injury" to the livestock farm operators who had provided data to EPA under Clean Water Act permitting.

"It's not only a win for environmental groups and EPA, but for open government," said Scott Edwards, co-director of the nonprofit Food and Water Justice.

At issue was EPA's release in early 2013 of hundreds of pages of documents on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pew Charitable Trusts, which had requested the data under the Freedom of Information Act. These documents disclosed farmers' names, addresses and geographical coordinates, as well as information on pollution discharges (Greenwire, Feb. 21, 2013).

After the farm groups complained, EPA asked the environmental nonprofits to return the materials so the agency could resend versions that had personal data redacted. Then EPA accidentally provided too much information a second time in May 2013 (Greenwire, May 3, 2013).

FOIA safeguards personal or medical information that would "constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

Environmental groups filed the request to know more about nutrient runoff from the farms. Manure from CAFOs can release excessive nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed algae blooms in waterways that smother aquatic life and contaminate municipal water supplies.

"The real importance [of this case] is that the states and the federal government have not done a good job of regulating agriculture and CAFOs," Edwards said. Edwards' group, a part of Food and Water Watch, had intervened in the case on EPA's side with the Environmental Integrity Project and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.

In her opinion, Montgomery added that the agriculture groups' argument failed to prove farmers were likely to be further victimized as a result of the information's release. Swine producer Rick Grommersch told the court that activists with the group Compassionate Action for Animals entered his property to take photographs of his farm, in a declaration submitted by the trade associations.

But the incident on Grommersch's farm took place in 2006 -- years before EPA received the FOIA requests, Montgomery said. This underscores "the ease with which activist groups can identify the location of large farms," she wrote.

The Farm Bureau and Pork Producers Council also presented an affidavit to the judge from Minnesota dairy farmer Patrick Lunemann, who alleged that his privacy had been violated. Environmental groups soundly disputed this claim when they discovered that Lunemann's name, his wife's name and their farm's address were available on his dairy's website and Facebook page.

The agriculture and livestock groups submitted five other declarations in which CAFO operators claimed the information would make them "more likely to receive disturbing threats and potentially targeted criminal activity," as well as acts of terrorism like the introduction of diseases in the food supply.

The CAFO document release sparked bipartisan outcry from Capitol Hill in 2013 as lawmakers called for investigations into the incident and introduced bills to block the agency from releasing such data (E&ENews PM, June 6, 2013).

The story drove an even deeper wedge between EPA and the agriculture community, which has traditionally distrusted the agency.

Michael Formica, chief environmental counsel for the National Pork Producers Council, said he is almost certain his group will appeal the "ludicrous" decision.

Montgomery is "arguing that if someone's name appears in the phone book, it means you can get all sorts of other information on them and release it," Formica said.

Furthermore, he said, the judge didn't mention whether EPA was required to protect the farmers from threats by handing the data to groups that could use it to invade private property. The fact that addresses were publicly available online does not nullify the responsibility to protect parties, he added.

As far as the groups' standing to look out for their members, Formica points to the Supreme Court case Friends of the Earth Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services Inc., in which a complaint from a single member of the environmental group was enough to justify Friends of the Earth's representation.

"We're disappointed. It's very disappointing," Formica said.

If an appeal is granted, the case will be considered in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, released a statement saying the decision should be concerning to farmers, ranchers and citizens in general.

"This court seems to believe that the Internet age has eliminated the individual's interest in controlling the distribution of his or her personal information. We strongly disagree," Stallman said.

The plaintiffs have 60 days to appeal the decision.

Groups sue EPA over animal confinement air pollution
Donnelle Eller, deller@dmreg.com 7:55 p.m. CST January 28, 2015
- 
Evidence is mounting that large animal-confinement operations are polluting the air and hurting public health, according to two lawsuits filed Wednesday that could have broad ramifications for Iowa, the nation's largest pork producer.

A coalition of eight groups seeks to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate air emissions from large pig, cattle, dairy and other livestock facilities.

The environmental and animal-welfare coalition is asking a federal judge to "compel the Environmental Protection Agency to finally act to address unchecked toxic air pollution from factory farms, a large and growing industry that's almost entirely escaped pollution regulations for decades," said Tarah Heinzen, an attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project, a group leading the legal challenge.

The coalition includes the Sierra Club, Humane Society of the United States, and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.

But Iowa pork producers and a Iowa State University professor say there is no evidence that large animal confinements pose a hazard.

In Iowa, the livestock industry, led by pig, poultry and cattle production, generated $14 billion in cash receipts in 2013, federal farm data shows.

Heinzen said the EPA estimates the country has 20,000 livestock operations. Large dairy and swine operations emit 100,000 pounds of hydrogen sulfide annually, contributing to acid rain and regional haze, Heinzen's group says.

"These facilities emit a large number of air pollutants, such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, fine particles and greenhouse gases, sometimes at levels that threaten nearby rural residents, factory farm workers and the animals themselves," she said.

Each of the facilities "can contain thousands or even millions of animals, along with vast quantities of waste. To give you a sense of scale, factory farms produce more than 500 million tons of manure every year in the U.S.," more than three times the amount of waste humans produce, she said.

Residents "who breathe ammonia suffer eye irritations and a variety of respiratory symptoms," Heinzen said. "Ammonia also reacts with other chemicals in the air and contributes to the formation of small particles that lodge deep in the lungs that cause heart attacks and premature death.

"Studies have shown that air near factory farms sometimes exceed acceptable ... ammonia exposure levels," she said.

But Daniel Andersen, an Iowa State University professor, said research is inconclusive about the confinements' public-health impact.

Large animal-confinement operations use complex ventilation systems to prevent animals and workers from exposure to ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, said Andersen, an associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering professor.

"By the time that air would make it to a neighbor, concentrations are very, very low. They're at levels we would naturally encounter in our daily lives," he said. "People have tried to study it, but it's been difficult to find a link."

Rosie Partridge disagrees. She said she's often forced inside her home in the fall, her hair and clothes reeking from the smell of neighboring pig-confinement operations.

Worse, she and her husband, D.G., struggle with headaches, nausea and breathing problems, the result, she says, of exposure to ammonia and hydrogen sulfide that comes from confinement operations housing 10,000 pigs within a mile of her rural Sac County home.

She said the couple, both in their 70s, sometimes has to leave for days at a time while manure is applied to fields.

"The smell is horrid," she said.

Heinzen said the federal government has done too little to protect residents from air pollution emanating from large animal-confinement facilities.

"The federal Clean Air Act mandates the EPA protect public health and the environment from air pollution, but the EPA has failed to live up to its promise in rural communities," she said. "In fact, the EPA has failed to use its Clean Air Act authority to address factory farm emissions for 45 years."

The lawsuits the groups filed Wednesday in Washington, D.C., federal court are designed to force the EPA to act on petitions the Humane Society filed in 2009 and the Environmental Integrity Project filed in 2011 on animal-confinement emissions.

The Humane Society's petition asks that the EPA determine that large animal confinements are a source of pollution and set performance standards. The Environmental Integrity Project asks the EPA to set health-based standards for ammonia.

The groups' lawsuits Wednesday ask a federal court to push the EPA to take action within 90 days.

An EPA spokeswoman said Wednesday the agency would review the litigation. The EPA says agriculture contributes 10 percent of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, while the energy needed to warm and cool homes, run businesses, and fuel for transportation accounts for 70 percent of harmful gases.

Ron Birkenholz, a spokesman for the Iowa Pork Producers Association, said he disagrees with the coalition's charge that confinement facilities degrade the health of workers or nearby residents.

"We believe the barns are safe, or we wouldn't continue building them," he said.

The association, Birkenholz said, is funding research at universities such as Iowa State to improve operations, including odor reduction.

Andersen said manure is injected into farmland to reduce the smell and help prevent it from moving into waterways. And even though millions of tons are generated annually, it's a fraction of the fertilizer that's needed to raise crops in Iowa and elsewhere in the nation, he said.

Birkenholz said: "We're working to be a good neighbor in rural Iowa. Yes, at times, there may be odor. But the activists think it's a constant problem, but that's just not the case."

 

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Publication:Arkansas Democrat-Gazette NW; Date:Jan 27, 2015; Section:Editorial; Page Number:7B

Good news for us?
A judge rules

Mike Masterson



Afederal judge in Washington state ruled earlier this month on a case that likely sets a national precedent for preserving the cleanliness of our own state’s natural waters and streams such as our treasured Buffalo National River.

District Judge Thomas O. Rice of Spokane ruled that manure waste from an industrial dairy farm in that state posed an “imminent and substantial endangerment” to the environment and drinking water there.

The judge determined he “could come to no other conclusion than that the dairy’s operations are contributing to the high levels of nitrate that are currently contaminating—and will continue to contaminate … the underlying groundwater,” an Associated Press story reads. “Any attempt to diminish the dairy’s contribution to the nitrate contamination is disingenuous, at best,” the judge wrote in granting a partial summary judgment.

This finding matters a great deal legally, according to the story. For instance, an attorney for Public Justice said this marked the first time a federal court has ruled improperly managed manure to be a solid waste, rather than a beneficial farm product.

It’s also the first time the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which specifically governs the disposal of solid and hazardous waste, was applied to farm-animal waste.

More importantly to our state and others, the judge’s ruling now means similar contamination standards can be applied to natural waters and private wells across America should animal-waste generators be discovered polluting with their animal manure and waste.