Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published in the Federal Register its long-awaited rules governing the nation’s factory farms, also known as “concentrated animal feeding operations” or CAFOs (68 Fed. Reg. 7175). A new study by the Environmental Law Institute® examines the experiences of seven states that attempted to regulate these facilities under state laws and previous federal regulations.
In recent years, animal feeding operations have come under intense scrutiny from environmentalists and regulatory agencies as nonpoint source runoff, spills, and odors have contaminated local water and air quality. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, livestock waste has polluted more than 27,000 miles of rivers and contaminated groundwater in dozens of states. While some regional initiatives have focused on mitigating non-point pollution, environmental catastrophes — such as a massive North Carolina hog farm spill caused by Hurricane Floyd in 1999 — have served to increase the spotlight on the need to curb pollution arising from these operations across the country.
The regulatory climate surrounding such operations has been in flux as states, in addition to the federal government, have experimented with ways to address the problems posed by this industry through varied regulatory approaches. The Environmental Law Institute (ELI) has released the report State Regulation of Animal Feeding Operations: Seven State Summaries to demystify different states’ programs and regulatory approaches and allow the reader to make a comprehensive comparative analysis between them.
“We’ve consolidated and simplified regulatory information across states so that different stakeholders such as citizens, governmental agencies, and industry officials can better understand and utilize the tools aimed at mitigating pollution generated by animal feeding operations,” said ELI Law Fellow Roman Czebiniak.
Seven states are analyzed in this report: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Nebraska, and Oregon. The state summaries identify what facilities and operations are regulated, how they are regulated, what regulatory standards apply, and how compliance with standards is monitored and enforced. The summaries each have the following sections: primary applicable laws and responsible governmental authority; permits and thresholds; permit overview; siting and design requirements; nutrient/manure management planning; liability and enforcement; and other related provisions. Funding for this report was provided in part by the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation and Winrock International.
For more information on this report, contact Roman Czebiniak at 202-939-3865 or czebiniak@eli.org. To learn more about ELI, look over the rest of our Web site.