National cattlemen officially opine on EPA's proposed CAFO rule

The US National Cattlemen's Beef Association has weighed-in on proposed modifications to the Environmental Protection Agency's water quality regulations for concentrated animal feeding operations, in official comments provided to the federal pollution control agency. While generally accepting of the proposed rule changes, NCBA asserts that "many" livestock operations will be forced from the business by costs to bring facilities & management into compliance. To offset this potential, the group says that deadlines to apply for and comply with federal NPDES permits should be delayed until state legislatures and regulatory authorities, which are delegated to enforce federal water quality laws, have had an opportunity to respond to the changes with revised laws and regulations of their own. NCBA argues that CAFO operators should not be forced to plan and pay for improvements that may not, in the end, be required. The very basis for federal regulation of water quality, discharges into public water sources, NCBA finds problematic, saying that "discharge" has not been adquately defined for CAFOs: "The EPA cannot expect producers to know if they have a discharge unless the term is defined. In addition, states must know the answer to this question before they can promulgate appropriate regulations."

The Cattlemen's comments seem reasonable enough: individuals should not be placed in a position where they are compelled to make speculative investments in pollution abatement that may not be appropriate or necessary. But there is a disingenuous streak in these comments: while there will be borderline and ambiguous cases, the reasonable layperson does not have much trouble interpreting what is a discharge. If wastes from livestock operations are not contained, treated, stored, and land-applied according to well-understood Best Management Practices, and this material winds up in public waters under less than catastrophic weather conditions, it is pretty clearly a regulatory discharge. Likewise, if an operation's wastewater lagoon is consistently full before the end of the storage season, it's unlikely that waiting for a final federal rule, and then waiting for final state adjustments to permit and operating conditions, will change the fundamental fact of inadequate storage.
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