Tag: EPA dairy

Dairy Farmers Welcome EPA Decision to Close Out Two-Decade-Old Air Emissions Study

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) welcomed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement that it will not finalize air emissions estimating methodologies under the 2005 Animal Feeding Operations Air Compliance Agreement, and that it will move to terminate the agreement. The decision ends more than 20 years of uncertainty for the dairy farms and other livestock operations that volunteered for the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study (NAEMS).

“Dairy farmers signed up for this study in good faith two decades ago, and they’ve been waiting ever since to find out what it would mean for their farms,” said Gregg Doud, president and CEO of NMPF. “You can’t measure a handful of farms years ago and use those numbers to set expectations for thousands of other farms. We appreciate EPA following the data and giving farmers a clear, final answer.”

In comments filed last year, NMPF told EPA that its draft dairy emissions models were built on monitoring data from only five dairies. NMPF’s technical analysis found that the models produced per-cow emission estimates that swung dramatically with herd size, predicted negative emissions in below-freezing weather, and offered no way to account for the advances in feed, genetics, manure management and emissions control that dairy farmers have adopted since the data were collected.

EPA’s announcement reflects many of these concerns. The agency concluded the data are too old and too limited to support reliable methods and no longer reflect current barn designs, herd sizes and manure practices.

“There’s a saying in our industry: when you’ve seen one dairy farm, you’ve seen one dairy farm,” said Clay Detlefsen, senior vice president and staff counsel at NMPF. “That’s why this approach was never going to work. Farms vary too much from one another and change too much over time. We’re grateful to EPA staff for their professionalism over the years, and we look forward to continued collaboration on practical, science-based approaches.”

U.S. dairy farmers have a long record of continuous environmental improvement, and NMPF will keep working with EPA, USDA, land-grant universities and its member cooperatives to build on that progress.

EPA’s decision marks the second win for dairy farmers in the last week. On Oct. 29, USDA announced $165.5 million in Section 32 dairy purchases, which NMPF welcomed as timely support for demand during a difficult stretch for milk prices.

EPA Calls for Nominations to Animal Agriculture and Water Quality Subcommittee

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

EPA has opened nominations for the Animal Agriculture and Water Quality Subcommittee, a subcommittee of the Farm, Ranch and Rural Communities Advisory Committee.

The subcommittee goal is to inform agency decisions on how to improve the implementation of the Clean Water Act National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation permitting program to effectively reduce nutrients and other types of water pollutants from animal feeding operations. The subcommittee will help determine whether any revisions to regulations are warranted and whether EPA can otherwise support the efforts of AFO operators to protect water quality.

EPA is looking for a diverse range of qualified candidates, with applications due on Jan. 2, 2024. If interested in serving, please reach out to Miquela Hanselman at mhanselman@nmpf.org. The announcement can be found here.

NMPF Gains through EPA Retreat on Manure Air Emissions

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

NMPF regulatory staff gained a years-earned win last month when the Environmental Protection Agency decided to solicit information on a proposed end to an exemption from reporting ammonia and hydrogen sulfide air emissions from manure under the Emergency Planning Community-Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) rather than to simply overturn that exemption. The somewhat surprising move all but ensures that the Biden Administration will not overturn the exemption, which benefits dairy, before the end of the presidential term that ends in 2025.

NMPF and animal agriculture groups since 2019 have worked hard with EPA to promulgate the EPCRA exemption after securing a Congressional exemption under the FARM Act in March 2018 for the same type of reporting under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). EPCRA and CERCLA are separate but interrelated environmental statutes. Both exemptions remain in place today—but while the CERCLA exemption would require Congress to overturn the CERCLA exemption, EPA retains the authority to overturn the EPCRA exemption.

Environmentalists seized on an opportunity to overturn the EPCRA exemption by modifying a complaint in ongoing litigation which challenged the final EPCRA rule. After the Biden Administration in January 2021 issued an Executive Order that called upon EPA to immediately review federal regulations issued over the past four years for consistency with national objectives, such as confronting the climate crisis, EPA that November asked the courts to return the final EPCRA rule to EPA for further review.

EPA then allegedly promulgated a proposed rule to eliminate the EPCRA exemption which was then sent to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review, where it sat for an extended period.  During that period NMPF and other ag groups repeatedly asserted to EPA and OMB that revoking the exemption would be inappropriate and defy common sense by requiring useless emissions reports that would serve no logical purpose other than to harass farmers—even while knowing the revocation was very much on the table.

Instead, EPA has issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which solicits information pertaining to requests comments to assist in potentially developing regulations to reinstate the reporting of animal waste air emissions at farms under EPCRA. The agency is soliciting comments under five general categories: health impacts; implementation challenges; costs and benefits; small farm definition and potential reporting exemption; and national report on animal waste air emissions.

The bottom line is that while the issue is far from over, EPA did not have sufficient information to justify a proposed regulation to end the exemption and therefore had to switch to information collection. NMPF and other ag groups will continue to fight on this long-lived, cumbersome issue.