Cleaning Up Factory Farms
By J.R. Pegg, Environment News Service, AlterNet.org
The
Bush administration thinks it's perfectly OK to let factory farms
discharge waste into the nation's waters. A federal appeals court says
the policy stinks.
The Bush
administration's regulations to limit water pollution from factory
farms violate the Clean Water Act and must be revised, a federal
appeals court ruled [last month]. The court found the regulations
failed to ensure that factory farms would be held accountable for
discharging animal wastes into the nation's waters.
…The
decision continues a long-running battle over how to regulate factory
farms – known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). CAFOs
have emerged as the dominant force in the modern production of
agricultural livestock as the size of livestock operations has grown
over the past two decades. These operations produce some 500 million
tons of animal waste annually – disposal and storage of this waste
presents serious risks to public health and the environment.
CAFOs
often over-apply liquid waste on land, which runs off into surface
water, killing fish, spreading disease, and contaminating drinking
water supplies. Waste can leak onto the land and into groundwater and
drinking water supplies from the massive waste storage units on the
farms.
Three
decades ago, the U.S. Congress identified CAFOs as point sources of
water pollution to be regulated under the Clean Water Act's water
pollution permitting program. The 2003 rule aimed to implement that
decision – it applies to some 15,500 livestock operations across the
country.
(Click here to read the complete article.)
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