Important update about CAFO regulation (sounds more like deregulation) from the website of Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors – JFAN
by Diane Rosenberg | Executive Director
The DNR is now continuing its revision of Chapter 65 under the direction of Executive Order Number Ten, named the “Red Tape Review.” JFAN and several other environmental organizations recently met with DNR legal counsel Kelli Book to learn how the agency is handling the revision. We came away with many concerns.
Currently, the administrative code is a self-contained document, but much of the new version will be spread piecemeal over the DNR’s website or on the state’s online legislative database. This will reduce transparency and ease of use. Book said the revised Chapter 65 will not affect enforcement of CAFO regulations, but we question how the revision will influence which rules and regulations remain and how well they will be able to be enforced.
Governor Kim Reynolds signed Executive Order Number Ten in January. It requires each state agency to review and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of every rule and regulation in the Iowa Administrative Code, remove any duplicate or “unnecessary” rules and regulations, eliminate restrictive language, and rewrite the code from scratch. Reynold’s goal is to reduce the page length of the administrative code and foster the growth of the private sector.
JFAN, the Iowa Environmental Council, Iowa Sierra Club, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Environmental Law and Policy Center, and others met with Book for over an hour, where she outlined how the DNR is approaching the chapter revision under the Executive Order and answered our many questions.
Important Information Is Being Removed
The DNR had a head start with Chapter 65 because it began an initial revision during last summer’s Five-Year Rules Review, removing duplicative language at that time. To fulfill the Executive Order’s dictates, the DNR is now eliminating language that appears in a rule’s corresponding statute (the actual language of the law) and replacing the language with only a reference to the statute number.
executive order number ten DNR language elimination
The administrative code exists to interpret and implement the various statutes that are written in somewhat more complex legal language. Now the public will be responsible for searching out the statute on the state’s legislative database to locate the deleted information. This will include 75% of the frequently-used definitions that form the basis of understanding the rest of the administrative code’s rules and regulations.
Blog For Iowa 
Thank you for this informative post. As a long-time member of the Iowa Environmental Council who has watched The Reddening of Iowa with growing horror, my only real question at this point is just how extremely bad the Red Tape Review is going to turn out to be. I try to do my share to fight this stuff (submitting comments to agencies, writing to legislators, donating, voting, etc.). But seeing how many Iowa voters seem to be just fine with horrible water, massive soil erosion, bad air quality, greedball-friendly conservation policies, etc., because the voters keep on voting for that, is scary.
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