The EPA Must Do Its Job and Regulate Factory Farms
Under the Clean Water Act, the agency should protect our water from harmful factory farm pollution, but the agency’s regulations have been failing for decades to achieve the act’s most basic requirements.
By design, factory farms generate stunning amounts of waste from the thousands or even millions of animals they confine. And while the industry swears it treats that waste “responsibly,” neighboring communities know otherwise.
Under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should protect our water from harmful factory farm pollution. But the agency’s regulations have been failing for decades to achieve the act’s most basic requirements, a fact that EPA admits.
According to the agency’s own data, roughly 10,000 of the nation’s largest factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), are illegally discharging dangerous pollution to waterways without the required federal permit. As a result, we’re facing a pollution crisis of epic proportions, threatening our drinking water, health, and environment.
When allowed to handle their waste cheaply, with little regard for the toll on people and the environment, their profit margins soar.
So in 2017, we led dozens of allies to petition EPA to strengthen its regulations to ensure all polluting CAFOs have Clean Water Act permits that effectively protect waterways as the law requires. When it denied our petition and refused to act, we sued.
A host of industry groups representing factory farm interests intervened in the case to defend EPA’s refusal to act. This comes as no surprise, as the industry has long peddled misleading arguments and downright lies to preserve the status quo. That’s because factory farms reap huge benefits from the lack of regulation. When allowed to handle their waste cheaply, with little regard for the toll on people and the environment, their profit margins soar.
This September, I countered those arguments in person before the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, explaining why EPA must strengthen its CAFO regulations to safeguard our water and our health.
Here’s the truth behind three false claims industry is pushing:
1. The Harms of Factory Farm Manure “Management” Are Clear
In their brief, industry groups claim that “modern feeding operations are designed and engineered to produce healthy animals and minimize environmental impacts from manure.” This is patently false. The industry employs—and EPA’s lax regulations allow— the cheapest waste management practices possible, with little concern for public health or the environment.
For instance, factory farms store millions of gallons of waste in open cesspools that are designed to leak, threatening drinking water. And because hauling waste away is expensive, they dump as much as they can onto nearby fields, where it runs off into waterways.
We, the scientific community, and EPA all know that lax regulations have fueled the current factory farm pollution crisis.
This is a main reason why CAFOs’ waste is such a big threat to our water. They claim they’re using this waste to fertilize crops, but in reality, they apply far more than the land or plants can absorb. It’s also common practice to dump waste on land that has no hope of absorbing any of it, including fields frozen solid in the dead of winter.
There is a trove of scientific literature documenting all of this, and even EPA concedes that its faulty regulations are to blame. Yet, EPA claims it lacks enough information to improve its regulations. This reasoning is frankly ridiculous, especially since the agency admitted it had not even reviewed the thousands of pages of scientific and government data we gave to it when we submitted our petition, including research it conducted itself.
In their brief, industry groups aim to sow doubt on this topic, but we, the scientific community, and EPA all know that lax regulations have fueled the current factory farm pollution crisis.
2. Factory Farms Benefit from a Gaping Regulatory Loophole That EPA Can and Must Close
The industry also defended an EPA rule that has created a loophole enabling thousands of CAFOs to circumvent the law. Under the Clean Water Act, polluting facilities must get a permit that requires them to limit and monitor their pollution discharges.
However, since 2003 EPA has chosen to interpret the statute in a way that exempts a huge portion of factory farm pollution from regulation. This “agricultural stormwater” exemption has also allowed the vast majority of factory farms to evade permitting requirements altogether, even for pollution that doesn’t fall under the exemption.
So we’re not surprised that the industry is determined to preserve this loophole. In its brief, it falsely claims that federal law requires EPA to apply this exemption to CAFOs. But in fact, the congressional and regulatory records make clear that legislators never intended for the exemption to apply to CAFOs or their waste disposal practices, and EPA understood that.
Contrary to industry claims, EPA applied this exemption to factory farms by its own discretion; the law did not compel them to. Now, in the face of substantial evidence that thousands of operations are exploiting this free pass, EPA can and must narrow the exemption and place stringent regulations on polluting factory farms, as Congress intended.
3. The Status Quo Is Failing to Prevent Pollution
Finally, industry groups argue that the current regulatory regime is working. They even point to Iowa and North Carolina as shining success stories for manure management. What they fail to mention is that these states have some of the worst factory farm-polluted waters in the country, because state regulators allow these operations to pollute with impunity. In fact, these states have laws that prohibit their environmental agencies from passing factory farm water pollution regulations more stringent than EPA’s.
EPA itself admits its primary pollution control strategy, “nutrient management plans,” are inadequate. For decades, the agency has assumed these plans minimize pollution runoff from fields applied with manure. That’s what the industry would like us to believe, too. But the truth is—as EPA recently acknowledged—nutrient management plans don’t do enough to protect against pollution because that’s not even their main focus.
The reality is that the status quo is not protecting rural communities from harmful factory farm pollution.
Instead, they prioritize “maximizing crop growth” where manure is applied. To fulfill its obligations under the Clean Water Act, EPA must stop pretending that nutrient management plans are a silver bullet for factory farm pollution.
The reality is that the status quo is not protecting rural communities from harmful factory farm pollution. Weak state regulations matter even less when the national permit program—the bedrock of factory farm pollution regulation—isn’t effective. EPA can and must overhaul its factory farm regulations.
The EPA Must Hold the Industry Accountable
EPA’s foot-dragging is welcome news to the factory farm industry. Under the agency’s current regulations, factory farms can continue cutting costs through irresponsible manure handling. They can dump the costs of their waste onto their neighbors, leaving rural communities with undrinkable water, health problems, and devastated quality of life.
This needs to change. EPA must stop toeing the industry line and finally stop this pollution.
Arguing before the court in September, EPA agreed the factory farm pollution problem was severe, but it swore up and down it was taking it seriously, pointing to an ongoing study Food & Water Watch forced the agency to launch through other litigation and an advisory committee it convened after denying our petition.
However, these are simply delay tactics. The study focuses narrowly on pollution standards that only apply to permitted factory farms, even though the heart of the problem is that thousands of factory farms don’t have permits to begin with. To add insult to injury, the study group is controlled by industry representatives. It’s simply not believable that the study process will lead to stronger environmental protections.
EPA’s weak arguments underscore what we’ve known for years: to address this pollution crisis, the agency must step up and strengthen its regulations. Not only do suffering communities need EPA to do its job, but the law demands it.
