CAFO’s Today
Mega-farms smell of money - Fort Wayne Journal Gazette An Editorial that starts out with teeth:
State officials have a goal that is chock-full of crap. Literally. Hundreds of thousands of tons of it.
But while covering the field, the piece has little real bite:
Most city dwellers would prefer to enjoy their breaded tenderloin sandwiches and pepperoni pizza without knowing too much about how those goodies ended up on their plate. Breeding sows are kept in gestation crates so small they are unable to move around. They are only able to eat and nurse their offspring. The idea of animals living in such cramped quarters may unnerve some, but the demand for cheap meat is increasing. Indiana has an opportunity to capitalize on the growing demand to the benefit of Hoosier farmers and Indiana’s communities.The most important thing is that state officials seize this opportunity without neglecting their responsibility to protect the state’s valuable natural resources or compromise the quality of life for neighbors of mega-farms.
Planners trying to track where manure is spread - Twin Falls Times-News. Idaho and Iowa, in many respects, are ahead of Indiana on the CAFO issue, having faced it more intensely for a longer peroid of time. This article covers the efforts of one local planning commission to keep track of where local CAFO’s are dumping (speading) their waste by requiring “nutrient management” agreements to be recorded. The county plans to map out the nutrient fields of the various farms. I guess as CAFO begin to crowd each other (and everything else) in Indiana, we’ll also get to this point.
Recent Second Circuit Decision May Have Significant Impact on CAFOs … - Mondaq News Alerts Todd J. Janzen has coverage of the Watterkeeper decision, issued earlier this year:
The CAFO Rule was a reaction to the growth of large CAFOs in the United States. Of its many provisions, three were important to the Second Circuit’s ruling: first, the CAFO Rule’s requirement that all large CAFOs apply for NPDES permits, based upon an assumption that all large CAFOs have the “potential” to discharge pollutants; second, the requirement that each CAFO develop a “Nutrient Management Plan” to outline the land application methods and rates by which it may apply manure and other waste materials as fertilizer; and, finally, treating land application areas as part of CAFOs, such that discharges from fields are subject to NPDES requirements. These provisions are also incorporated into the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s NPDES regulations. See 327 IAC 5 and 327 IAC 15.The Farm Petitioners challenged the CAFO Rule’s requirement that, in essence, “all” CAFOs apply for an NPDES permit. The Second Circuit held that this requirement violated the Clean Water Act, because, “[i]t imposes obligations on all CAFOs regardless of whether or not they have, in fact, added any pollutants to navigable waters.” The court concluded that the Clean Water Act gives the EPA jurisdiction to regulate only actual discharges of pollutants, not potential discharges.
