WE MUST STOP EFFORTS IN WASHINGTON AND IN OKLAHOMA TO REDEFINE POULTRY LITTER AS NOT HAZARDOUS. EXCESS ANIMAL WASTE IS DEGRADING OUR NATION'S LAKES AND STREAMS INCLUDING OKLAHOMA'S ILLINOIS RIVER AND LAKE TENKILLER.
SOME LAWMAKERS IN WASHINGTON WANT TO CHANGE THE SUPERFUND LAW TO SAY THAT ANIMAL MANURE IS NONHAZARDOUS (SEE ARTICLE BELOW TO LEARN WHO IS BEHIND THIS).
POULTRY LITTER CONTAINS BACTERIA, ARSENIC, HORMONES, AND HEAVY METALS ALL OF WHICH COULD DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH.
WRITE YOUR SENATORS AND HOUSE MEMBERS AND SAY YOU OPPOSE ANY EFFORT TO DEFINE POULTRY WASTE AS NOT HAZARDOUS UNDER SUPERFUND LEGISLATION.
DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE ARKANSAS POULTRY COMPANIES WHO SAY WE ARE ATTACKING AGRICULTURE BECAUSE WE DON'T WANT THE SUPERFUND LAW CHANGED. WHAT OKLAHOMA IS DOING IS PROTECTING WATER QUALITY AND SAFETY.
ACTION ALERT!
Contact your U.S. Congress member about the Dirty Water Lobby's effort to define poultry waste as nonhazardous.
Copy and paste letter below, modify to express your own words, and STIR will forward for you.
Send to:
Suggested letter:
Dear , I am very concerned about a reported effort in to define poultry waste as nonhazardous when in fact it is a danger to water quality and safety. Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson is attempting to protect eastern Oklahoma streams and lakes from excess poultry waste. An important element of his lawsuit centers on this issue. Clean, safe water is critical to eastern Oklahoma. I know you believe this so please help protect the Illinois River and Lake Tenkiller. Excess poultry litter is seriously degrading these important water resources. Thank you,
(Your name and address)
Congressional hearing statement by Asst. Attorney General Kelly Burch.
Here is the latest development in the animal waste debate in Congress.
From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette
BY ROBERT J. SMITH
Posted on Friday, September 7, 2007
Oklahoma’s lawsuit against Arkansas poultry companies is a misuse of the federal Superfund law, a Missouri senator said Thursday.
U. S. Sen. Christopher Bond made his comments during an appearance by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson in Washington before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Edmondson, who filed the suit against the companies, testified on the human health and water quality impacts of large confined animal feeding operations.
“What I do not support are efforts by some in Congress and certain groups to misuse our laws in ways never intended, such as applying our Superfund law intended for toxic industrial waste pollution instead to farmers and agriculture,” said Bond, a Republican and member of the committee.
“The results of such a strategy seen here today in Oklahoma’s lawsuit is litigation gridlock with endless court motions and no resolution. That does not improve the environment.”
Edmondson said he felt Bond had read the Oklahoma Farm Bureau’s “script” on what to say about the federal lawsuit he filed in 2005 against Springdale-based Tyson Foods and seven other poultry companies with operations in Arkansas.
“I heard it from the farm bureau, and now I’ve heard it in Washington from the farm bureau,” Edmondson said in a telephone interview. “The bottom line is the poultry industry forced us to proceed with the lawsuit.”
Oklahoma’s lawsuit accuses poultry companies of polluting the Illinois River watershed with poultry litter spread on farm fields to fertilize crops and of violating the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, also known as Superfund.
The Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works is reviewing legislation introduced earlier this year by Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N. M., and Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., that’s been dubbed the Agriculture Protection and Prosperity Act. It would exempt large-scale poultry and beef farms from regulations in the Superfund Act, a law used to force the cleanup of toxic chemical sites.
In his comments to Senate committee members, Edmondson repeated many of his messages about the environmental damage that he says is caused by poultry litter — manure-laden rice hulls or wood chips — that is spread on fields after it’s been removed from poultry houses.
The attorney general, 60, told committee members that litter contains phosphorus and chemicals such as zinc and arsenic, which he says harm water quality in the Illinois River watershed. The watershed includes portions of Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the committee’s chairman, told Edmondson she’s opposed to the exemption for animal waste.
“This [lawsuit ] is a big step,” Boxer told Edmondson. “You are going up against a lot of giants. What’s the straw that broke the camel’s back ?”
Edmondson told her he began negotiating in November 2001 with the poultry companies about poultry litter, and in 2003 saw the city of Tulsa settle its lawsuit against poultry companies and the city of Decatur over poultry litter’s use in the Eucha-Spavinaw watershed. Poultry companies reduced poultry litter use in the Eucha-Spavinaw watershed by 70 percent, but continued to “spread large amount of litter in the Illinois River watershed,” Edmondson said.
“The straw, if there was one, was simply a loss of patience,” Edmondson told Boxer. “Every month that we negotiated [about the Illinois River watershed ] was another month with litter being applied to the land.”
A poultry industry spokesman pointed out that Edmondson didn’t mention how Arkansas poultry companies formed a nonprofit corporation called BMPs Inc. in 2003. Its purpose is to haul poultry litter to farms outside the Illinois and Eucha-Spavinaw watersheds.
In 2005, those poultry companies gave a $ 1. 1 million gift to the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission, the agency charged with protecting the Illinois River and the small streams near it. The money was to stabilize stream banks, control erosion and build restrooms in camping areas near the river.
The companies also promised to spend $ 5 million to remove 202, 000 tons of poultry litter from the Illinois River watershed, the spokesman said.
April 2007
AWWA urged Washington legislators to expand conservation programs in the omnibus Farm Bill to at least $7 billion annually and to make protection of drinking water supplies a top priority for those funds.
Wiley Stem, assistant city manager of Waco, Texas, represented AWWA at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment April 19, 2007. http://www.awwa.org/Advocacy/Govtaff/Documents/Stem_Testimony_April_2007.pdf
The committee was investigating primarily agricultural nonpoint sources of pollution.
Reauthorizing the Farm Bill
The Farm Bill, which has to be reauthorized every five years, is due for that this year. One component of the Farm Bill provides assistance to farmers to undertake soil conservation and waterway protection practices.
Stem told House members, "The city of Waco has both an obligation under the Safe Drinking Water Act and a moral responsibility, which we take very seriously, to ensure that the water we deliver to our residents is safe, odor-free, and pleasant to drink.
"In order to meet this obligation, Waco has been forced to spend millions of dollars in recent years for additional water treatment as the direct result of the pollution in our watersheds." He said Waco is undertaking a treatment upgrade project that will cost $90 million, $40 million of which is attributable to water degradation caused by animal operations in the city's watershed.
Fighting efforts to exempt agricultural operations from Superfund
Stem urged Congress not to relax Superfund to exempt agricultural operations. AWWA has been fighting such efforts in Congress because agricultural operations applying livestock manure to fields as fertilizer, according to their approved permits, are already exempt from Superfund.
Waco sued a number of dairies in the watershed under the Superfund statute to force them to adopt practices to reduce runoff from their fields, Stem said. The dairies could have adopted those practices voluntarily with support from the US Department of Agriculture under the existing Farm Bill.
US Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., presided over the hearing and said, "The question is, is the federal government doing enough (in assisting in conservation efforts)?"
He added, "Waco had to spend millions on water treatment," noting that money could have gone toward education or lower taxes.
Some argue agriculture `scapegoat' for runoff pollution
Some members of Congress expressed doubt that agricultural interests were the cause of as much nitrogen or phosphorous runoff as they were being blamed for. US Rep. John Salazer, D-Colo., said US "farmers and ranchers were the best stewards of the land and water."
He later said agriculture was being made the scapegoat for nonpoint source pollution and asked Stem how much Waco contributed to runoff pollution. Stem said urban runoff in his watershed was less than 10 percent of the problem, and that the dairies contributed 30 percent - 40 percent. Salazar said he thought those numbers were optimistic (for the city).
US Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-N.Y., whose upstate district contains a number of dairy farms, asked Stem about the relative pollution contributions of large and small operations. Stem said Waco's watershed contained 64 large (more than 500 head) concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and 10 - 12 small CAFOs (less than 500 head).
"Generally, we don't have problems with the smaller operators," Stem said. "Primarily the problem is with the larger CAFOs."
US Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., questioned an official from the US Environmental Protection Agency about whether there were sufficient studies on runoff problems. Craig Hooks, director of USEPA's Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds, said a Science Advisory Board study had found that 74 percent of the nitrogen in the Mississippi River was from agricultural sources. Baker said he was not convinced that farming operations represented the threat being depicted at the hearing.
Wide support for aid to farmers for conservation
Members of the subcommittee were virtually unanimous in calling for more federal support for farmers to participate in conservation programs.
Scott Faber, farm policy campaign director for Environmental Defense, noted that more than 50,000 farmers are annually turned down for USDA conservation grants because of a lack of funding. He said that in general farmers were eager to solve water quality programs. For example, he said, about 41 percent of farmers adopted conservation tillage practices in 2004 to reduce soil erosion, up from 26 percent in 1990.
Update 3/09/07
BY KATHERINE MARKS
Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007
Cowpats shouldn’t qualify as hazardous waste, some politicians who are backing an effort to exempt manure from federal Superfund laws said Thursday.
Legislation, dubbed the Agricultural Protection and Prosperity Act of 2007, was introduced in both houses of Congress to exempt large-scale poultry and beef farms from the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 — also known as the Superfund Act.
Similar legislation has failed in the past, and critics say it would do more to protect factory farms than family farms.
But on Thursday, politicians on both sides of the aisle said the bills make “common sense.”
U. S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., said that “without clarification” the Superfund Act could be applied to “ranches of any size.”
To date, none of the sites on a national priorities list made the cut because of animal waste, federal Environmental Protection Agency officials have said.
Lincoln and U. S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., are among the nine co-sponsors of the legislation in the Senate.
U. S. Reps. John Boozman, RArk.; Marion Berry, D-Ark.; and Mike Ross, D-Ark., are among the bill’s 59 co-sponsors.
U. S. Rep. Collin Peterson, DMinn., chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said in a statement that current laws “equate manure with the toxic and industrial waste that has been responsible for some of America’s worst chemical spills. Congress needs to reaffirm its intention that this material is not a pollutant or hazardous substance.”
Lincoln and other elected officials talked with reporters during a teleconference from Washington, D. C.
“People who own and operate herds are scared to death,” said U. S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico.
The senators said largescale operations already have to abide by the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. And they expressed concerns that the current law could make it hard to tap methane from cow manure to create energy.
Oklahoma, which filed suit in U. S. District Court in 2005, accusing poultry companies, including some with operations in Arkansas, of polluting the Illinois River watershed with poultry litter, opposed similar legislation proposed last year by U. S. Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas.
Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has said such efforts were attempts by the poultry and beef industry to intervene in the lawsuit.
He contends that phosphorus, arsenic, zinc, copper and other substances found in poultry litter are hazardous substances.