DNR/EPA Clean Water Act Workplan Agreement Fails To Prevent Manure Spills
DNR/EPA CLEAN WATER ACT WORKPLAN AGREEMENT FAILS TO PREVENT MANURE SPILLS
2 Years Since Historic Clean Water Act Agreement And Still No Permits For Hog Factory Farms
Des Moines, IA. In early August Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) submitted its 2-year progress report of the precedent-setting Work Plan Agreement between the DNR and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement the Clean Water Act (CWA) for factory farms in Iowa.
Iowa CCI is calling out the DNR for the lack of detail in the report about the outcome of DNR inspections and why no Clean Water Act permits have been issued.
“This is an absolute disgrace. We’ve been saying for 8 years that the DNR is failing to do its job to hold factory farms accountable for their pollution and sadly we’re proven right,” said Larry Ginter, CCI member and family farmer from Rhodes, Iowa. “We’ve already had at least 17 manure spills this year. If DNR was completing good inspections, you’d think the number of manure spills would go down significantly each year, but it doesn’t.”
The DNR agreed to assess twenty percent of Iowa’s 8,500+ factory farm facilities each year to determine which operations need permits. The 2-year progress report states they have completed 41% over the past two years.
The DNR touts the number of inspections as a success but CCI members think otherwise.
“It’s not just about the quantity of inspections – it’s about the quality of inspections,” said Ginter. “Who cares how many you’ve completed if they don’t result in anything but more pollution?”
The Work Plan also required the DNR to “timely issue [Clean Water Act] permits that meet federal requirements to all CAFOs that DNR determines discharge to Waters of the U.S.”
According to DNR records, since the Work Plan was signed on September 11, 2013 there have been at least 99 documented manure spills in Iowa yet the DNR failed to issue a single Clean Water Act permit to any of the polluting hog factory farms.
Barb Lynch, DNR Chief of Field Services and Compliance was quoted saying ‘Since the majority of larger facilities in Iowa are confinements, with animals housed under a roof and state law requiring manure containment, most facilities we inspect do not have problems with manure runoff’.
However, water data collected from Iowa’s 2014 list of impaired waterways shows manure as one of the leading cause of impaired waterways in Iowa lakes and rivers. CCI members say this and the fact the DNR has issued no CWA permits shows how the DNR continues to work for factory farm corporations by misleading the public about the cause of Iowa’s polluted waterways and not holding them accountable for the pollution they create.
Also, CWA permits aren’t just targeted at runoff problems, they are for any kind of pollution discharge leaving a facility.
“We see dozens of cases of factory farms with multiple manure spills,” said Barb Kalbach, 4th generation family farmer from Dexter. “Any factory farm that has a discharge needs a CWA permit and needs to be held accountable, not just a slap on the wrist.”
Another demand of the DNR to meet the Clean Water Act Work Plan is “to implement enforcement program that ensures penalties are sought in accordance with DNR’s [Enforcement Management System] and creates a stronger deterrent to noncompliance”.
In the past 2 years, DNR has only issued 23 Administrative Orders and 1 Attorney General referral against factory farm polluters with manure spills or other violations. That means out of the 99 polluters, 75 of them received no meaningful penalty for their manure spill. CCI members believe that the lack of penalties sends a message to the industry that manure spills are just a cost of doing business.
DNR is also failing to meet the final Work Plan requirement, which is to keep the public informed of its Work Plan progress. So far the Work Plan progress updates have been vague and contain very little real information. The annual report lacks detail about the outcome of inspections and why no Clean Water Act permits have been issued to a hog factory farm.
“The 2-year report lacks detail,” said Kalbach. “DNR provided no detail on the outcome of assessments and how they determined that a factory farm does not need a CWA permit. The DNR needs to take a presumption that every factory farm has a potential to discharge and therefore every factory farm has the duty to apply for a permit.”
“This Work Plan will only be successful if it leads to real oversight of factory farm pollution in Iowa. That means serious inspections, strong permits, and enforcement actions that ensure it doesn’t pay to pollute. DNR hasn’t shown that it takes permitting seriously, and EPA should step in and conduct independent investigations of Iowa manure spills,” said Jess Mazour, Farm & Environment Organizer at Iowa CCI.
CCI members are calling on the DNR to strengthen the Clean Water Act implementation with four demands:
Issue a Clean Water Act Permit to every factory farm in Iowa.
Complete quality on-site inspections that find problems and fix problems.
Issue tough fines and penalties that deter future pollution.
Create a transparent database of manure spills, inspections and details of specific factory farms.
Iowa’s more than 20 million hogs confined in thousands of factory farms produce nearly ten billion gallons of toxic manure every year. There have been more than 800 documented manure spills since 1996 and Iowa currently has more than 725 polluted waterways.