CERCLA-EPCRA Rule on Livestock Reporting
December 15, 2008--EPA signed and made final today the long awaited final rule under Comprehensive, Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) / Emergency Planning & Community Right-To-Know Act (EPCRA). While the proposed CERCLA/EPCRA rule issued by EPA late last year would have exempted all livestock and poultry facilities, regardless of size, from having to meet reporting requirements under CERCLA/EPCRA, the final rule signed today is narrower in scope.
Consistent with the proposed rule, today’s final rule will exclude all livestock operations from having to report their emissions to the air under CERCLA. CERCLA reports are sent to the National Coast Guard Response Center on the Mississippi River, and the EPA had reasoned that reporting livestock air emissions to this center were unnecessary and burdensome in light of the fact that EPA had never and would never have an emergency response to such a report.
While the proposed rule had excluded all livestock facilities from having to report their air emissions to state and local emergency response authorities under EPCRA, the final rule modified this exclusion so that large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) must continue to do so. In the case of an egg operation, facilities with a capacity of greater than 82,000 laying hens would need to report their air emissions. Operations smaller than 82,000 layers would not have to submit a report. EPA reasoned that the community right-to-know provisions of EPCRA are best met by continuing these reporting requirements for larger operations so as to ensure state and local emergency response authorities know where these facilities are located.
While large CAFOs must submit reports under EPCRA, EPA in the final rule made clear that such operations are eligible to submit their reports consistent with the approach spelled out for “continuous releases” under existing rules. Under these “continuous release reporting” rules, a CAFO provides the state and local emergency response authorities with a one-time report of the operation’s “normal range” of emissions. No further report is required unless the operation has emissions that will be occurring “above the upper bound of the reported normal range.”
Egg operations that are participating in the EPA Air Consent Agreement need not submit these reports to state and local emergency response authorities until after the Air Consent Agreement and the associated National Air Emissions Monitoring Study, is completed. Other egg operations should submit the required EPCRA reports.
The new rulemaking has drawn criticism from Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), the outgoing chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, who is vowing to block the regulation in the next Congress. Environmentalists are also criticizing issuance of the rule . |
