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Animal Feeding Operations - Nonpoint Source Pollution

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By confining animals to areas or lots, farmers can efficiently feed and maintain livestock. These facilities, which congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area, contain major volumes of animal manures. Pollutants from these facilities include:

These pollutants can cause several types of water quality and public health impacts, such as contamination of drinking water supplies and fish kills. While there are other potential environmental impacts associated with animal feeding operations (AFOs), such as odor, habitat loss, ground water depletion, EPA strategies focus on addressing surface and ground water quality problems. Once implemented, however, these strategies will indirectly benefit other resources.

To target and prevent animal manures from entering water bodies, watershed and water quality managers must know where AFOs are located within their area and if animal waste is impairing the water quality of the nearby water bodies. Maps and data tables can be used to:

All Animal Feeding Operations - Small operations are considered to have less than 250 animals. Large operations have over 1,000. The most common AFO size for all the mid-Atlantic states is medium. Pennsylvania has the most counties that have greater than 5 AFOs in the medium and large size categories, while West Virginia has the least. All of the nutrient impaired watersheds in the mid-Atlantic region have greater than 1 medium sized operation and at least 1 large sized operation. Pennsylvania is the only state with large sized operations in the 100-400 range. Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia all have a few counties with greater than 50 medium sized operations.

Beef - Medium sized beef operations exist in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. No beef operations are located in West Virginia. Pennsylvania is the only state in the region that has large sized beef operations. The majority of the impaired watersheds have a medium sized beef operation, the most common range is 0-5.

Dairy - The largest concentration of dairy AFOs exist in the medium sized category. Nearly all of the impaired watersheds have a medium sized dairy operation, and the most common ranges include 1-5 and 5-10. Medium sized dairy AFOs exists throughout all the mid-Atlantic states with the exception of West Virginia. The largest concentration of medium and large sized dairy AFOs exist in Pennsylvania, including the two counties with the largest number of operations per county, 20-33. Only six counties in the region have a large sized dairy AFO, three in Pennsylvania, and one each in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware.

Swine - In 1997, there were almost 6,000 hog/pig farms in the mid-Atlantic region with over 3 million sold hogs/pigs sold that year.

CAFO News

CAFO Rule Challenged while EPA Continues Compliance Assistance with CAFO owners and operators - Petitions were filed in various Federal courts challenging EPA’s recent revisions to the regulations requiring concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to obtain permits for discharges of manure, litter, and process wastewater.

The Final CAFO Rule, published on November 20, 2008 intended to address the 2005 Decision from the 2nd Circuit Court after industry and environmental groups challenged the 2003 CAFO Rule. Petitions will be heard in the 5th Circuit Court. The 2003 CAFO Rule identified additional types of facilities to be CAFOs, and set a deadline to these operations to seek permit coverage by February 27, 2009. The 2008 CAFO Rule did not extend the deadline. The petitions do not “stay” the regulations, meaning EPA and the states are required to carry out the rule as written. The revised regulations mean that states will also have to revise their state programs within the next year, while simultaneously issuing permits.
Region 3 is meeting with all states in preparation of the fast approaching deadline to discuss the pathway forward. We are making every effort to ensure CAFO owners and operators are aware of the impending deadline and their duty to submit a permit application if they discharge or propose to discharge. We are meeting with industry groups and publishing articles in trade papers. The CAFO Team is conducting drive-by inspections of CAFOs on the Delmarva that may discharge to the Chesapeake Bay. EPA plans to conduct inspections in March 2009 at facilities who have not applied for permit coverage.

Petitions filed in the Circuit Courts are listed below, except that the petition in the 6th Circuit Court has been voluntarily withdrawn.

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