U.S. farmers will spend an estimated $14.9 million a year reporting to federal emergency managers that livestock are releasing gas, the Environmental Protection Agency disclosed Monday.
The EPA also projected that the mandate, set to take effect Jan. 22, will apply to approximately 44,900 farms, though producer groups say they’re still sorting out which operations will have to report.
“It’s going to be a challenge, to put it lightly,” said Jack Field, executive director of the Washington Cattle Feeders Association.
The EPA included the figures in a notice due to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register. The new rule comes after a decade-long battle between the EPA and environmental groups over the scope of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly known as the Superfund law.
The law, passed in 1980, gives federal emergency managers authority to respond to releases of hazardous substances. The EPA exempted animal feeding operations, maintaining that it was unlikely anyone would ever stage an emergency response to decomposing manure.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia this year overruled the EPA. The court sided with Waterkeeper Alliance and other environmental groups, which argued that manure was a hazard that emergency responders and the public should know about...
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"...environmental groups, which argued that manure was a hazard that emergency responders and the public should know about..."
Pointing out the enviro's double-standard logic:
1) There are far less cows now than there were when GHGs levels were said to be lower...so how can the decreased cow population have caused the increased GHG levels?
...not to mention the GHG levels of the mass population of the buffalo herds of 1800's.
2) Why aren't the enviros arguing as loudly about the hazards of the manure from the homeless that's littering the city sidewalks & parks...which also washes into waterways when it rains?
Even the grounds around California's capital reeks worse than an outhouse - and much worse than the smell a dairy after a rainstorm.
...but it also could be that I was just smelling the lawmakers' B.S. leaking out through the capital's walls...
3) If bovine manure is causing hazardous levels of GHGs...then why is it sold in stores that urban folk buy to use in their gardens?
...I doubt those urban gardeners would want to switch fertilizers & put their hands in - or grow veggies in - manure that can be picked up for free on the streets of San Francisco...hepatitis A & drug toxins highly enrich that "nutrient" list.
4) Are the enviros also going to regulate the GHGs of the cows in India that are kept because they are believed to be reincarnated relatives?
5) Why aren't enviros raising a stink over the number urban sewage treatment plants that increase with urban sprawl?
...Frank Mitloehner, PhD of UC Davis, says that urban sprawl is 70 times more harmful to the environment than dairy farms.
Maybe the real way cows could be contributing to the increase of GHGs is in the more environmentally-harmful urbanized 'heat islands' that replace the former ranches & farms the cows once inhabited.
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