Washington CAFO plan offers silver lining

cows feedlot dairy 92255434Opinion piece from the Capital Press

While we hesitate to hail any plan to increase state regulation as good news, the Washington Department of Ecology’s plan to overhaul how it regulates the storage and spreading of manure at dairies and other concentrated animal feeding operations has a silver lining for producers.

Currently, DOE issues pollution discharge permits to only a small number of CAFOs. The permits combine federal and state laws and apply only to pollutants discharged to surface water.

The department has proposed giving dairies that discharge to groundwater only the option of obtaining a permit based solely on state law. That’s good news. Because the permits are based on state laws they can’t be challenged in federal court, the preferred venue of the environmental lobby. Read the rest of the opinion here.