EPA throws in the towel on policing air pollution from factory farms

The Environmental Protection Agency late last week announced it would end a 20-plus-year effort to develop methods to monitor air pollution from factory farms, effectively shuttering the agency’s stop-and-start attempts to regulate the potentially pollutant-spewing facilities under the Clean Air Act.

The announcement came just days before the midterm elections and was characterized by the agency as a long-awaited reprieve for farmers, a historically important constituency for Trump and the Republican Party.

When tens of thousands of animals are packed into one place, pollution from their waste is blown from ventilation fans or emanates from giant lagoons of liquid effluent. Livestock facilities emit fine particulate matter, ammonia, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds, all contributing to a toxic mix. Research has shown that emissions from these operations are a major cause of air pollution, causing nearly 12,700 deaths in the United States a year.

Strictly speaking, concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, are required to get permits under the Clean Air Act and report emissions of these pollutants under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability and Act and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. But through a deal crafted in tandem with the EPA and the livestock industry, they’ve been given amnesty from doing so for more than 20 years.

The arrangement goes back to the early 2000s when the agency attempted to prosecute CAFOs for exceeding limits on some of these pollutants. The industry pushed back, arguing there was no adequate way of measuring them. So the agency worked with industry groups to develop what was dubbed the Air Consent Agreement, through which the EPA granted thousands of CAFOs safe harbor from legal action in exchange for their participation in a study that was funded by the industry.