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Monday, March 19, 2007
PROTECTING LIVESTOCK PRODUCERS FROM AN EXTREME PROPOSAL

When we talk about the Superfund, many people think about places like New York's Love Canal, a chemical dumpsite that homes were built over. Eventually, the toxic chemicals seeped upward through the soil causing noxious fumes and pools of thick black sludge. Some children complained of rashes and respiratory problems. One 8 year old boy who played in a creek where deadly dioxins were later found died of kidney failure. Kidney and liver problems as well as increased miscarriages and birth defects came to the attention of government and health authorities who found 82 chemicals including potentially carcinogenic substances.

In 1980, a couple of years after Love Canal residents were moved, the federal government's Superfund was established to clean up the nation's worst toxic waste sites which today number more than 1300.

Taking it to the Extreme

It is a good and necessary program that has helped clean up many contaminated sites throughout the country but, as so often happens, some people take a good thing to an unnecessary extreme. We are seeing examples of that today with the use of the Superfund act to go after livestock producers.

Some environmental activists and attorneys are trying to use the Superfund law to sue livestock operations for the manure produced. You read that right: there are those that want to treat animal manure as if it were a hazardous substance. Manure is a lot of things, but it is not hazardous waste.

Manure is not Hazardous Waste

I have again cosponsored a bill that would clarify the Superfund law, formally known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), and protect livestock producers from being subject to liability for the manure produced in their operations.

The bill states that it was never the intent of Congress to include natural animal waste as a hazardous substance.

Without such protection, farms and ranches that produce large amounts of manure could be targeted for the costs of clean-up and forced to follow strict Superfund rules. Some pundits have even joked that if that were to happen we could see cows wandering around in diapers.

This legislation is supported by the National Pork Producers Council and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association which say the issue could have a tremendously negative impact on producers.

They point out that if opponents of animal agriculture are successful in their efforts to bring manure under Superfund regulations, any cattle producer that spreads manure on a pasture or provides it for use as a fertilizer could be subject to EPA's Superfund laws, originally intended to address only hazardous and toxic industrial chemical spills.

Agriculture Already Is Heavily Regulated

American agriculture is regulated by a wide range of tough federal and state environmental laws. Manure already is heavily controlled under the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and other federal and state regulations.

Farms have not been subject to Superfund liability because they are not producing, storing or dumping toxic chemicals, and I do not believe that manure is a Superfund waste. Fields on which manure is spread are not Superfund sites either, and I don't believe that it was ever the intention of Congress to make our farms and fields Superfund sites.

In a state where cattle and hogs outnumber people 4 to 1, animal waste is natural and unavoidable. It has been safely used as a fertilizer worldwide for centuries. If normal animal manure is found to be a hazardous substance then virtually every farm operation in the United States could potentially be exposed to expensive lawsuits and devastating penalties under the act. Clearly, Congress should clarify that it never intended such an outcome.

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