Pollution exemptions for farms questioned

WASHINGTON - A leading Democrat yesterday asked the EPA's top official to explain why the agency has proposed to exempt corporate pig and poultry farms from air pollution reporting rules.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman John D. Dingell said the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed rule appears to run contrary to the findings of one EPA study that warned of human health risks in big industrial agriculture.

"The Bush administration's plan to exempt industry-sized animal feeding operations . . . is nothing more than a favor to big agribusiness at the expense of the public health and communities living near these facilities," said Dingell (D., Mich.)

The EPA proposal, issued the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, would exempt farms from reporting ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions from animal manure. Many farmers say the reports are overly burdensome; some local health officials say they can help track illness in rural areas.

EPA spokesman Timothy Lyons said EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson would review Dingell's letter before responding. Lyons said the proposed rule was "protective of human health and the environment and consistent with the agency's goal to reduce reporting burdens" in situations where releases are small.

The EPA is accepting public comment on the proposal until March 27.

National Chicken Council spokesman Richard Lobb said his industry proposed the exemption because "there is no threat to human health."

"People have been keeping chickens for centuries, and there has never been a problem with ammonia," he said.

Some Democrats and environmental groups believe the EPA has acted in bad faith. As part of a 2006 consent decree, the EPA said it would wait to implement reporting rules while it conducted a study to help set national standards. Now, advocates say, instead of coming up with standards, the EPA is seeking to remove the requirement altogether.

"This raises extremely disturbing questions about whether the agency gave these animal feeding operations immunity from enforcement to allow time for the agency to move forward with a blanket exemption," Dingell said in a letter yesterday to Johnson. In his letter, Dingell cited two studies, including one last month by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which called for "greater, not lesser, scrutiny" of such farms.

The other study, by EPA scientist Roy Smith in 2004, said hydrogen sulfide pollution could cause "acute respiratory irritation and effects to the central nervous system" up to about one mile downwind.

Pennsylvania farms produced 147 million chickens in 2006, Lobb said. Lancaster, with 150 such farms, tops the list of counties with large-scale pig and poultry farms, according to the advocacy group Food and Water Watch.