We Pressured EPA To Answer our Factory Farm Pollution Petition

Published Aug 15, 2023

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Food SystemClean Water

We took EPA to court for failing to answer our Factory Farm Water Pollution Rulemaking Petition and we won.

We took EPA to court for failing to answer our Factory Farm Water Pollution Rulemaking Petition and we won.

In 2017, over 30 public interest and environmental justice groups – led by Food & Water Watch – filed a rulemaking petition with the Environmental Protection Agency urging the agency to strengthen its clean water rules governing factory farms. The industry produces mountains of manure, and is a leading contributor of dangerous water pollution.

Though EPA was legally required to respond to the petition “within a reasonable time,” more than five years later the Agency had neither responded, nor updated its lax Clean Water Act regulations for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). This egregious delay prompted Food & Water Watch to file a Petition for Writ of Mandamus in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in October 2022, asking the court to compel EPA’s response. The suit argued that the more-than-five-year delay is unreasonable, and that EPA’s inaction is unlawfully prolonging dangerous pollution and public health threats from factory farms.

The Clean Water Act defines CAFOs as “point sources” of pollution, which should require polluting CAFOs to follow discharge permits that restrict their discharges into rivers and streams. But due to EPA’s weak regulations, only a small fraction of CAFOs have the required permits. The permits that do exist are weak and inadequately protective of water quality. The agency’s failed approach has led to widespread factory farm pollution in waterways and communities across the country. The 2017 rulemaking petition provided a roadmap for EPA to close loopholes that have enabled CAFOs to avoid regulation, and to make permits stronger and more effective.

By suing EPA for its long-overdue answer, Food & Water Watch’s goal was to finally get EPA to address the specific demands in our petition – either by granting it, or by at least giving us a denial that we could challenge in court. Immediately after we filed suit, EPA came to the negotiating table and agreed to an accelerated answer deadline of August 2023.

On August 15, 2023 EPA finally answered our petition, denying our request for regulatory reform. Instead, the agency opted to form an Animal Agriculture Water Quality federal advisory subcommittee to make recommendations for ways in which EPA can improve its Clean Water Act program for CAFOs and pursue a “detailed study” of CAFO effluent guidelines that it had already committed to following another Food & Water Watch lawsuit. The proposed study process will take years to complete, and there’s no guarantee it will result in the long overdue and urgently needed regulatory updates we demanded. In other words, just another delay tactic on EPA’s part.

Nevertheless, because we forced EPA to finally answer our petition, we were able to bring the agency back to court, and this time we can challenge the merits of its denial.

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