EPA Seeks to Keep Manure Out of Rivers

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency will announce plans today to begin regulating large livestock farms much like factories and other waste-producing industries, requiring permits and inspections in an unprecedented effort to keep manure out of rivers and streams.

The plan would dramatically increase the government’s oversight of thousands of the nation’s largest farms, including poultry houses in Eastern Shore counties that some have blamed for last year’s attacks by the fish-killing microbe Pfiesteria piscicida.

The Clean Water Act already gives states the authority to regulate large feedlots for hogs, dairy and beef cattle. But in practice, only about a quarter of the estimated 6,600 largest farms are regulated.

The EPA’s draft plan applies the act’s full authority to an agricultural sector that produces large amounts of waste yet is exempt from many of the pollution controls that apply to small municipal sewage plants or even septic systems. It also addresses one of the most contentious environmental and social issues in rural America: the proliferation of large industrial farms that raise animals by the tens of thousands in factory-like confinements.

Some of the manure, which is often used as fertilizer, can end up in ground water and rivers through spills or runoff from waste-saturated fields. In waterways, the waste can trigger algae blooms that choke the life from aquatic ecosystems.