ACT50 — Urge EPA to Adopt Stronger AFO Regulations
103 actions taken
97 needed to reach next goal
Today, the U.S. food system is dominated by a handful of multinational agribusiness corporations that employ industrialized methods to produce most of the meat and dairy we consume—confining tens of thousands of animals in cramped, unsanitary structures called “Animal Feeding Operations” (AFOs). AFOs produce roughly 1.1 billion tons of animal manure annually, most often in rural areas and in communities of color, which typically stored in unlined waste pits that pollute groundwater and then disposed of on nearby land at rates far beyond what is needed to produce crops.
This system has displaced the independent farmer and resulted in massive amounts of air, land, and water pollution that disproportionately impacts economically disadvantaged communities. Despite being industrial-scale operations that can produce as much waste as a small city, AFOs are rarely forced to implement protective pollution controls or fix the harms that they cause to people, air, land, and water.
Although the largest AFOs are required to obtain Clean Water Act permits if they are discharging pollution, the most recent reports from EPA show that only 31% of these facilities have actually obtained permits. Additionally, because of overwhelming industry influence, regulatory agencies have not taken action to ensure that large AFOs obtain permits and employ meaningful pollution controls.
For example, AFOs are one of the largest unaddressed sources of nitrogen, and phosphorus pollution in the United States. Nutrient pollution from uncontrolled discharges of nitrogen and phosphorus has become a national crisis that is producing toxic algal blooms and impairing drinking water supplies, fisheries and recreational waters across the country. Lake Erie, the Chesapeake Bay, the Mississippi River Basin, North Carolina’s coastal estuaries, and many other inland and coastal waters are already polluted, which according to EPA, is “resulting in serious environmental and human health issues, and impacting the economy.” Despite this and the fact that EPA has recognized the need for more than two decades, most of the nation’s waters do not have numeric water quality standards needed to control and reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.
To address this nationwide crisis, we need the U.S. EPA to implement and enforce the Clean Water Act by requiring large AFOs to obtain permits that contain meaningful and protective limits that actually prevent uncontrolled discharge of untreated animal waste into our nation’s waters. EPA also needs to work with the states to finally ensure that all of the nation’s waters are protected by water quality standards designed to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, as well as prevent toxic algal blooms.
Act now!
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