The Prairie Star: Montana Ag Newspaper

Back in 1980 Congress passed the “Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act” (CERCLA - also knows as the Superfund Law) to address the growing concerns about the need to clean up uncontrolled, abandoned hazardous waste sites and to address future releases of hazardous substances into the environment.

Lately some environmentalists have been demanding, with some support from isolated judicial cases, that livestock manure should be classified as a hazardous waste and thus come under the Superfund Law. To counteract this move, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation on March 8 that would clarify the Superfund Law that has unintentionally impacted America's farmers and ranchers.

The bipartisan “Agricultural Protection and Prosperity Act of 2007” would clarify that livestock manure is not classified as a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant under CERCLA. Those introducing the legislation contend that if normal animal manure is found to be a hazardous substance under the Superfund Law, then virtually every farm operation in the country could be potentially exposed to liabilities and penalties under the Super-fund Law, and this is an outcome that Congress never intended.

During a telephone news conference, three of the co-sponsors of the Agri-cultural Protection and Prosperity Act of 2007 issued opening statements indicating the importance of getting this legislation on the books.

But getting urban Senators and Represen-tatives to agree to this exemption legislation may prove to be difficult, according to Rep. Collin Peterson, (D-Minn.) who is chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and one of the sponsors of this legislation.

In addition, he fears without clarification of CERCLA, some aspects of the renewable energy efforts could be derailed.

“This is a tough issue and a tough one to explain to those people who don't live out in the country and not affiliated with farming,” Peterson noted. “It's not going to be easy, but we have a lot of folks working on this and will do whatever we can to make it happen.

“Congress never intended for Superfund to apply to farms, but the judicial system has done just that, threatening the livelihood of farmers and ranchers everywhere by trying to equate manure with the toxic and industrial waste that has been responsible for some of America's worst chemical spills,” he continued.

“Congress needs to reaffirm its intention that this material is not a pollutant or hazardous substance. In addition, the treatment of animal waste through the use of anaerobic methane digesters could be put at risk if we don't clarify this law. That would jeopardize the opportunity we have to improve the environment by using this biogas as a renewable energy resource. If we get bogged down in this Superfund stuff it's going to make that not only difficult, but probably impossible.”

One of the sponsors on the Senate side is Sen. Blanch Lincoln (D-Ark.) and she echoed Peterson's concerns on the obstacles confronting this legislation.

“Most of the difficulty in these issues is explaining to the people who don't understand living on a farm or don't understand living in rural America what this kind of restriction and liability would be,” Lincoln said.

“The last thing we want to see is our family farms put out of business, like we have seen other types of family businesses shut down because there was no idea what kind of liability they would suffer from,” she noted, referring to the shut down of practically all of the small family owned scrap iron businesses that have been a direct result of the application of CERCLA regulations.

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), whose state has seen a large expansion in the number of dairy cows in recent years, emphasized there are already several tiers of regulations in place that govern the environmental impact of animal waste and clarified CERCLA will in no way diminish those other regulations.

“This clarifies the original intent of CERCLA and does nothing to change the current environmental laws that regulate agriculture, including animal waste,” Domenici said. “Agriculture operations will still be subject to full scrutiny and strict standards set in the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. We offer this measure to protect the viability and competitiveness of our nation's livestock industry, including the burgeoning dairy industries in New Mexico and the southwest.

“As things currently stand, dairy farmers under CERCLA could be fined up to $27,500 a day per violation and that would mean they are gone,” he added. “Instead, the regulations we would like to be under are far more reasonably related to agriculture and will clean up what needs to be cleaned up and will let livestock farmers survive.”

Lincoln pointed out that the animal manure problem isn't going to go away and instead of looking at ways of fining and eventually putting our livestock producers out of business, we need to look at ways for developing this material as a beneficial resource.

“Why wouldn't we want to be moving this debate in the direction of energy and renewable fuels, instead of stymieing operations or putting them out of business?” Lincoln asked. “Why wouldn't we want to be encouraging more production of renewable fuels for animal waste? It's not going to go away. If we are going to continue to eat as a civilization we are going to have animal waste. And what would be much more productive from our standpoint is to encourage production of renewable fuels from this.

“So I hope we have a positive response direction in terms of where we go with this, as opposed to getting mired down with people who just want to be negative.”