Groups battle EPA in court over factory farm pollution
A landmark lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is underway with oral arguments being given in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California.
Last week, attorneys for the Food & Water Watch and 13 groups, including Dodge County Concerned Citizens (DCCC), appeared in a San Francisco courtroom in the fight to regulate water pollution caused by factory farms. The groups filed the lawsuit in September 2023.
“The EPA has spent decades enabling a factory farm water pollution crisis of epic proportions,” said Emily Miller, staff attorney for Food & Water Watch. “Finally, the agency has had to answer for itself in court. The evidence is clearer than ever that EPA’s current rules are not protecting waterways or the communities that rely on them from the massive amount of manure the nation’s factory farms produce. EPA refuses to act, so we are asking the court to require it to rein in factory farm pollution and protect clean water.”
Oral arguments lasted about an hour, where lead counsel for the Food & Water Watch advanced two main arguments outlined in their opening brief:
- EPA’s refusal to make any regulatory updates to its failed factory farm program runs counter to its obligations under federal law, and EPA’s plan to further study factory farm water pollution rather than regulate it as federal law requires is not sufficient.
- EPA’s refusal to narrow its overbroad interpretation of the “agricultural stormwater exemption” at the core of its factory farm program is unlawful, because this faulty interpretation is also at the core of the program’s failure, single handedly enabling thousands of factory farms to evade Clean Water Act regulation altogether.
If successful, the lawsuit, could force EPA to finally bring thousands of unregulated factory farms under the umbrella of the Clean Water Act as Congress intended.
“I’m hopeful the court will see through the EPA’s feeble attempts to defend its shameful refusal to properly regulate factory farm pollution,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s no excuse for the EPA to keep dodging its duty to clean up the filthy factory farm waste that’s seeping into our waterways. This critical case could force thousands of factory farms to comply with the Clean Water Act, which they should’ve been doing for decades.”
“Rural residents shouldn’t bear the brunt of factory farm water pollution,” said Ben Lilliston, director of climate and rural strategies at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “The EPA’s permissive approach benefits the big meat and dairy companies at the expense of rural communities and farmers raising animals in ways that protect the environment.”
“EPA should hold all industrial polluters to the same standard,” said Abel Russ, senior attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project. “But it doesn’t – it routinely gives factory farms special treatment, with disastrous consequences. It’s time to change course.”
“Factory farms and corporate interests have already consolidated the livestock industry to the point where small to midsize operators are finding it hard to compete. The current EPA rules allow these large farms to avoid paying for the pollution they cause as a byproduct of their style of production, allowing them to sell their product for dirt cheap and making it even harder for farmers stewarding the land to compete,” said Matthew Sheets, factory farming policy organizer at Land Stewardship Project. “The EPA needs to amend these rules to stop this loophole for large corporate operations and give small to midsize farmers a fair shake.”
DCCC, which has been led by the Trom family of Blooming Prairie, has been at the center of the factory farm debate for many years.
Besides DCCC, other groups involved in the lawsuit are Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Dakota Rural Action, Environmental Integrity Project, Helping Others Maintain Environmental Standards, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Kewaunee CARES, Land Stewardship Project, Midwest Environmental Advocates, and North Carolina Environmental Justice Network.