WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 1998-- As part of the Clinton Administration's Clean Water Action Plan, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol M. Browner today announced a draft plan to improve America's water quality and reduce public health risks associated with animal feeding operations. Glickman and Browner invited public comment on the proposed USDA-EPA Unified National Strategy for Animal Feeding Operations.

"Earlier this year, President Clinton announced his Clean Water Action Plan to finish the job of cleaning up America's waterways. Today, this Administration is taking a major step toward that goal by working together to curb a significant source of water pollution-- animal wastes that run off into our waterways," said Browner. "This draft plan is the most aggressive strategy ever proposed to address this problem and protect our nation's rivers, lakes and streams."

"This is a customer-driven strategy." said Glickman. "Comments from the public are essential to shaping it. This comment period provides the public with an excellent opportunity to let us know how we can work with livestock producers to improve the quality of our Nation's water while keeping the livestock industry strong and protecting the quality of life in rural communities. We want to hear from owners and operators of animal feeding operations and the livestock industry on the draft strategy."

The proposed USDA-EPA Unified National Strategy for Animal Feeding Operations is one of more than 100 actions President Clinton directed as part of the Clean Water Action Plan. Despite tremendous progress, 40 percent of the nation's waterways assessed by states are still unsafe for swimming and fishing. The plan identifies nonpoint sources (runoff from urban and rural areas) as the most important remaining source of water pollution and provides a coordinated effort to reduce polluted runoff. Today's release of the USDA and EPA draft strategy to control animal waste runoff is the first key action item under the President's plan.

Animal feeding operations, or AFOs, are livestock-raising operations, such as hog, cattle, dairy, and poultry farms, where animals are kept and raised in confined situations. When not properly managed, animal waste can runoff into nearby water bodies. The draft Strategy addresses the resulting water quality problems of runoff polluted by excess nitrogen, phosphorus, pathogens, and other compounds. Elevated concentrations of these pollutants have been associated with the contamination of drinking water, crops, and animal feed, and adverse impacts to fish and shellfish.

Since the 1970's, factors like the growing concentration of animals at larger feeding operations, the availability of new waste and runoff controls, and increasing water pollution problems have heightened awareness that more should be done to control agricultural waste. While USDA and EPA agree that tremendous progress has been made by private landowners in improving the environment, they also cite that 35,000 miles of rivers (out of 694,000 surveyed) are adversely affected by animal feeding operations.

The draft strategy proposes a variety of voluntary and regulatory approaches. It is designed to help AFO owners and operators remain financially strong while reducing threats to public health and water quality. This draft strategy also contains a section encouraging industry leadership to provide education, financing and advice for pollution control plans.

The strategy establishes a national expectation that all animal feeding operations develop and implement comprehensive nutrient management plans by the year 2008. These plans include manure handling and storage, application of manure to the land, record keeping, feed management, integration with other conservation measures, and other manure utilization options. USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service estimates 300,000 feeding operations will need to develop or revise comprehensive nutrient management plans to meet expectations of the strategy.

As part of the strategy, USDA and EPA estimate that 95 percent of the 450,000 animal feeding operations will be encouraged to implement voluntary comprehensive nutrient management plans. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 livestock operations will be required to develop comprehensive nutrient management plans as part of permits under the Clean Water Act (currently about 2,000 permits have been issued). The regulatory program intends to focus permitting and enforcement activities on the largest concentrated AFOs (or CAFOs, those with 1,000 or more animal units), AFOs with unacceptable conditions such as direct discharge into waterways, and AFOs that are significant contributors to water quality impairment within a watershed.

EPA and states will expand efforts to ensure that all permits include comprehensive management requirements, including land application conditions, and will revise regulations to support this effort by December 2001. In addition, EPA will revise national environmental guidelines to limit discharge from poultry and swine facilities by December 2001 and national guidelines for cattle and dairy facilities by 2002.

Over the next 120 days, EPA and USDA will be taking comments on the draft strategy. Comments on the draft strategy should be addressed to Denise C. Coleman, Program Analyst, USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service, PO Box 2890, ATTENTION AFO, Washington, DC 20013-2890.

After the public has had a chance to review the document, EPA and USDA will hold listening sessions in several cities to get comments firsthand. The listening sessions will occur in late November and the date and locations will be publicly announced.

Copies of the draft strategy are available from EPA's Water Resource Center at 202 260-7786.
Copies are also available on the Internet at www.nhq.nrcs.usda.gov/cleanwater/afo
or www.epa.gov/owm/afostrat.htm