Monitoring the Air Around Mega-Farms

The Environmental Protection Agency says it will start monitoring the air around some large livestock farms this winter. The EPA says it will help them develop better air quality standards for these farms. But critics say the project is too soft on polluters. The GLRC’s Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency says it will start monitoring the air around some
large livestock farms this winter. The EPA says it will help them develop better air
quality standards for these farms. But critics say the project is too soft on polluters. The
GLRC’s Mark Brush has more:


Thousands of farms have agreed to be a part of a voluntary air pollution monitoring
project. Big hog, poultry, and dairy operations produce a lot of manure. The manure
releases gases that can cause health problems. As part of the agreement with the EPA,
the farms will be immune from most federal lawsuits while the monitoring is done.


Jon Scholl is with the EPA. He says this voluntary approach will bring more farms into
compliance faster than direct enforcement:


“We have 2,568 agreements covering 6,267 farms that have a written agreement with the
agency that they’re going to come into compliance with applicable air quality laws, and
we think that’s significant and certainly much better than taking it on a case by case
basis.”


Critics of the voluntary project say there is enough evidence now to force these large
farms to comply with air quality laws. They say the Bush Administration lacks the
political will to do so.


For the GLRC, I’m Mark Brush.

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