“The Sierra Club, Environmental Integrity Project and two dozen other environmental groups have asked EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from industrial dairy and hog operations.
The new petition touts the benefits of pasture-raised livestock over simply capturing the methane for use as biogas, a move to push back on oil and gas industry interest in using agricultural emissions as an energy source.
Details: The groups are targeting operations “that liquefy manure and confine at least 500 cows or 1,000 hogs without access to pasture,” noting that such numbers of animals could not be sustainably raised on the same amount of pasture, so they generate outsized waste. Liquefied manure that is stored in impoundments and then placed on crop fields releases significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere — 13 percent of total U.S. methane emissions and 1.3 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the petition.
It asks EPA to list industrial dairy and hog outfits as a source category under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, the same provision EPA has used to regulate methane from the oil and gas industry and municipal landfills, as well as carbon dioxide from power plants. After listing the industry, EPA would have one year to propose a regulation to limit emissions from newly built operations in the future and another year to finalize it. EPA would also have to write another rule for existing operations.
The petition specifically criticizes the potential use of the industrial farming operations’ methane as a fuel source, since methane is the primary component of natural gas. Instead, the groups urge EPA to “stand with family farmers” in supporting the “tried and true approach of sustainably raising far fewer dairy cattle and hogs on pasture.”
Environmental justice: The groups also highlight these operations’ impact on communities of color amid the Biden administration’s effort to address environmental justice issues, and they cite such efforts in North Carolina, EPA Administrator Michael Regan’s home state.
“In North Carolina, industrial hog facilities are placed in predominantly African-American, Native American, and Latino communities,” said Naeema Muhammad, an organizing co-director with the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network. “We have to live with 19 million tons of crap in our backyards every year. It stinks up our air, gives our kids asthma, and adds stress to our lives. Environmental justice means listening when people say, ‘I don’t want this in my neighborhood.’”
EPA said it will review and respond to the petition.
Background: The Trump administration in 2017 rejected a 2009 petition to list concentrated animal feeding operations — that is, confined livestock facilities — as a source category, arguing the agency needed more data before determining whether or how to regulate. The new petition argues that EPA already has effective tools to estimate methane emissions from farm operations and should revisit the matter.
EPA’s most recent draft greenhouse gas inventory says methane emissions from manure management increased 67.9 percent from 1990 to 2019, mostly from hog and dairy cattle manure. Emissions from enteric fermentation, when methane is created as part of livestock’s digestive process, were up 8.4 percent over the period, a less steep increase due in part to the development of more digestible feed for cattle.”
Editor’s Note: This article appears in the Northeast Dairy Farmers Cooperatives’ NDFC Newsletter April 9, 2021
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