icare house agriculture committee presentation on cafo files audit

8/7/2019 ICARE House Agriculture Committee Presentation on CAFO files audit

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ICARE Presentation to House Agriculture Committee

Title Slide: ICARE Logo

Mr. Chairman, Honorable Members of the House Agricultural Committee,

My name is Shavone Hasse, and I am a Board Member of Idaho Concerned Area

Residents for the Environment (I.C.A.R.E.)a pro-agriculture organization that, among other

things, strongly encourages sustainable alternatives to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations

(CAFOs).

I, ICAREs Executive Director Alma Hasse, and Dr. Jerry LaCavaprofessor Emeritus

at Boise State Universitys College of Business and Economicsare here today to share with

you some preliminary results from our audit of the Idaho State Department of Agricultures

(ISDAS) Large CAFO files.

This committee often hears from representatives of Idahos CAFO industry as well as

ISDAI feel I can safely assume that all of you are well-versed in their perspectives, arguments,

and justifications. The purpose of this presentation is to shed some factual light on the unhealthy

living conditions and unjust treatment that CAFO neighbors have to deal with everydayto

provide a voice for those who have so far been silenced by industrys stereotyping. Im sure you

are all familiar with the complaining neighbor simply unwilling to accept modern farming

methodstoday, Id like to present you with that neighbors real story.

Audit Parameters

[Slide: Large CAFO]


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Before I get into the details, heres a bit of background about the scope of this audit.

When I say Large CAFO, I mean something very specificIm not just saying it for

rhetorical effect. Large CAFO is a regulatory category that relates to the federal Clean Water

Act. Technically, any fixed source that discharges recognized pollutants to waters of the United

States is considered a point source and requires a special permit known as an NPDES permit

(NPDES stands for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System). However, like all of us,

EPA has to prioritize. And, because generally speaking, discharges from larger point sources

such as factoriesdo more damage than discharges from smaller point sourcessuch as

individualsthey do so based on the size of point sources. For Concentrated Animal Feeding

Operations, EPA prioritizes those facilities that meet the definition of a Large CAFO.

How many animals make a Large CAFO varies according to animal species, but for

our purposes its fairly simple: a dairy with 700+ head or a beef feedlot with 1,000+ head. I

realize that we do have a few swine and poultry CAFOs in the state of Idaho, but because of time

constraints, different regulatory systems, and the fact that there simply arent that many swine or

poultry CAFOs in the state, we originally limited our audit to the Large beef and dairy CAFOs.

While the regulatory category provides a convenient cut-off point, there are other reasons

why we focused solely on these facilities. First and foremost, ICARE hears from our members

and other citizens almost exclusively about Large CAFOstypically facilities that have 2,000 or

more cows. We have never received complaints about small dairies or feedlots, and have only

ever had a few calls about mid-sized facilities. As many of our members are native Idahoans and

farmers themselves, they understand and fully support traditional agriculture. Most of the time, it

is these people who have been moved in on by the CAFO industrynot the other way around.


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Lastly, we chose to focus on Large CAFOs because we consistently hear that they are the

future of animal agriculture in Idaho. Proponents of Large CAFOs claim that these factory-scale

operations increase efficiency and allow farmers to make a profit in a competitive marketplace,

and that those who express concerns about Large CAFOs simply want farmers to return to the

stone age. This rationale is not factual, and it is also extremely misleading. In dairies, for

example, increases in herd size beyond 200-300 do notsignificantly increase efficiency and on

a per-cow basis size has no effect on profit levels (Weida, 21, 22). Yet even if it were true, it

would still be misleading: the cost of externalitiesincluding, but not limited to water and air

pollutionare not considered by this cost-benefit analysis. If Large CAFOs are the future of

animal agriculture in Idaho, it is important that this committee and the public at large fully

realize what that future looks like. That is what we have undertaken to do with this audit.

Audit Rationale

A number of factors led to our decision to begin this audit in August 2010: first, there has

been steadily mounting concern from our members about dairy and beef CAFOs in the Magic

and Treasure Valleys, as well as increasing frustration with what CAFO neighbors perceived to

be a lack of enforcement by ISDA and DEQ, especially with regard to water and air pollution.

[Slide: Water]

Water

At least 22 separate studies have identified CAFOs as significant sources of surface and

ground water pollution in Idaho. Despite this, none of the responsible state or federal agencies

has done anything to prevent CAFOs from further contaminating peoples drinking wateras

required by Idahos Ground Water Quality Ruleor from using our streams and rivers as open

sewersas required by the Clean Water Act.


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[Slide: discharge]

ISDA does monitor for nitrates at Idahos dairies, but this program is haphazardly

conducted and wholly inadequateISDA doesnt collect important meta-data (well depth, well

logs, etc.), or keep proper track of the data itself. For example, ISDA couldnt tell us whether the

electronic program that holds the nitrate data ties that data to a site or to a specific

facility/operator. In addition, ISDAs dairy well monitoring program does not include monitoring

for ammonia or nitritenitrates chemical precursors and important clues to the source of nitrate

contamination in ground water. These problems are compounded by the fact that ISDA does not

conduct nitrate monitoring at feedlots.

[Slide: Warning Letter]. ISDA and DEQ have sent warning letters to producers whose

wells are above the maximum contaminant level for nitrate, but neither agency has issued fines

or undertaken a real enforcement effort.

In our opinion, ISDAs refusal to act on this issue has served as a tacit endorsement of it.

As Idahos CAFOs have consolidated and become even more concentrated, Idahos ground

water pollution problems have gotten worse.

[Slide: Nitrate trends]

In 2008, IDWRs Ken Neely found that five of Idahos Nitrate Priority Areas (NPAs)

showed increasing nitrate trends, and that twice as many NPAs had increases in median values

than decreases (Neeley, 4). Then, in 2009, three wholly separate DEQ reports found that CAFOs

were contaminating drinking water with not only nitrates, but also livestock-only antibiotics and

hormones [Slide: pharmaceuticals]. In fact, at an informational meeting in Cassia County in

January 2010 DEQ informed residents that if their wells had elevated nitrates they likely also had

some or all of these emerging contaminants. These enforcement failures have burdened CAFO


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neighbors with the cost of having to drill their wells deeper, install reverse osmosis systems, or

buy bottled water from the store.

[Slide: Snake River]

Large CAFOs have not only polluted Idahos ground waterthe sole source of drinking

water for 95% of Idahoansthey have also severely impaired our streams and rivers. [Slide:

CAFOs and Phosphorous] For example, recent DEQ data shows that at 6 out of 7 of monitoring

sites along the middle Snake River, total phosphorous exceeds the Total Maximum Daily Load at

frequencies at and above 50%. Not surprisingly, the site with the highest total phosphorous

exceedance rate (83.6%) is immediately downstream of a cluster of Jerome and Gooding County

CAFOs.

As many of you know, Municipalities are now being forced to shoulder the cost of this

pollution (by replacing or upgrading their waste treatment plants), though their contribution to

the Snake Rivers nutrient load pales in comparison to that of the CAFOs.

Air

[Slide: Ammonia]

While there are not quite as many studies concerning CAFO impacts to air quality in

Idaho as there are about water quality, the story concerning air quality is nearly identical to that

of water: ISDA has failed to take action despite compelling evidence. In 2003 DEQ issued a

white paper on CAFO impacts to Treasure Valley air quality, which showed that 64% of .

[Slide: Treasure Valley ammonia] Yet nothing has been done. Instead, DEQ has focused solely

on motorists (requiring smog checks). While there has been no such white paper regarding air

quality in the Magic Valley, any resident can tell you about the industrial haze that regularly

settles over their valley. Our members who are nurses in the Magic Valley tell us regularly about


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the alarmingly high asthma rates they see in children. Another of our member families lost a son

in 2008 to an asthma attack. The boys death certificate lists environmental causes as having

triggered his attack. If you were to visit this family, youd notice that theres nothing out there

except the 30,000+ cows housed on the CAFOs that surround their home in all four directions.

Neighbor frustration with lack of enforcement

After nearly 5 years of this work, ICARE has determined that these incidents are not

isolated. Rather, they are part of a larger pattern of local, state, and federal authorities kowtowing

to industry regardless of the impact to neighbors and workers.

[Slide: SB 1346]

In addition, nearly every year since ICAREs founding in 2006, public access to CAFO

records has somehow been restricted while CAFO entitlements have increased or expanded.

After last years passage of Senate Bill 1346, which made all information generated by Beef

CAFOs as a result of their nutrient management plans trade secrets, we felt it was imperative

to access what we could and make it widely available to the public. This information is vital to

Idahoans who wish to hold their government accountable.

Finally, we undertook this audit with the knowledge that the poultry and swine industries

are looking to ramp up production in Idaho, and that there was serious discussion about

transferring regulatory oversight of these types of operations from DEQ to ISDA. We felt that,

prior to granting ISDA any more authority, it was important to have an accurate portrait of the

agencys enforcement record under its existing authority.

Method


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Im going to say just a little about how we went about selecting files for our auditif you

have more questions about the selection process or the technical aspects of that process, Id

encourage you to save those questions for Dr. LaCava. We began with a list, provided to us by

ISDA in August of last year, of all 413 Large Beef and Dairy CAFOs in the state. We used the

random number generator function in Microsoft Excel to randomize the numbers. We warmed up

the random number generator and ran it through multiple times to ensure that the results would

be truly random.

[Slide: Redacted Beef file]

Initially, the audit included beef CAFOs, but these had been so heavily redacted by ISDA

that after we had reviewed a handful of them, we realized that there was almost no useful

information remaining in them. As a result of this, we skipped over the beef CAFOs, nonetheless

retaining the order of our randomized list.

We chose to audit files at random for a specific reason: if we could have gotten through

all of the files prior to this presentation, there would have been no need, but we anticipated (and

were correct in so thinking) that we would be hard-pressed to get through everything on time. So

in order to present something to this committee that spoke about the Large CAFO files as a

whole, we needed to have a randomized list from which Dr LaCava could draw valid statistical

conclusions.

Preliminary results

Discharges

[Slide: discharge]


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A quick review of the federal and state laws regarding discharges: under the federal

Clean Water Act, CAFOs may only discharge to waters of the United States in the event of a 25-

year 24-hour storm event; under the laws of the state of Idaho, dairies are mandated to keep all

liquid waste in approved storage containment areas and may not discharge off-property.

As of August of last year, there were a total of 271 Large dairy CAFOs in the state. For

this preliminary report, we were able to sampleninety (90) of those. Of the ninety (90) in our

sample, 29 had been cited for discharges. While the true proportion of discharges from this

sample is approximately 1/3, for the purpose of this preliminary report, Dr. LaCava calculated an

optimistic estimate for the percentage of facilities that have discharged. The optimistic estimate,

at the 95% confidence level, is .241 or 24.1%. One can be quite confident (95%) that the

proportion of dairy CAFOs that have experienced discharges is at least 24.1%.

Our sample produced 40 observations of successive discharges from a single dairy. The

average length of time between discharges from the data set was 12.47 months. At the 95%

confidence level, the optimistic estimate is 17.61 months. One can be very confident that the

statewide average for the interval between successive discharges at a single Large dairy CAFO is

no longer than 17.61 months.

Of the 29 CAFOs that had been cited for discharges in the study period, 15 had only one,

28 had 5 or fewer, but one had been cited 17 times over a six-year period. With this distribution

we were unable to make a statistical projection about the average number of discharges per

CAFO for the state as a whole. Still, an incidence of 17 discharges over 6 years at one dairy

seems to suggest a significant problem even without any further analysis. We will have a clearer

picture of the distribution once we have completed the audit. For the time being, however, we


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feel that it is clear that discharges are not just problems in and of themselvesthey are

symptoms of larger underlying problems with the facility itself. It also seems to us that the most

likely culprit for discharges is facilities exceeding their permitted animal numbers, thereby

overloading their waste storage systems.

Phosphorous

[Slide: ISDA News Release]

Since most of you are farmers, I dont need to explain why soil sampling for phosphorous

levels is important. What I think does bear mention is that soil sampling by CAFOs is required

by both state and federal law. Further, the legal threshold for phosphorous levels is set by NRCS

in the 590 Nutrient Management Standard (NMS). NRCS issued a new NMS for Idaho in 2007

(and another is already in the works), but as the state of Idahos Dairy and Beef Rules

incorporate the 1999 NMS, that is the standard we are using in our audit.

[Slide: Phosphorous fields]

Our sample files recorded a total of 520 CAFO fields that had been tested for phosphorus levels;

268 of these tested above the 1999 NMS for either ground water or surface water concern.

Within the sample, the true proportion of fields above phosphorous thresholds is about 51.5%.

Statewide, one can be quite confident that the true proportion of Large dairy CAFO fields which

have exceedingly high levels of phosphorus is at least47.9%. [Slide: Phosphorous data; click]

Our preliminary study also looked at the average level of phosphorous in fields that were

above the NMS for both Groundwater and Surface water concern. [click] The threshold for

ground water concern in Idaho is 20 or 30 ppm, depending on the site. The average level of


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phosphorus in fields above the NMS for Groundwater concern was 47.76 ppm. At the 95%

confidence level, the optimistic estimate is 41.49 ppm. [click] One can be quite confident that

phosphorous levels in Idahos Large dairy CAFO fields which exceed the NMS for ground water

concern would average at least 41.49 ppm. Phosphorous in ground water can impact surface

water (Baldwin, Arena Valley, 14).

The threshold for surface water concern in Idaho is 40 ppm. [click] The average level of

phosphorus in these fields above this threshold was 101.16ppm. The 95% optimistic estimate

for average concentration of phosphorus in fields that exceed the NMS for surface water concern

is 94.21 ppm. [click] One can be quite confident that the average concentration of phosphorous

such fields is at least 94.21 ppm. As a point of comparison, DEQs guidelines for reclamation

and reuse of industrial and municipal wastewater consider Phosphorous levels above 51 ppm to

be very high. Industrial and municipal wastewater fields with these kinds of levels have

historically required remediation when land use changes.

ISDA reporting and enforcement [Slide: ISDA logo]

In our preliminary study we also attempted to gauge the effectiveness of ISDAs

compliance and enforcement efforts. To do this, we looked at two pieces of information: how

often inspectors failed to officially report non-compliance and how often ISDA assessed fines for

serious non-compliance violations (such as discharges).

Nearly 2100 reports were examined in this data collection. 1985 of these had written

comments from the inspector. Comments that directed the dairy to take corrective action would

seem to suggest that the dairy was in a state of noncompliance. Of all the times that such

comments were made, 582 did not indicate noncompliance in the box where noncompliance is


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typically indicated on the inspection form. The estimate of the true proportion of such

incidences statewide is .293 or 29.3%. At the 95% level, the optimistic estimate is .276 or

27.6%. In other words, one can be very confident that ISDA significantly underreports the

incidence of non-compliance at Large dairy CAFOs.

[Slide: Live cow amongst deads]

Out of a total of 323 official non-compliance violations (including 69 discharges) fines

were assessed only 14 times. With so few observations available, no attempt was made to

determine the effectiveness of ISDAs enforcement measures.

Caveats

ISDAs files were in disarray. There was no uniform method for dealing with files for

facilities that had changed owners or business namessome files were missing records from the

previous owners tenure or business name, others included this information. Multiple files were

missing legally required soils data. We also routinely came across inspection reports filed in the

wrong files. ISDA does not appear to have a detailed inventory of records.

None of this affects the validity of our analysisif anything, it demonstrates how

extraordinarily optimistic our analysis is.

Had we used the 2007 NMS, the Phosphorous exceedance rate would be far higher (and

theres yet another standard in the works).

What it means and why its important

[Slide: So What?]


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This is not about a few bad apples, and it certainly isnt about whiny urbanites who dont

understand how agriculture worksit is a systemic problem that requires serious attention.

Water and air quality are not being protected, the rules currently on the books are not being

enforced, and rural Idahoans are shouldering the cost of the CAFO industrys pollution. None of

the responsible state or federal agencies have stepped up to enforce existing laws; ISDAs reports

to the legislature regarding compliance and enforcement are inaccurate. Very few facilities are

fined even for serious violations (when they are, most of it is held in abeyance, even though

this is not an effective policy).

We ask this committee to consider whether the states current coursewhich surrenders

the rights of Idahos rural citizens to clean air and drinking water to the handful of people who

operate Idahos factory farm industryis morally defensible and economically wise. We do not

believe it is.

Proposed Solutions

[Slide: happy cows]

Strengthen Idahos Ground Water Lawpolluter pays

Hand beef & dairy enforcement over to DEQ (and dont give ISDA any more authority)

Legislative audit of CAFO files

Implement more rigorous water testing standards / Broaden nitrate testing parameters

Require ISDA to adopt the 2007 NMS

Restore funding for water monitoring


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Repeal the law that makes the NMPs private (so that neighbors who are being moved in on can

have the tools they need to solve their own problems)

More rigorous training for inspectors as well as consistent reporting requirementspolicy

manual of some kind.

More rigorous training for Nutrient Management Plannerspossible revamp of One Plan.

Place more clear restrictions on ISDAs discretionary authority.

Thank you again for your time and consideration.

icare house agriculture committee presentation on cafo files audit

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