By SHELLY STRAUTZ-SPRINGBORN
Michigan Correspondent LANSING, Mich. — In a split decision June 20, the Michigan Senate approved a set of bills that would maintain the state’s ability to regulate large livestock farms.
The Republican-controlled Senate voted 21-17 to approve the bills, which continue to put into law a 2002 agreement made with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allowing concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to be verified by the agriculture department.
Administered by the Michigan Department of Agriculture, the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP) is a voluntary program designed to help reduce farmers’ legal and environmental risks. Farmers can gain verification that they are in compliance with environmental regulations through education, farm risk assessment and third-party monitoring.
However, Democrats and environmentalists argue that the current system is not working. They say that existing CAFOs should go through a more rigorous permitting process with state regulators.
Earlier this year, identical bills were introduced in Michigan’s House and Senate, calling for a five-year moratorium on new or expanding CAFOs in the state.
The legislation, which was derailed by the GOP, would have established several other restrictions on CAFOs, including: confirming in statue that CAFOs with more than 1,000 animals must have a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit to operate, prohibit the transfer of existing CAFO permits to CAFO owners/operators who have been found to be in violation of the law and require the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to submit a comprehensive report to the legislature, detailing the status of CAFOs in Michigan.
Democrat Gov. Jennifer Granholm is opposed to the current legislation and its future in the Democrat-led House is uncertain.
State DEQ Director Steve Chester sent a letter to senators June 20 calling the bills “purely special interest legislation that make factory farms a unique, unregulated class of industries in Michigan.”
In Michigan, at least 200 of the state’s 53,000 farms are CAFOs, 122 of which will need to apply for permits unless legislation is passed. According to Chester, four CAFOs verified under MAEAP illegally discharged manure and polluted streams but still remain under the program.
The bill gives CAFOs a “license to pollute, placing our water resources at risk, subjecting communities to potential harms and diminishing the quality of life and property values of neighboring landowners,” Chester wrote.
Key leaders acknowledge that there are some “bad actors” in Michigan.
Of the legislation to place a moratorium on CAFOs, the Michigan Farm Bureau released a statement that said, “the legislation arbitrarily paints all farms of a certain size as bad actors and prevents the DEQ from doing its job of sorting those farms in compliance with environmental laws from those farms which are not.”
The Farm Bureau has maintained its position supporting “effective and consistent enforcement of environmental laws by DEQ against farmers who knowingly, willfully and/or negligently pollute.”
Under the set of bills passed last week, CAFOs with a discharge would lose their verification and have to get permits.
“Senators who supported the legislation acted intelligently and responsibly in casting their votes,” said Wayne H. Wood, president of Michigan Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farming organization. “They saw through misinformation being spread about the legislation and recognized that the bills provide a fair and safe way for Michigan’s $60 billion agriculture industry to continue to operate and grow without compromising the public or the environment.
“Agriculture, the state’s second largest industry, continues to be challenged by people who refuse to recognize that farmers are on the frontline of environmental stewardship. Much the same, opponents of these bills refuse to recognize that this legislation actually strengthens the environmental commitment to Michigan farmers,” Wood said.
The animal farm bills are Senate Bills 447, 448 and 501-504.
This farm news was published in the June 27, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
