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Category Archives: NPDES
Feedback and Unintended Policy Consequences
Today has been a day to reflect on the way things actually work and the perverse outcomes that sometimes obtain when we do what seems logical…meaning, of course, that unintended consequences are everywhere. —– Over the past 20 years or so, perhaps more, environmental advocacy groups (Environmental Defense, Sierra Club, etc.) have trained their guns on industrial agriculture, especially industrial ANIMAL agriculture, arguing that the larger our “animal factories” (their term, not mine!) become, the greater risk they pose to the environment. The logical conclusion they reach is… Read More →
Dairies and Air Pollution
Last week, at the invitation of Dr. Ellen Jordan (Extension Dairy Specialist, Dallas), I made a short presentation at the annual Dairy Outreach Program Area (DOPA) workshop in Stephenville. Dairy producers in the Central Texas (Erath, Comanche, Johnson, Bosque, and Hamilton Counties) and East Texas (Hopkins, Rains, and Wood Counties) DOPAs are required under their state water-quality permits to obtain a certain number of continuing-education units each year. Because these CEU programs are a regulatory requirement, they’re usually well attended, and this year’s was no exception: somewhere around 45… Read More →
Clean Water Act and Livestock Producers
Short post today. Over at the Texas Agriculture Law Blog last week, Tiffany Dowell-Lashmet posted a couple of articles that will be of interest to livestock producers in the southern High Plains. In this post, the question is whether or not winter grazing of cropland residues is an activity that requires a federal NPDES permit under the federal Clean Water Act. In this weekly roundup, the second summary asks whether or not land-applied livestock manure may be considered a “hazardous waste” under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act… Read More →