The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) kicked off a media campaign aimed at spotlighting and correcting a recent court decision that will require livestock producers to comply with laws that are only meant to apply to highly toxic Superfund sites.
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) was enacted to provide for cleanup of the worst industrial chemical toxic waste dumps and spills, such as oil spills and chemical tank explosions. The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) was enacted to ensure that parties who emit hazardous chemicals submit reports to their local emergency responders to allow for more effective planning for chemical emergencies. Both of these laws include reporting requirements connected to the events at hand.
Neither of these laws was ever intended to govern agricultural operations, for whom emissions from livestock are a part of everyday life. To make this clear, in 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule to clarify that farms were exempt from CERCLA reporting and small farms, in particular, were exempt from EPCRA reporting, given that low-level livestock emissions are not the kind of “releases” that Congress intended to manage with these laws.
“This is just another example of radical environmental groups using the courts to wildly distort the original Congressional intent behind legislation,” said NCBA President and Nebraska cattleman Craig Uden. “Unless this ridiculous situation is fixed, agricultural producers will soon have their operations treated like toxic Superfund sites, and government agencies like the U.S. Coast Guard will be inundated with unnecessary questions and reports.”