Air emissions exemption for farms overturned

A rule exempting livestock farms from reporting certain air pollutant emissions to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been overturned by a federal appeals court. However, the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is most likely to affect large livestock operations or those with disproportionately high emissions, experts say.In 2008, the EPA exempted most farms from reporting ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions from animal waste to EPA under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA.The EPA had determined that requiring such emissions reports from farms is “unnecessary because, in most cases, a federal response is impractical and unlikely.”The agency issued a similar exemption to the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-know Act, or EPCRA, which requires reporting of those pollutants to state and local governments. However, the EPCRA exemption didn’t apply to large facilities, such as those with more than 1,000 cattle or 10,000 sheep. The Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental group, filed a lawsuit against the exemptions while the two agriculture groups — the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association and the National Pork Producers Council — challenged the provision that excluded large confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, from the exemption.