NEDC Fights to Protect Streams from harmful Animal Waste

In Fall 2003, NEDC led a coalition of environmental interests and individuals who were concerned about an overly permissive National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit developed by the Oregon Department of Agriculture to control water pollution caused by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). We attended public hearings, submitted comments and held meetings with agency officials charged with developing the permit. When the final permit failed to address a number of our concerns, we were forced to resort to litigation against the state for developing an under-protective permit.

After ten months of negotiations, we finally reached resolution concerning final permit conditions. The settlement over these conditions will:

• Allow for public participation and review of permit documents and animal waste management plans up front
• Tighten up prior loopholes concerning the application of manure to saturated and frozen ground
• Require compliance with state water quality standards
• Require in-stream monitoring if a discharge occurs twice during any 2 year period,
• Require the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) to make basic complaint, inspection, compliance and enforcement information readily available to the concerned citizens in a publicly accessible file (members of the public were previously required to pay ODA to search through an unwieldy database for this basic public information whenever it was requested).

NEDC and the other plaintiff organizations are extremely appreciative of the dozens of pro bono hours that Western Environmental Law Center attorney Charlie Tebbutt put into representing us on this matter. Final permit documents can be found on the Oregon Department of Agriculture's website.

Read a December, 2004 article about the suit in Greenwire.