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State ag officials praise Congress for providing farmers certainty under CERCLA
Story Date: 3/26/2018
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Source: PRESS RELEASE, 3/22/18
The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) today applauded Congress for including provisions in the omnibus spending package which clarifies that farmers and ranchers are not required to report livestock manure data under Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), a law intended to regulate toxic Superfund sites.
Dr. Barbara P. Glenn, NASDA CEO, thanked Congressional leaders for including the Fair Agricultural Reporting Method Act (FARM Act), in the omnibus package.
“It was never the intent of Congress to regulate animal agriculture operations under the Superfund law. We applaud the inclusion of this commonsense, bipartisan effort to restore certainty for farmers under CERCLA. The farms and ranches producing our food and fiber should not be regulated as toxic Superfund sites,” said Glenn.
An estimated 200,000 farms and ranchers would have been required to report animal emissions to the Coast Guard and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the current rule, which does not advance environmental protection and serves no useful purpose to the Coast Guard.
“We appreciate Senators Fischer and Donnelly for introducing the fix and the host of bipartisan cosponsors who helped restore certainty on air quality reporting requirements to our agriculture community. Further, we applaud Congress for passing this necessary spending package with supports for agriculture and communities across the country.”
Initial cosponsors of the FARM Act are U.S. Senators Deb Fischer (R-NE), Joe Donnelly (D-IN); and John Barrasso (R-WY), Tom Carper (D-DE), Chris Coons (D-DE), Bob Casey (D-PA), Jodi Ernst (R-IA), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), John Hoeven (R-ND), James Inhofe (R-OK), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Roger Wicker (R-MS).
NASDA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit association which represents the elected and appointed commissioners, secretaries, and directors of the departments of agriculture in all fifty states and four U.S. territories. To learn more about NASDA, please visit www.nasda.org.
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