Washington Insider-Wednesday

By DTN's Washington Insider

Here's a quick monitor of Washington farm and trade policy issues from DTN's well-placed observer.

Lawsuit Seeks to Force USTR to Release Confidential Details of Trade Negotiations

The nonprofit news service Intellectual Property Watch (IP-Watch) has filed a lawsuit against the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that seeks to force the government to make public some of the confidential documents relating to ongoing trade agreement negotiations, most especially the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, as well as communications from industry insiders on USTR Industry Trade Advisory Committees.

USTR has said that the talks have been the most transparent and consultative in the history of US trade negotiations, but that officials still need to maintain confidentiality appropriate for a government-to-government negotiation. Recently, the USTR unveiled a series of steps aimed at giving members of Congress and select personal and committee staff members additional access to classified TPP texts.

IP-Watch claims it needs the requested information to inform the public in a timely manner about the TPP deal. Over the centuries, government officials have chosen to conduct delicate government-to-government negotiations in private, knowing that to do otherwise would be a prescription for failure. The Obama administration is continuing this tradition. The two viewpoints are definitely in conflict on this issue, but it seems unlikely that a federal court will come down on the side of IP-Watch.

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Schumer Expected to Remain Strong Advocate for Environmental Issues

Now that current Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has announced that he will not run for re-election in 2016, a great deal of attention is being showered on Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Reid's hand-picked successor and the candidate most likely to move into the position. A majority of Senate Democrats already have committed to backing Schumer for leader, according to Bloomberg News.

Among other things, Schumer is expected to maintain his party's support for environmental issues and for actions aimed at combatting climate change. It won't be much of a leap for Schumer: he has a lifetime rating of 91% from the League of Conservation Voters and has consistently backed action to address the effects of human activity on climate change. But his Senate priorities largely have been on non-environmental issues such as immigration, health care and financial industry regulation.

Reid will remain in the Senate as majority leader until the end of his term in December 2016. In politics, much can happen in a short time and the 20 months between now and January 2017 is an eternity. Add to that the fact that the senior senator from New York is facing his own re-election battle in 2016, and it may be that Schumer is no shoo-in as the next Democratic leader in the Senate.

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Washington Insider: Tougher Ag Pollution Regs on the Horizon

Many producers and their representatives say they are confident that efforts to limit the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency's regulations on farmland and livestock operations are being successful. But at least a few observers are pointing to a somewhat different picture emerging in areas where real, understandable pollution problems have been in the news.

For example, Lake Erie has had severe pollution problems for a long time, but the Ohio State Legislature has been pushed hard to adopt new regulations on agriculture as a result of last summer's drinking water concerns. Following that experience, the state focused on toxic algal blooms with new rules. The issue now is whether these will be sufficient.

Last week, Ohio's Republican Gov. John Kasich signed a new law that would prohibit farmers from spreading manure on frozen or saturated agricultural fields and also end within five years the dumping of dredged sediment into Lake Erie. The measures are intended to reduce the amount of nutrients, especially phosphorus runoff from fields and farms into the lake.

Kasich signed the bill just outside Toledo, Ohio, where the drinking water of 400,000 residents was contaminated by one of those toxins from an algae bloom in August 2014. Lake Erie is the city's main drinking water source.

The law is the latest effort by Ohio to combat its algal blooms but environmental advocates suggest it won't be the last. For example, the state has set "do not drink" and "do not use" thresholds for four cyanotoxins produced by algae. Similar rules are in force in Minnesota and Oregon concerning drinking water thresholds for any cyanotoxins, and EPA notes that a number of states have thresholds indicating when to avoid recreational use of waterways.

In the meantime, it appears that pressure is building to tighten regulations on fertilizer use for agriculture even more, observers say. "I believe Ohio is the first to pass an actual state law. Other states have rules of some sort or another, with varying levels of enforcement," Adam Rissien, director of agricultural and water policy at the Ohio Environmental Council, told the press. "This is another step forward."

The new law was both praised by water quality advocates and criticized for focusing on the timing of fertilizer applications rather than the amounts actually being used. "Until we have something in place that ensures growers don't over-fertilize, we'll still have runoff problems," Rissien said.

Those concerns were echoed by Tom Curtis, deputy chief executive of the American Water Works Association. "There's a limit to how much of the nutrients from the manure the soil can absorb, so it's not just a matter of timing. It's not clear yet whether this law will be enough to make a difference, but I applaud the effort and believe it will likely result in water quality improvements," he added.

In addition, the move toward fertilizer regulations in Ohio appears to be stimulating similar efforts elsewhere. Rissien noted that any significant action to combat the phosphorus runoff that is a major contributor to algal blooms would need to be extended to several U.S. states and Canadian provinces. Some of these have been working together for years to gather data and work toward setting targets for phosphorous in the lake, observers note.

In 2012, interim phosphorus targets for Lake Erie, as well as for the other Great Lakes, were set by the U.S.-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement which also committed EPA and Environment Canada to develop targets for both phosphorus concentrations and loadings over the next three years.

While the joint targets now being considered would not be legally binding, Rissien called on the governors and premiers of bordering states and provinces to commit to reducing phosphorus runoff by at least 40%. The pullback, he says, would be required to "significantly reduce or eliminate" harmful algal blooms in the lake's Western Basin.

"Ideally this would come from reducing phosphorus in rivers and streams, but it could also come from reductions in wastewater treatment plants that discharge phosphorus directly into the lake," Rissien said. He noted that while such point sources are regulated under the Clean Water Act, federal law does not directly address nonpoint sources which are largely left to the states. "But not all states have laws — or enforce them," added Curtis of the American Water Works Association.

The speed with which the Ohio legislature began to consider regulations for agriculture after last year's water quality problems in Toledo was amazing. Now, while it seems likely that those battles are really just getting under way, the public seems increasingly willing to believe that agriculture bears very significant responsibilities for Lake Erie's problems, as they have in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and other "problem" environmental areas. This is a belief that could well intensify if environmental problems worsen, Washington Insider believes.

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