EPA Names Names, Stirs Anger

OMAHA (DTN) -- If the Environmental Protection Agency didn't already suffer enough from a negative image in rural America, the agency may have done some irreparable damage to its relationship with livestock producers by releasing proprietary and personal information about animal feeding operations to three environmental groups in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

EPA has taken heat from agriculture groups and others who say the agency does little to reach out to rural America.

Ashley McDonald, deputy environmental counsel for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association told DTN Thursday that those relations took yet another hit and put cattle producers in a potentially dangerous situation.

"It has irreparably hurt rural America's trust -- what had been there or could have been built -- in EPA," he said.

"I told EPA that yesterday and they acknowledged that they knew it probably would hurt relations with rural America. If Lisa Jackson's (outgoing EPA administrator) biggest regret was not reaching out to rural America, then she should have thought of that five-plus months ago when all this was taking place behind our backs."

EPA officials told NCBA the agency didn't consider the information to be proprietary, he explained.

"Well we would consider it proprietary info, but EPA does not," McDonald said.

NCBA learned about the release during a meeting with agency officials Wednesday. That information release included feeding operations of all sizes, even smaller operations not regulated by the Clean Water Act.

EPA dropped a proposed CAFO reporting rule in July 2012 that would have required cattle producers to provide a wide array of information about their operations directly to EPA.

At the time EPA said it could instead acquire the data from states that operated CAFO permitting programs. The information was to be used to create a national database, drawing heated opposition from cattle producers. EPA collected data from states, making it subject to federal FOIA requests.

The FOIA release comes just seven months after the agency told livestock industry officials it would take measures to protect farmers' personal information.

The information recently released to Pew Charitable Trust, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earth Justice by EPA covers concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, in more than 30 states. This includes many family farmers and ranchers who feed less than 1,000 head and are not subject to the Clean Water Act, according to a news release from NCBA.

NCBA past president J.D. Alexander, a cattle feeder from Pilger, Neb., said in a statement that the information includes his family's home address, geographical coordinates, telephone numbers and the names of deceased relatives.

"They apologized to us for not telling us sooner," McDonald said, telling NCBA the agency is still planning to create a national database.

"By withdrawing the rule there was also an understanding among the agricultural community that the agency would take measures to address the privacy concerns with any data they collected."

NOT GOING PUBLIC

When asked for what purpose groups requested the information, Karen Steuer, deputy director of government relations for Pew Charitable Trust, said her group is trying to make sure EPA is doing its job.

"Pew doesn't intend to do anything public with the information from EPA," she said.

"Our goal in seeking this information has been to determine whether the states are indeed turning it over to the EPA, and if they are, is EPA finding a way to use it to monitor and if necessary require permits for polluting operations."

"Maybe it's semantics," Steuer said, "but in our view this is not about personal information about farmers but about the locations of large industrial operations."

NRDC Senior Attorney Jon Devine said in a statement that cattle producers should have nothing to hide.

"It is not surprising that the CAFO industry, which generates approximately three times the waste that humans in the U.S. produce, would rather keep information about their waste from their neighbors and concerned citizens," he said.

When contacted by DTN for comment EPA offered the following statement:

"Through a collaborative effort since July 2012, many states have provided EPA with basic information about concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that helps both EPA and the states ensure they are protecting water quality and public health.

"Under Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Natural Resource Defense Council, Pew Charitable Trust and Earth Justice, EPA has provided the CAFO data to these organizations as required by law. The data released would be publicly available through the states."

EPA MEETING

McDonald said EPA acknowledged it should have been communicating with the livestock community while gathering CAFO data from states, during the meeting with NCBA.

"We remained completely in the dark, although NRDC and the other environmental activist groups apparently were not because five months ago was when they filed the FOIA request," he said.

"EPA should have been asking the states for more targeted information to protect privacy concerns, and they should not be continuing down the path of creating a national database."

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security also expressed concern that the information could threaten the U.S. food system.

"EPA misled all of us," McDonald said.

"EPA has stated they do not believe DHS and the livestock community's concerns regarding bioterrorism. Until the agency recognizes that these threats are real the agency will continue to jeopardize the safety of our food system."

STATE DATA

Although the data is available at the state level, McDonald said it isn't readily available to the public.

"If it had been easy for these activist groups to get this data via the states, those groups would have done it years ago," he said. "The fact is it isn't easy to gather this data.

"So instead, these groups spent a lot of time and litigation expenses to get EPA to do it. EPA used taxpayer dollars to further their activist agendas."

Although EPA was required to release the data, "the issue is that they shouldn't have been collecting such a wide breadth of data" since they knew it was subject to the FOIA, McDonald said.

Todd Neeley can be reached at todd.neeley@telventdtn.com.

(CC/CZ)

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