Total Maximum Daily Limits (TMDLs)

Swine Producers and the TMDL Rule

BACKGROUND

• The Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) program is a part of the federal Clean Water Act (CWA)
  • Until the mid-1990's it had received very little attention since the CWA began in 1972
  • The current TMDL Rule has been in place since 1992
• The CWA says that if a water body is not meeting the standards set for it by a state, even with the use of pollutant discharge (NPDES) permits designed to protect water quality, then the state must
  • Establish the total maximum daily load of a pollutant that the water body can receive
  • Develop a plan to work with the sources of that pollutant to reduce the pollutant's discharges into the water body
• States have reported to EPA that there are currently 20,000 impaired water bodies needing TMDL's for some 40,000 pollutants (some water bodies are impaired by more than 1 pollutant)
• EPA issued a new Proposed Rule for the TMDL program on July 13, 2000
  • The proposal followed 2 years of contentious public meetings and approximately 40 lawsuits and several court ordered settlements
  • The Proposed Rule was highly controversial
  • EPA received 32,000 comments
  • Congress stepped in and prohibited EPA from putting the rule into effect by denying funds for that purpose until October 2001.
• Other than questions of exceeding their legal authority, one of the main reasons for the controversy was that its costs were tremendously underestimated in the July 2000 rulemaking
  • EPA released a new, cost study in August of 2001 that estimated the ANNUAL cost of the TMDL program could be between $900 million and $4.3 billion dollars.
  • This number is considered to be far more accurate
  • Another key issue was concerns about data quality, a concern that was subsequently echoed by the National Academy of Science
    • NAS found that many states lack sufficient data to develop TMDLs for all of their impaired waters
• NPPC, along with approximately two-dozen parties, challenged in court the July 2000 rule in August 2000.
  • EPA Administrator Whitman asked the court in 2001 to give EPA 18 months to review and revise the Proposed Rule to get a more acceptable program
  • EPA continues to implement the current TMDL program
• EPA is now in the process of finalizing a new Proposed Rule and it is expected to be issued for public comment by April 2003.

EPA'S NEW THINKING

• Watersheds are the focus of the new rule
  • The new rule will focus on finding water quality solutions on a "watershed" basis
• EPA intends to focus the new watershed-based TMDL Proposed Rule on
  • The setting of a TMDL and allocations of discharges to broad categories of sources of pollution
  • Giving the states the flexibility to
    • adjust these allocations over time
    • adapt their work as conditions change over time
    • work closely but cooperatively with the sources of pollution in the watershed to restore water quality
• NPPC expects that ultimately EPA will create a new program that will
  • Set aggressive and ambitious water quality goals
  • Expect real progress to be made by states and those in these watersheds towards improving water quality
  • Provide for the flexibility needed by the states to ensure that their hands are not tied and prevented from working cooperatively with those involved
• The new TMDL program will be very important to swine producers because, by law
  • EPA and states will have the authority to reopen CWA water quality permits for CAFOs and add additional restrictions
  • States or EPA will have the authority to refuse to permit any new point sources in an impaired watershed until the TMDL process is working
  • EPA will likely have the authority in impaired watersheds to veto state-granted NPDES permits under certain key situations
  • The final TMDL rule will likely include a nutrient/sediment trading policy that could be of real benefit to producers doing soil and water conservation work

Links

Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.epa.gov/owow/tmdl/

International Trade

Conservation & the Environment

Animal Health & Welfare

Mandatory Price Reporting

Country-of-Origin Labeling

Agricultural Security

Fatigued Hogs