Regulating Milks Spills

[Carl Russell]

This link was sent to me, as many of you may be interested.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/7722660/epa_to_regulate_milk_spills_just_like.html?cat=62

Carl

[Tim Harrigan]

It is hard to tell where this is going.

http://poststar.com/app/blogs/?p=62323&cat=259

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/02/11/11greenwire-anti-reg-republicans-crying-over-spilled-milk-20605.htm

When you try to track down the origin of some of these things you see that the news media do a dismal job of getting things straight. Again and again it is more important to tell a good or amusing story rather than to get it right. To me it looks like an astonishing lack of creativity in the reporting process, looks like the writers read other newspaper articles and use that at their source. WTF kind of reporting is that? I still don’t know exactly what the thought process at EPA was to get this going but it is clearly rooted in the Clean Water Act. While milk is a great and healthy food, if it finds its way into waterways it is not water friendly. Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) is a measure of how much dissolved oxygen (DO) is removed from water as microorganisms breakdown the organic fraction. Dissolved oxygen in a healthy stream is usually 5-7% range. Degraded streams with lower levels lose desirable species such as trout which are replaced eventually by carp etc. In the worst cases the DO drops so low the waterway will not support aquatic life. BOD is measured as mg O2/L of pollutant. The BOD of milk is about 140,000, liquid cattle manure is 10,000-20,000, raw domestic sewage is 300-400. So a milk house release has the potential of sucking 350 times more O2 from a waterway as a similar size release of domestic sewage. So a spill of any substantial size is a fish kill: repeated smaller releases will probably degrade the stream over time. Still not very neighborly, and not a good day to be a fish.

So there is a certain amount of logic to it, but I guess the epa nerds have a hard time framing the issue. And there is the Limbaugh effect where there is no news, only entertainment, and could there possibly be an easier target than the epa, particularly if you are chronically unencumbered by facts? And I suppose an army of journalists with a copy deadline and absolutely no knowledge of science. Arrrgh.

[dominiquer60]

NY Farm Bureau has been opposing this for some time now. I believe that it started as requiring farmers, that have storage for X number of gallons of oil, including fuel, lubes, etc., to have certain safety features on their farms so that the can handle a spill as safe as possible.

We know that local authorities and rescue workers have to treat a milk tanker spill like a HAZMAT spill. I can see where it is a concern, but not as much as other substances. I think at this point there is a threshold number and if you have combined oil types that total under that number you do not need to have a plan and facilities upgrade.

Erika

[near horse]

It appears this article was meant to stir the pot and get folks outraged at the EPA.

IMHO the only fat of concern was between the ears of the original writer. Seemingly innocuous substances can have negative impacts on the environment when the volume is large enough. And therein lies the positive – sure when you’re processing 100,000’s of gallons of milk and a line breaks and all of that hits the river, that can be a problem. Or those confinement system manure lagoons – bigger isn’t always better. So another argument for small local production.

If they want to be megasize then they need to take mega precautions.

[goodcompanion]

@near horse 25132 wrote:

It appears this article was meant to stir the pot and get folks outraged at the EPA.

IMHO the only fat of concern was between the ears of the original writer. Seemingly innocuous substances can have negative impacts on the environment when the volume is large enough. And therein lies the positive – sure when you’re processing 100,000’s of gallons of milk and a line breaks and all of that hits the river, that can be a problem. Or those confinement system manure lagoons – bigger isn’t always better. So another argument for small local production.

If they want to be megasize then they need to take mega precautions.

Exactly my thoughts. If farmers choose to operate at such a scale that the storage and transport of the product threatens the common good, why shouldn’t they be held responsible for damage?

The EPA and NRCS operate under the assumption that left to their own devices, farmers will destroy the environment in every way imaginable. And considering the dominant ag model and its effects, they are not exactly wrong in believing this.

Not a farming issue. This is an industrial issue.

[dominiquer60]

Here is a cut and pasted PDF from the EPA, I omitted the second page due to length. I see the good in it, but 1,320 gallons can add up fast even on a small dairy.

Erika

Oil Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) Program: Information for Farmers
This fact sheet will assist you, as a farmer, in understanding your obligations under the SPCC Program.
What is SPCC?
The goal of the SPCC program is to prevent oil spills into waters of the United States and adjoining shorelines. Oil spills can cause injuries to people and damage to the environment. A key element of this program calls for farmers and other facilities to have an oil spill prevention plan, called an SPCC Plan. These Plans can help farmers prevent oil spills which can damage water resources needed for farming operations.
What is considered a farm under SPCC?
Under SPCC, a farm is: “a facility on a tract of land devoted to the production of crops or raising of animals, including fish, which produced and sold, or normally would have produced and sold, $1,000 or more of agricultural products during a year.”
Is my farm covered by SPCC?
SPCC applies to a farm which:
• • •
Stores, transfers, uses, or consumes oil or oil products, such as diesel fuel, gasoline, lube oil, hydraulic oil, adjuvant oil, crop oil, vegetable oil, or animal fat; and (note that there is an “and” to this)
Stores more than 1,320 US gallons in aboveground containers or more than 42,000 US gallons in completely buried containers; and Could reasonably be expected to discharge oil to waters of the US or adjoining shorelines, such as interstate waters, intrastate lakes, rivers, and streams.
If your farm meets all of these criteria, then your farm is covered by SPCC.
TIPS:
*
Count only containers of oil that have a storage capacity of 55 US gallons and above.
*
Adjacent or non-adjacent parcels, either leased or owned, may be considered separate facilities for SPCC purposes. Containers on separate parcels (that the farmer identifies as separate facilities based on how they are operated) do not need to be added together in determining whether the 1,320-gallon applicability threshold is met.
If my farm is covered by SPCC, what should I do?

If my farm is covered by SPCC, what should I do?
The SPCC program requires you to prepare and implement an SPCC Plan. If you already have a Plan, maintain
it. If you do not have a Plan, you should prepare and implement one. Many farmers will need to have their Plan
certified by a Professional Engineer (“PE”). However, you may be eligible to self-certify your amended Plan if:
•
Your farm has a total oil storage capacity between 1,320 and 10,000 gallons in aboveground containers, and the farm has a good spill history (as described in the SPCC rule), you may prepare and self-certify your own Plan. (However, if you decide to use certain alternate measures allowed by the federal SPCC Rule, you will need a PE.)
•
Your farm has storage capacity of more than 10,000 gallons, or has had an oil spill you may need to prepare an SPCC Plan certified by a PE.
TIP: If you are eligible to self certify your Plan, and no aboveground container at your farm is greater than 5,000 gallons in capacity, then you may use the Plan template that is available to download from EPA’s Web site at: http://www.epa.gov/oem/content/spcc/tier1temp.htm

When should I prepare and implement a Plan?
Farms in operation on or before August 16, 2002, must maintain or amend their existing Plan by November 10, 2010. Any farm that started operation after August 16, 2002, but before November 10, 2010, must prepare and use a Plan on or before November 10, 2010.
Note: If your farm was in operation before August 16, 2002, and you do not already have a Plan, you must prepare a Plan now. Do not wait until November 10, 2010.

If the amount of oil spilled to water is more that 42 gallons on two different occasions within a 12-month period or more than 1,000 gallons to water in a single spill event, then notify your EPA Regional office in writing.
For More Information
Read the SPCC rule and additional resources:
http://www.epa.gov/emergencies/spcc
Call or send an e-mail to the EPA Ag Compliance Assistance Center: 1-888-663-2155 http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/agctr.html
Call the Superfund, TRI, EPCRA, RMP, and Oil Information Center:
(800) 424-9346 or (703) 412-9810 TDD (800) 553-7672 or (703) 412-3323 http://www.epa.gov/superfund/resources/infocenter

[goodcompanion]

I would totally support this law, frankly. If your bulk tank is over a thousand gallons then your farm probably bears little resemblance to mine. I’m not going to get up in arms to defend conventional dairy from having to clean up (or at least prove that they are prepared to clean up) after their own messes.

I would like it if there was also an EPA law that would fine farmers for nitrifying the watershed! Maybe even jail time too! But if there were that would probably kill off the remaining 1000 or so dairies in my state. Fact is, if those producers were not permitted to externalize the cost of their pollution in the first place that they would not be in business anyway.

Farming that way is a choice. Every choice entails risks. Why is conventional dairy so special that the taxpayer needs to step in and clean up after them time and again?

I assume that this is the kind of issue this likes of Rural Vermont will take a backseat on. At least I’d hope so.

[dominiquer60]

I agree that farming is a choice, and that the choices that we make are important to ourselves and the world around us.

I am thinking that a farm with a 1000 gallon milk tank is going to have a substantial fuel storage there as well.

We are not a small dairy, but we had to think about it for a minute with our 4 fuel tanks, 4 propane tanks, and stored lubes for the shop. We don’t exceed the 1320, but we did have to think about it, and we are by no means big, a little larger than the 2 of us could handle if we suddenly lost the older generation, but not big. If we had 20 good milking cows and a 250 bulk tank, it would be a different story.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

I had a hard time putting a thought into words earlier.

I think that within reason size doesn’t matter, it is how you use it, how much heart, care and common sense you put into it that matters. Of course there are farms that are just too big even if well “managed,” I just hate seeing good folks being squeezed by big government, especially when the guys with enough money seem exempt from such rules, or get away with crap all too easily.

erika

[goodcompanion]

@dominiquer60 25143 wrote:

I had a hard time putting a thought into words earlier.

I think that within reason size doesn’t matter, it is how you use it, how much heart, care and common sense you put into it that matters. Of course there are farms that are just too big even if well “managed,” I just hate seeing good folks being squeezed by big government, especially when the guys with enough money seem exempt from such rules, or get away with crap all too easily.

erika

I think I have to respectfully disagree on the size issue. Size does matter, always. I am not saying anything about the character of people who farm larger acreages, or how much they love or are good at what they do. Fact is, the bigger your tract, the more thinly that love is spread over it.

Ask any farmer what the best size farm is. Guarantee they’ll either reply with the acreage they already have or one that is slightly bigger. It’s not a useful discussion.

My background is that I am in dairy central here. My lands are polluted with runoff from conventional producers, who are fine people of excellent character but kind of laugh off the idea that what I am doing is farming too. The local ag service providers like NRCS don’t give you the time of day around here either unless you are bulk milk. Every bulk farm in my town has a big expensive manure containment system of one kind or another paid for out of the public purse, and over half of those farms have sold their cows since it was installed anyway. Those that are left give farms a bad name operating under the umbrella of the Right to (Destroy the Natural and Social Environment While I) Farm Law.

Erika, sounds like you’re square in the center of the debate. I’m sorry for that and didn’t mean to sound off on you personally. However I really don’t have the back of the bulk dairy crowd on this one, and they don’t have mine either. Just the way it is.

[dominiquer60]

I am just torn on how do we define too big, I don’t like big and irresponsible anything. But what about all the farms that are on the edge of all these definitions and classifications. It seems it should be easy to define big and small, but I really don’t think that it is. Can a 4 acre vegetable farm near an urban center that grosses a million every year be defined as small in the business sense, compared to a 300 acre diverse operation that earns just enough to keep going?

Is a farm that is the biggest in the neighborhood worse than the, small one that may be next door. It all depends, maybe the “bigger” farm is a clean grass based organic dairy, and the small farm is a pig farm that feeds antibiotics and lets manure wash down to the stream. There can be bad little farms and good largish farms. There is a point where farms are too large, but defining where large and small start is the problem for me.

The debates against raw milk often start with, “a negative raw milk story will make the entire industry look bad,” I often come back with,”the water quality pollution problems makes the entire industry look bad too, but you don’t seem nearly as interested in putting a stop that,”

I am on the dying edge of big dairy country now and I lived in the heart of it a few years ago. I am lucky that in both places there was nothing but forest upstream from us. When I first moved to the heart of Eastern NY dairy country I was a cattle breeder, I saw all sorts of operations from big and dirty to small and dirty with a lot of the nicer farms being in the 100 cow range. One small farm was a total hole, cows in the stream, gutter running into the stream, the type of place that would still use milk cans in the spring room if they could, nice guys, clean stalls but filthy water shed use. The cleanest farm that I have ever seen was a Mennonite farm that we bought a tractor from this past fall, eat off the floor clean, streams fenced, nice manure storage and a ton of land to spread it on, they had about 92 cows, a lot bigger than the 18 cow hole that I used to breed in.

I really feel that good farms do not need heavy regulations, but rather irresponsible farms should be the ones hit with regulations. It should be quality not size that determines who gets the anal probe of government, but then you get into the added layer of who should and should not qualify for regulation. Any way you slice it, the bad cause problems for the good folks that just want to put their head down, lean into the yoke and not be told that they can’t whistle while they work.

Erik, you mention that most say that their size farm or larger is a good sized operation, but personally I wish we were smaller, for the exact reason that you stated, spreading the love too thin. Dale’s family kept taking on more land as neighbors stopped using it, it is great to have such a land base to rotate corn, small grains and hay, but I know that we could take better care of a smaller amount. In some cases even with our minimal inputs some of the rented land is better off now than when they started to use it, so at least we have that going for us.

Erika

[Tim Harrigan]

I agree with Erika on this one. Management is such a big part of the system and I have seen dismal small farms and large farms that were very well done. The potential negative impact of small farms is much less so a lot of them manage to fly under the radar, but if you look close, farm size is probably not the first criteria most folks would choose in deciding where to buy their milk.

As far as water quality impacts I think some of our largest farms are doing a better job than many of the smaller farms because they are so closely monitored and regulated while many of the smaller farms have been able to overlook some of the problem areas. This is sort of a hard assessment though, because large farms carry a lot of other emotional baggage for folks regarding odors and animal housing/welfare issues, road traffic, etc.

The line between what is too big and what is OK is fuzzy and where you draw the line seems to float with what catches your attention. My biggest regret is that many of the advances in animal housing over the last several years may have improved material handling but it has been at the expense of the animals that have to live there.

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