Posted January 23, 2014
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has
asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to review a district
court ruling in favor of a West Virginia poultry farmer, according to a
Bloomberg BNA article available here. Farm and Dairy also reported on the story here.
In Alt v. EPA,
2013 BL 218814, N.D. W.Va., No. 2:12-cv-00042 (Oct. 23, 2013), a federal judge
ruled against the EPA, stating stormwater from a West Virginia chicken farm is
exempt from National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit
requirements under section 402 of the Clean Water Act. U.S. District Judge for the Northern District
of West Virginia, John Preston Bailey, ruled that the runoff entering the
Chesapeake Bay watershed from Lois Alt’s “Eight is Enough” Farm is stormwater
and, as a result, is not subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act. The order is available here. Background on this decision is available here.
Intervenors on behalf of EPA, Food and Water Watch,
Potomac Riverkeeper, Waterkeeper Alliance, Center for Food Safety, and the West
Virginia Rivers Coalition, also filed separate notices of appeal.
In June 2012, Lois Alt, a West Virginia poultry grower,
filed a lawsuit against EPA challenging its authority to regulate her farm
under the Clean Water Act after the agency “threatened her with $37,500 in
fines each time stormwater came into contact with dust, feathers, or manure on
the ground outside of her poultry houses.”
The district court stated that the areas between
poultry houses are not animal confinement areas and that manure and litter in
the farmyard “would remain in place and not become discharges of a pollutant
unless and until stormwater conveyed the particles to navigable waters.”
Scott Edwards, co-founder of the Food and Water
Justice, a project of Food and Water Watch, said, “We believe that the court
completely misapplied well-settled law in exempting the Alt pollution
discharges from the Clean Water Act.”
Edwards continued, “The court has, in effect, given these highly
polluting, yet sorely under-regulated facilities, and even greater license to
pollute.”
Ellen Steen, general counsel for the American Farm
Bureau Federation, which intervened on behalf of Alt, said, “If EPA wishes to
persist in its unlawful application of the Clean Water Act, we are pleased to
take the matter to the appellate court.
We are confident the Fourth Circuit, too, will decide this case in favor
of Mrs. Alt.”
For more information on the Clean Water Act, please
visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
