EPA Petition to Object to WPDES Permits Issued by Wisconsin's DNR to Sixteen Livestock Factories

Background:  Over the past fifteen years, the DNR has been issuing WPDES permits to livestock factories in Wisconsin that do not meet the basic requirements of the federal Clean Water Act in at least four ways:

1.) The permits failed to prohibit discharges of pollutants from the facilities.
2.) The permits failed to include limits necessary to protect water quality standards.
3.) The permits used compliance schedules, giving some facilities four years before they needed to stop manure from running off into lakes, rivers, and wetlands.
4.) The permits failed to require sufficient monitoring, reporting, and certification requirements to ensure that factory farms are not endangering water resources and public health.

To stop this pattern of illegal conduct, Midwest Environmental Advocates filed a petition with the United States Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of Wisconsin's Environmental Decade, Sierra Club—John Muir Chapter, River Alliance of Wisconsin, WISPIRG, Wisconsin Rural Development Center, Wisconsin Citizen Action, and the Family Farm Defenders.  Together, these organizations represent 100,000 citizens of Wisconsin.

We brought the petition before the EPA Region V Administrator pursuant to 40 C.F.R. 123.44, which gives the EPA Regional Administrator the authority and responsibility to object to any water discharge permits issued by a state agency that do not meet federal requirements.

Status:  In response to this petition, the EPA recommended changes to the WDNR's statewide permitting program, and the WDNR complied by letter dated May 24, 2000, in which the agency submitted draft permit language to the EPA.  In a little over one month, the coalition achieved many of the changes they sought.  Most notably, the WDNR has strengthened the prohibitions against waste entering lakes, rivers, wetlands, and drinking water, by including the effluent limit required by federal law.  The agency has also promised to require monitoring and reporting, a vast improvement over the challenged permits that required no monitoring and reporting of polluted runoff.

[View the petition filed with the EPA: CAFO-pet.pdf 20 KB]