A new proposal to reduce wastewater discharges from meat and poultry slaughterhouses and processing plants has the Environmental Protection Agency facing criticism from both environmentalists and the meat industry.
EPA is rarely — if ever — able to satisfy environmentalists and regulated industries when adopting new pollution safeguards. But the proposal published last week highlights how difficult it is for the agency to balance competing interests — even within its own administration — which has made both bolstering the protein supply chain and environmental justice high priorities.
The proposal includes three different regulatory options to cut nitrogen and phosphorus from the more than 5,000 plants nationwide, the overwhelming majority of which are “indirect dischargers” because they send their wastewater to municipal treatment plants, not directly into waterways.
Smaller facilities, defined as facilities producing less than 6,000 pounds per day or 2.19 million pounds per year, would be exempt under the preferred option (Option 1). Nevertheless, EPA predicted adopting that option would potentially result in the closure of 16 plants. The other two produce higher numbers — 22 closures under Option 2 and 53 under Option 3.
But the Biden Administration also has a goal of increasing meat processing capacity and has committed $1 billion in American Rescue Plan funds to do so.
“You've got two entities in Washington, D.C., working counter to each other,” said Chris Young, executive director of the American Association of Meat Processors. He called the closure of even 16 plants out of more than 5,000 across the country “unacceptable.”
“Across town in Washington [from EPA], the government's handing out money to the meat industry, to try and build up these small- and medium-sized plants to make them more sustainable, to make the meat industry more sustainable,” Young said.
In a statement, USDA acknowledged that under the Clean Water Act, EPA is the lead regulatory agency for wastewater discharge standards. “USDA will work with EPA by providing constructive feedback and participating in EPA’s processes, public outreach efforts, and other activities where appropriate to improve the outcome of and ease of compliance with its proposed rule,” the department said.
Young said EPA does not have enough data to back up assertions about the cost of the proposal for slaughterhouses and processing plants, or on the impacts of wastewater discharges on local communities.
“EPA should stop what they're doing and come back to the table,” Young said. “We need to discuss and look at the real data, the real science of it. And if there's some real problems, we need to address it. But it should be done together.”
Young said the proposal’s preferred option, by setting a floor for regulation, “protects really small plants,” including “a bunch of our members. But it doesn't protect everybody.”
EPA says in the proposal that even though the plan “would not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities, EPA nonetheless has tried to reduce the impact of this proposed rule on small entities.”
Young's group supports what have already been numerous requests for a 90-day extension to the comment period, which currently ends March 25.
Two other industry groups say the proposal is not well thought out.
Meat Institute spokesperson Sarah Little said EPA cannot say which plants might close, “and based on their data collection process and rushed analysis, could not know. Therefore, they do not and cannot understand the potential disruption to the food supply or to local communities due to job losses.”
Little cited EPA's proposal, which says any loss of employment due to closures “is considered transitory as some of the production that occurred at these facilities will quickly move to other facilities with spare capacity.”
“So now we have 'spare capacity' when USDA is spending $1 billion to increase capacity?” she asked.
National Chicken Council spokesperson Tom Super said “the agency rushed the process and put out a proposal that is lengthy, technical, complex and costly, with very little time to provide meaningful comment. It will also have a disproportionate effect on small and medium-sized processing facilities. For these reasons, NCC joins the growing chorus of those supporting a lengthy extension of the comment period.”
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Environmental groups, meanwhile, are calling for more analysis and consideration of environmental justice, which was the subject of an executive order issued by President Joe Biden last year.
EPA’s proposal says it “would advance progress on environmental justice goals,” but in a virtual public hearing Jan. 24, Earthjustice attorney Ashley Ingram said the agency “expressly excluded environmental justice from consideration as a factor in this rulemaking — without any justification.”
EPA’s EJ analysis, included in its environmental assessment, “does not form a basis or rationale for any of the actions EPA is proposing in this rulemaking,” the agency said.
“By its own analysis, EPA’s preferred option would protect the waters of only 1.3 million of the 60 million people living near waters impacted by slaughterhouse pollution,” Ingram said. “By comparison, the most protective option would protect the waters of over 22 million people, including many environmental justice communities already overburdened with water and air pollution.”
“EPA’s acknowledgment of the disproportionate impact experienced by these communities warrants nothing less than the pollution reductions that would come with Option 3, and quickly,” said Patience Burke, campaign manager of the Pure Farms, Pure Water campaign at Waterkeeper Alliance.
Burke said the preferred option would only reduce nitrogen discharges by 10% — “a pittance” — and phosphorus by 37%. “Option 3, however, would cut nitrogen by a consequential 83% and phosphorus by 94%,” she said.
Waterkeeper’s North Carolina CAFO coordinator, Larry Baldwin, said at the virtual hearing that communities most affected by the proposal are also those least able to participate in the process.
“The very citizens who have the most to lose by not tightening the already extremely lax regulations are effectively being left out of the conversation,” Baldwin said. “In my state of North Carolina, environmental justice communities most impacted by these facilities are often the ones least able to travel long distances to attend in-person hearings, or have the technological resources necessary to take advantage of the virtual hearings.”
Baldwin called for meetings to be held in those affected communities. Aside from the virtual hearing, EPA has scheduled one in-person hearing for Wednesday in Washington.
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