“Just because we have a new President-Elect,” bemoans Philadelphia Treehugger Lloyd Alter, “doesn’t mean that the existing President can’t leave a few parting gifts to his friends and supporters.”
Photo credit: StoptheMegaDairy.org via earthfirst
Looking the other way, as the Dead Zone spreads, is part of what Jeff Odefey at the Water Keeper Alliance calls an “environmental yard sale” being conducted by the lame duck administration.
Back in March we noted that the EPA (Evidence of Pollution is Annoying) removed reporting requirements for ammonia and hydrogen sulfides; now the President has signed a new rule making factory farms exempt from permits that limit water pollution.
According to the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):
Factory farms, also known as CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), confine animals on an industrial scale and produce massive amounts of manure and other waste that can pollute waterways with dangerous contaminants. EPA estimates that these facilities generate three times more waste than people do nationwide. Moreover, factory farms lack waste treatment facilities comparable to those that treat human sewage.
The new rule:
- -Creates a loophole allowing facility operators to avoid permits by claiming they won’t have a discharge.
- -Adopts a scheme that allows facilities to avoid certain environmental enforcement. For instance, if an operator certifies that the facility won’t have a discharge, environmental authorities will ignore enforcement action, even if the facility discharges to the nation’s waters.
- -Rejects improvements in technology that would reduce harmful bacteria and other pathogens contained in animal waste, missing an opportunity to prevent water pollution and threats to public health.
“Literally and figuratively, this rule puts the Bush Administration’s stamp of approval on a load of manure,” said Jon Devine, Senior Attorney in the Water Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “Even though Congress specifically targeted factory farms for regulation under the Clean Water Act in 1972 and EPA has recognized the importance of these operations getting pollution control permits, the Administration stepped in it today.” (my emphasis)
More TreeHugger on Factory Farming
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Especially has the situation worsens, eloquent advocacy for survival of the oceans, and, thus, life on the planet as we know it, increasingly can be found throughout the blogosphere. Treehugger contributors have described mass coral die-offs, increased acidification, proliferation of dead zones and rising sea levels.
Brooklyn Treehugger Matthew McDermott previously relayed news about marine dead zones — areas which are periodically or permanently starved of oxygen — and how the extent of such areas has doubled every 10 years since the 1960s. Particular, in regard to those “dead zones” along coastlines, investigators have seen an increase in size and intensity. “Currently there are about 400 coastal areas, with a combined area larger than the size of Oregon, with such poor water quality, with so little oxygen that only microbes can survive.”
A new study looks at how climate change is expanding the volume of dead zones in tropical oceans.
by up to 50 percent over the coming century.
Quirin Schiermeier reports in Nature, that researchers at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences ascribe the problem to the decomposition of bacteria. “As more carbon dioxide dissolves into the water column, phytoplankton are able to increase their rate of photosynthesis, resulting in the production of more dissolved organic matter and the release of various nutrients.” According to Andreas Oschlies, the study’s lead author and an oceanographer it is eutrophication that consumes large amounts of oxygen.