An Arkansas environmental group is one of eight organizations to sue the federal government over a 2016 decision that exempted certain-sized animal farms from federal loan policies requiring environmental assessments.
The groups, which include the White River Waterkeeper, seek to end the Farm Service Agency rule change and reopen loan applications to environmental assessments and public input on those assessments before farms are constructed.
The lawsuit was filed Dec. 5 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The federal government had not filed a response to the complaint as of Friday afternoon.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. The Farm Service Agency is part of USDA.
In August 2016, the Farm Service Agency began using an environmental screening worksheet instead of an environmental assessment when considering farms for loans or loan guarantees, according to the lawsuit. But the worksheet is "insufficient and is not always employed," the lawsuit said.
The worksheet process does not provide public notice of the proposals the way an assessment did, the groups argue.
Larger facilities must still complete environmental assessments.
The Farm Service Agency supplied loans using the worksheets, instead of an assessment, to at least 100 medium-sized confined animal feeding operations in Arkansas between Aug. 3, 2016 and December 2017, according to the lawsuit. Those include breeding facilities with as many as 48,000 hens. Medium confined animal feeding operations have limits of 2,499 pigs, 699 dairy cows, 54,999 turkeys or 124,999 broiler chickens.
During that time, 40 operations in four counties had no public comment or environmental assessment, according to the White River Waterkeeper.
Requiring environmental assessments before construction would protect the owners of concentrated animal feeding operations, which are often contracted with global corporations and have small profit margins, Jessie Green, executive director of the White River Waterkeeper, wrote in a news release issued last week.
"Limiting environmental review and transparency on the front-end places farmers in a position to be blindsided by concerns after they are trapped with debt and unable to negotiate better contracts which would allow them to upgrade environmental controls," Green wrote. "We don't need more loopholes for corporations; we need a system that promotes independent farming and wealth for rural communities."
An Arkansas Farm Bureau spokesman said he did not know what percentage of farm loans are federal.
"There are, obviously different financing options available," Arkansas Farm Bureau spokesman Steve Eddington wrote in an email to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "Young farmers with limited assets are the ones who are impacted most when financing options are limited."
Companies are using medium confined animal feeding operations and their exemption from the assessments rather than larger facilities still required to conduct the assessments, the groups argued.
The rule change violated federal laws in a handful of ways, the groups argued:
• Farm Service Agency did not provide a basis for its rule change and only stated that the rule would not have significant effects, the lawsuit contends.
• The agency proposed the rule because of "its desire to reduce the number of [National Environmental Policy Act] assessments to make it faster and easier for the industry to get loans," the lawsuit reads. That violates the law because the act did not intend for rules to be changed for such a reason, the groups argue.
• The agency also violated the Administrative Procedures Act when it did not open the rule change to a public comment period, the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit asks that the rule be stricken and declared in violation of the two laws, and that all funding approved but not yet fully implemented since the rule change be declared "null and void."
The groups suing alongside White River Waterkeeper are Food & Water Watch; Dakota Rural Action; Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement; Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana; the Shafter, Calif.-based Association of Irritated Residents; and the Animal Legal Defense Fund.
Metro on 12/17/2018