Great news! We just won a major court victory against Big Ag!
Last year, we challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) statewide water pollution permit for factory farms in Idaho. Factory farms are a major source of water pollution in Idaho and across the country, but EPA’s permit didn’t require Idaho factory farms to monitor what they discharged into waterways. Instead, it simply assumed that factory farms would meet the permit’s “zero discharge” limits.
Clean Water Act permits rely on pollution monitoring to track whether dischargers are violating the law and ensure that waterways can maintain high water quality — but EPA’s permit gave factory farms a pass. Food & Water Watch, with allies Snake River Waterkeeper and Earthrise Law Center, argued that this head-in-the-sand approach violated the Clean Water Act’s requirement that all permits contain adequate monitoring.
Last week, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. If factory farms are not required to monitor and report their pollution discharges into waterways, we have no way of knowing which factory farms are meeting permit requirements. Therefore we can't hold violators accountable.
Because of our victory, the permit now must require factory farms in Idaho to comprehensively monitor and report on their water pollution. This is huge. And because EPA and state agencies routinely issue factory farm permits without pollution monitoring requirements, this case may have broad implications for how pollution from factory farms is regulated across the country!
With this win, we have struck a major blow against the EPA’s practice of granting illegal exceptions and special treatment to the factory farm industry!
Factory farms are a huge source of water pollution across the country. But without pollution monitoring, they have been able to pollute at will and hide this pollution from residents and regulators. Now they can’t hide anymore.
Food & Water Watch is fighting to change the fundamental structure of our food system to ensure food is safe, animals are treated humanely, and our communities and the water they rely on are not a dumping ground for toxic pollution. Because of your support, we just moved one step closer to making this a reality.
Food & Water Watch and its affiliated organization, Food & Water Action, are advocacy groups with a common mission to protect our food, water and climate.
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