Stop Amendment 613 to H.R. 2822

All throughout our country industrial agriculture using CAFOs has been housing dairy cows, pigs, chickens and other livestock in small confined areas. The volume of urine and manure produced is beyond what a sustainable environment can handle. This results in nitrate contaminated water supplies and significant air pollution. A recent federal court case in Yakima County, Washington presented EPA and other scientific data to the federal judge and he determined that the industrial dairies were polluting the ground water with nitrates through leaking manure lagoons, long term storage or composting of acres of unused manure, and over-application of manure on fields. He determined that manure is an environmental hazard when produced in great quantity and inappropriately managed. He determined that manure should be regulated as a solid waste. Almost immediately a U.S. Congressman from the Yakima Valley, Dan Newhouse, attached amendment 613 to H.R. 2822 that would reverse the court’s decision and prevent the EPA from regulating manure as a solid waste. For the sake of our land, water, air and the innocent neighbors of CAFOs, this amendment needs to be withdrawn or defeated.