The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) effort to implement a Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) rule was the focus of critical testimony on March 16 before members of the Subcommittee on Conservation Energy and Forestry of the House Committee on Agriculture.
Tom Hebert, a senior advisor to the Agricultural Nutrient Policy Council (ANPC), brought conflicts between EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to the lawmakers’ attention, focusing on a public report commissioned by ANPC that highlights differences between EPA’s and USDA’s estimates of agriculture’s contribution to nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
According to The Fertilizer Institute (TFI), one of ANPC’s members, the report commissioned by ANPC (GM Dec. 13, 2010) found EPA’s baseline sediment loads were almost three times the size of USDA’s. In his testimony, Hebert noted that this may be due to EPA’s assumption that half the crop acres in the Bay are being plowed, while USDA data says at least 88 percent are in conservation tillage. Additionally, the study found that EPA’s nitrogen estimates are about 25 percent lower than USDA’s, and EPA’s phosphorus loads are 25 percent higher than USDA’s.
“In terms of sediment and phosphorus, this comparison could be interpreted to mean that agriculture has already met its TMDL obligations and in the case of nitrogen it would indicate that in absolute terms agriculture can meet EPA’s TMDL load allocation,” Hebert said. “But the real bottom line is that these differences are so substantial that the need for further work on the TMDL is apparent.”
“Farmers are willing to continue doing their part to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, but these actions will require significant resources,” said Rod Snyder, director of public policy with the National Corn Growers Association and an ANPC steering committee member. “If EPA bases its regulatory decisions on flawed modeling, we risk investing time and money in areas with limited environmental benefit. This is bad for the farm economy and bad for the Bay.”
“If a faulty model means that EPA misses the mark on what’s required of agriculture, producers and agribusinesses across the region can’t wait another five years for them to get it right,” said Lisa Kelley, vice president of government affairs and chief of staff of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives and an ANPC steering committee member. “If it turns out that EPA’s assessment was wrong, tens of millions of dollars will have been wasted for little or no environmental benefit.”
“With pressure on federal and state government resources at an all-time high, it makes no sense at all for EPA to impose the Chesapeake Bay TMDL before it knows it has accurate impact data,” said Bill Hertz, TFI vice president of scientific programs and an ANPC steering committee member.
Also testifying at the hearing were Dave White, chief of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service; Bob Perciasepe, EPA deputy administrator; Doug Domenech, Virginia’s secretary of natural resources; Carl Shaffer, president of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau; Lynne Hoot, executive director of the Maryland Association of Soil Conservation Districts; and Hobey Bauhan, president of the Virginia Poultry Federation.