A Message from Marge...

(Marge Welch, Executive Director, Property Rights Congress)
http://www.freedom.org/prc/

May 21, 2001

EPA DRAFT PUBLIC PARTICIPATION POLICY

These comments may give you some ideas to use for future reference on EPA issues. We are seeing more comment periods being re-opened and extended now since we have been responding so strongly to the new administrations policies. Former VP Al Gore's Clean Water Action Plan is right on top of my list. We have addressed several of the 111 key elements of the Plan but still have many left to work on. Hopefully we will have a better chance to stop the rest of them and reverse some of the others. They are listening.

I had faxed my comments to EPA on this issue. The Washington DC office called and asked me to e-mail it to them so they could distribute it throughout the agency more easily for discussion as they work on the Policy. I have sent it to them and copied it to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, EPA Administrator Whitman, and a few selected Congressmen and women. I'll keep you all posted if I get any more feedback.

April 27, 2001

Patricia A. Bonner, US EPA
Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation (MC 1802)
Washington, DC. 20460

RE: Draft Public Involvement Policy

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this issue. It is one that truly does need to be addressed. In reviewing the existing policies I can tell you that under the previous administration they have not been implemented as written. As Executive Director of a national, non-profit, grassroots organization, I have attend dozens of federal agency meetings and commented on hundreds of issues attempting to bring a "balance" back into environmental issues. We look forward to working with the new administration. But there are still many policies that were implemented under the previous administration that must be addressed before we can move forward. I hope my comments will help clarify some of the reasons that many rural residents have become so skeptical of dealing with EPA and help give you a little more insight into what we have been faced with in the past eight years.

1) Relating to education and outreach, please make it known that efforts to "balance" environmental concerns while protecting private property rights and natural resource production is not being "anti-environmentalist." Senator Robert Byrd got highly upset when he was labeled "anti-environmentalist" when he resisted EPA's regulations that would have served to shut down West Virginia's coal mines. Senator Byrd helped pass the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts. Recognize the progress we have made over the past decades in curbing pollution. Americans must be re-educated to know that natural resource production is not only the creation of our nation's wealth, our economic independence, but the bread and butter on our tables, and the clothes on our backs. Environmental problems of the past are being corrected, largely due to the efforts and new technologies developed by resource producers.

2) EPA should not hold any public hearings or public meetings until 30 days AFTER publication of Notice in the Federal Register.

3) Make every effort to notify County governments of proposals that will affect land uses in their County.

4) Remove "proposed" language from MOA recently entered into with USFWS and NMFS. The MOA includes more restrictive ESA (EPA) protections for both listed and PROPOSED species and designated and PROPOSED habitat.

5) Do not implement EPA proposals on a "watershed" basis. These should be done on a site-specific basis as much as possible. County governments will work together on issues in common when given the freedom to do so. Under the previous administration there were many proposals to be implemented on a watershed basis. One such proposal is a "partnership" covering 31 states to protect the entire Mississippi River watershed - 40% of the continental United States with grant-funded environmental groups, Corps of Engineers and Mississippi River Commission delegating what can and cannot be done. (Voices of the River Partnering Conference, St. Louis, MO, June 1998) "Watershed" is entirely too big a word to use when talking about implementing a land use rule or regulation.

6) Curb grant-funding and authority of "partners" in proposals. These groups should not be able to exert any authority over elected officeholders or use their "partnership" status to influence any land use policies, and should never be allowed to enter private property to conduct their "studies" or do testings without local government officials present.

7) Do not issue new regulations until local governments and industries reach compliance with existing regulations. Entities can never reach compliance if EPA keeps changing the rules and moving the goal posts. They have to know that some point they can focus on maintenance instead of facing total shut down or bankruptcy due to ever-changing regulations.

8) Review and revise the 111 key elements of the Clean Water Action Plan.

In 1997 when then-Vice President Gore introduced the Clean Water Action Plan, the Notice of public meetings was published in the Federal Register on a Thursday, the same day of the first meeting (of only three meetings held nationally) that was held in Atlanta, Georgia. The second meeting was scheduled for the next day, Friday in Columbia, Missouri. The third and final meeting was scheduled for Sacramento, California the following Monday. (I cannot find the FR Notice on the internet now. Hopefully EPA can.) I lived in Missouri then and was able to attend the Columbia meeting. It was very well attended by members of environmental groups, specifically the Sierra Club, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, and the Stream Team.

There was only one member each from Cattlemen's Association, one dairyman, one pork producer, myself and what was most disturbing to me, only one County Commissioner. I don't remember seeing any Farm Bureau representative. I had alerted as many people as I could but the County Commissioners in other parts of the State could not attend on such short notice. There were no representatives from any other State. They did not have enough notice to be able to attend.

The County Commissioner, who is a farmer, spoke just before I did. He told the EPA representative that if he just knew what "levels" were considered unsafe (phosphorous and nitrogen were the ONLY pollutants discussed) and if he had the testing equipment, that he would promise them a "clean" county. But the EPA rep told him "no" that the equipment was too expensive and that the testing would have to be done by the Stream Team, a grant-funded partnership of "volunteers" with Missouri Dept. of Conservation.

The Commissioner also said that it is hard to know if excess nitrogen could be from fertilizer as EPA was saying, or if it could come from the crops. Some crops put nitrogen into the soil and some crops take it out, so they rotate their crops to balance the nutrients in the soil. Depending on time of year, or succession of crops, nitrogen levels will be higher from one crop and lower from another, so testing results will not be accurate. That made no difference to the EPA rep.

I supported the County Commissioner and recommended that local Soil & Water Boards also be included in the testing process. These are the duly elected officials closest to the people. They are farmers and livestock producers and have the knowledge and experience required to make good decisions. But they are not allowed to participate nor even consulted with in EPA's "environmental" programs.

EPA's partner in the CWAP is the NRCS, under the Department of Agriculture. Many rural producers and Soil & Water Boards have been intimidated by NRCS since they are at the helm in "cost-share" conservation programs which in the past, had been a beneficial program. This has changed under the previous administration also. And the CWAP placed EPA and NRCS in the position to over-ride local elected Soil & Water officials.

After the comment period expired for the CWAP, addressing only the issues discussed at the meetings, EPA/NRCS issued the 111 key elements of the Plan. These included the highly controversial TMDL issue, and the CAFO feeding rule, changing the "C" from "concentrated" animal feeding operation, to "confined" animal feeding operation. There is a big difference between animals being "concentrated" and merely "confined." (Draft Unified Strategy for Animal Feeding Operations, September 11, 1998)

During the CAFO meetings, the first one was held in Texas the day BEFORE the meeting Notice was published in the Federal Register. (Clarification: I cannot find the FR meeting Notice in question now. It may have been TMDL/NPDES meeting which afffects CAFOs) During the TMDL meetings, EPA declined Missouri Forest Products Association's invitation to attend a public meeting to explain the TMDL issue. They deferred to Missouri Dept. of Natural Resources who also declined to come and explain the rule. Please review those 111 key elements of the CWAP. I think you can see that they seem to be designed to totally shut down natural resource producers which will destroy the traditions, culture and economies of rural areas. We will never achieve an effective energy policy like President Bush has proposed, or be able to feed America, or rural areas even continue to exist if the EPA proposals of the previous administration are allowed to continue. Especially if EPA employees continue to take the attitudes they have exhibited in the past eight years.

Please place my name on your mailing list to receive updates on this issue. EPA policies and personnel must be able to interact with the public on a more people-friendly basis if we are ever going to be able to break the environmental gridlock. It will not be an easy task considering the heavy-handed policies of the previous administration but I believe it can be done. Respectfully, Marge Welch CC: EPA Administrator, President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Members of Congress

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