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Gettysburg, PA | I can speak a little from the regulator side of this (here in PA), if you're interested. EPA is putting a lot of pressure on the PA Dept. of Evironmental Protection (DEP) to ratchet down its regulations on smaller farming operations. Right now there are permitting and nutrient management requirements on the larger and high density animal operations but, by and large, smaller operations run "under the radar". It seems that EPA is a strong proponent of paperwork and they want the state to lower their requirements for permits so that more farms are brought into the existing regulations. DEP isn't too anxious to create additional paper mountains and knows that they don't have the personnel to deal with this efficicently anyway. DEP is proposing to put "more teeth" in their quasi-regulatory "Manure Management Manual" in an attempt to regulate manure application, animal heavy use areas, livestock in streams etc. Winter spreading, setbacks from streams, livestock exclusion, pasture management are all areas that farmers could begin to see changes that they need to implement in order to be compliant. For the most part this is all relative to animal operations or farmers that import manure. Grain operators probably won't see much of an impact. That's probably enough for now. Any questions just holla!
Edited by conservation cop 8/18/2010 09:11
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Chesapeake watershed
