EPA declares hay a pollutant [see UPDATE]

reply to post by butcherguy


this is exactly why im saying hay isnt a pollutant, and that you cant let your hay mold and give it to your livestock. you cant let your hay mold and then sell it either. i come from a family of farmers, so yes, i know that hay is expensive,trust me. this is why i state that its not the hay thats a pollutant. but letting it rot before feeding it to animals, or letting it be subjected to runoff where that mold/bacteria spreads to groundwater or creeks/streams is.

i dont think you realize which side of the debate im on, please read again

consider i come from a farming family who has long since got out of it.

hay is used for alot of things among them livestock feed, bedding, and natural water control for ponds to kil algea and other things such as land erosion control.

many uses for many people

hay is a million dollar industry if not billion people need to considering the ramifications of those who depend on it

reply to post by Ghost375


Do you ever do any of your own research?
www.infowars.com...
Obviously you are fed from MSM so you wouldn't hear about the story this thread is delivering to ATS.
It's not propaganda, bud.

edit: They did their job here ---->Radiation in drinking water, www.forbes.com...

Didn't and aren't doing it here ----> Toxic levels of Barium and Aluminum in Mohava County, Arizona
aircrap.org...

I'm sure there are dozens more examples of things in drinking water the EPA is "not catching", hopefully some other folks here will dig them up

reply to post by neo96


the ramifications are: if you are going to sell it, or feed it to animals that you are, it needs to be clean. dont leave it where rainwater runoff can get to it, or where the animals can poo all over it. they never once say that hay is a pollutant. again, just posting this even if there is no real link to the fda to prove it will still make people jump off the deepend

now that has ramifications too

reply to post by narwahl

You quote the last 100 Years, yet the EPA has only been around since 1970

WOW!

This statement would indicate that you have all the data necessary to understand my post.....

But it also tells me that you didn't understand it. Maybe if you read it again.

reply to post by Venomilk

you cant let your hay mold and then sell it either.

Composting operations and mushroom soil producers buy moldy hay.

You don't receive top dollar for moldy hay, of course.... but you can sell it.

reply to post by smarterthanyou


did he say that hay was the pollutant? or that keeping hay out open to the elements would create one? this could very well just be doublespeak so they can classify hay as a pollutant, but it could just be an assumption that since uncovered hay can cause a pollutant, they are calling hay the pollutant.

reply to post by butcherguy

not my point.. i understand that. you can sell junk cars to scrapyards too, but you cant sell a junk car as a working car.

selling hay thats meant to be moldy is one thing. selling moldy hay as animal feed is entirely different. im sorry i didnt clarify

reply to post by butcherguy


Do you deny that N & P have adverse effects on freshwater?
Do you deny that excretions from farm animals are a source of N deposited in water?
Do you deny thata the EPA did *NOT* say hay was a pollutant.
If you look at the EPAs website you will find a great number of pages containing the word "hay"
Most of them are spanish...
The others mention hay as as a possible filter medium.
Your argument is "Fishings bad in chesapeak bay, so we better stop trying make it better"

In the 1970s, the Chesapeake Bay was discovered to contain one of the planet's first identified marine dead zones, where hypoxic waters were so depleted of oxygen they were unable to support life, resulting in massive fish kills. Today the bay's dead zones are estimated to kill 75,000 tons of bottom-dwelling clams and worms each year, weakening the base of the estuary's food chain and robbing the blue crab in particular of a primary food source. Crabs are sometimes observed to amass on shore to escape pockets of oxygen-poor water, a behavior known as a "crab jubilee". Hypoxia results in part from large algal blooms, which are nourished by the runoff of residential, farm and industrial waste throughout the watershed. One report in 2010 criticized Amish farmers for having cows which "generate heaps of manure that easily washes into streams and flows onward into the Chesapeake Bay

Edit to add: you also didn't read that article on that swiss lake.
It's only a small lake, but it started dying in the 70ies, due to farmers spraying slurry over their fields whenever their containers got full. 40 years later, and with regulations in place that would make US farmers shoot themselves, It still isn't fixed, and they drilled pipes under the lake and pump oxygen into it every winter.
You can't solve hundreds of years of input with a few decades of reduced input.

Just a prime example of how the EPA has run wild with the powers granted to it by the current administration. Powers that they were never meant to have in the first place.

Step two. Farmers will now have to buy certified, manufactured feed for their livestock. The self sustaining aspects of growing and harvesting your own hay is simply unacceptable the EPA. My god think of the emissions saved by eliminating the need to harvest and bail it.

Step three. Mowing our lawns will be banned as well. Time for all of us to install naturescapes or brady bunch astro turf.

reply to post by jibeho


Step one: read the thread and find out that the EPA never said that hay was a pollutant

Edit to add: you also didn't read that article on that swiss lake. It's only a small lake, but it started dying in the 70ies, due to farmers spraying slurry over their fields whenever their containers got full. 40 years later, and with regulations in place that would make US farmers shoot themselves, It still isn't fixed, and they drilled pipes under the lake and pump oxygen into it every winter. You can't solve hundreds of years of input with a few decades of reduced input.

reply to post by narwahl
Exactly right, I did not read it.

Every ounce of the manure from 100 years ago (and there was more of it then) was spread directly on top of the soil. This went on for hundreds of years, yet the Chesapeake died with the advent of modern detergents...

The best place to crab in the Chesapeake Bay years ago was where the raw sewage dumped into it, not speaking of any study that was done. Speaking from the experience of generations of crabbers.

Originally posted by narwahl
reply to post by jibeho

 

Step one: read the thread and find out that the EPA never said that hay was a pollutant

Shhh...

Don't say crazy things like that, ATS is my primary source of comedic entertainment. If you tell people to start making sense, it would lose much of that value.

reply to post by narwahl


The farmer in question was cited by the EPA for failing to store hay in a pollution containment zone. Sorry, but my grandfather's small farm never had a pollution containment zone for hay storage.

From the EPA's region 7 office

failure to conduct operations within areas that are controlled in a manner capable of preventing pollution

www.cattlenetwork.com...

The EPA's statement is intentionally vague. I will however side with the rancher in this case and just about every other case involving the evolution of the EPA's never ending power grab and the noose that they are intentionally placing around the necks of small scale farmers, ranchers and self sustaining gardeners.

How you Americans put up with Agencies like the EPA and FDA.

They are un constitutional and barbaric by nature.


HAY is now a pollutant? WFT?

But all the missiles and bombs that the US drops on peoples all over the world and the Nuke test are not pollutants?

You guys in the States need to weed out these agencies and mass attack them where it hurts.

reply to post by butcherguy

you are right:
P definitely was a big factor(detergents).
But N was too(manure).

And it washes down into the water, and it causes algae to bloom, consuming all the oxygen, leading to dying fish, leading to more nutrients in the water, leading to more algae consuming all oxygen that is needed for higher lifeforms.

I've actually got a nice anectodal example. I grew up in a place with lots of small bodies of water and canals. Great opportunities to play as a kid.
One was very small, about 1,5m wide, 25 cm deep. That one wasn't one of those opportunities.
It couldn't handle all the sewage that was dumped into it. When I was a little kid, in the 70ies you could smell it from about 10 meters. I still recall getting pushed into it by some bigger boys, as a punishment. I also recall spending quite some time plotting elaborate revenge strategies, most of them involving some kind of fleet, sailing down that river of #.
In the 80ies you couldn't smell it anymore. But there still was no sign of life, and you couldn't see the bottom of it. It was an opaque broth.
These days it still hasn't recovered. But there are a lot of plants growing there (Propably too much, and I yet have to go closer to see if there are any fish there. If there are they would be quite small, and impossible to spot from up on the road) But there is a familly of ducks, who seem to quite enjoy it now.
Every time I go past that creek I remember it how it was only 30 or 20 years ago. It's such an improvement! If today a little kid gets pushed into it, he will get slightly muddy and very wet. And the perps will propably get a lot less satisfaction out of it.

reply to post by narwahl
I gave you a star for your pleasant anecdote.

I drew up some pleasant childhood memories. Most of the real damage to the watershed where I spent my childhood was caused by strip mining coal.

I must go code reports. I hate when work ruins pleasantries, but you have to do it sometimes.

Everyone take a deep breath...

Has anyone bothered to look up the sources for this??? ANYONE???

At the recent 12th Annual R-CALF USA Convention in Rapid City, SD, an audience member asked Mike Callicrate, a Kansas cattle feeder, if the EPA had, indeed, declared hay a pollutant.

Being the sceptic I am, I just didn't want to accept the word of a biased cattle farmer. So of course I went to the EPA's website where all laws are publicly available. And guess what, nothing on there classifies hay as a pollutant. What a surprise

So I went to the original source (which isn't naturalnews.com): r-calfusa.com

Now of course they want as little regulation as possible, because it increases their profitability. That includes use of pesticides and genetically modified stuff that is regulated by the EPA. It's regulated because it could seriously mess up the environment. The US have beautiful landscapes, and it would be wrong to spoil that for future generations. Google "China,waste,disaster" and you know what I mean, and why having environmental regulations is important for everyone...even at the expense of some profitability for farmers.

In short:

1) R-CALFUSA represents farmers who want to increase a profit.
2) EPA has some regulations that harm their profitability. For example, some pesticides are forbidden because although effective, they destroy the environment in the process. But those pesticides would be cheap, and therefore increase profitability.
3) R-CALFUSA starts a rumour and posts it on news distribution networks like naturalnews.com.
4) Most people won't bother looking up the facts and will blindly believe hay is now outlawed.
5) People start "hating" the EPA, the very organization making sure our landscapes stay as beautiful as they are. Especially now that people believe cutting the tiny EPA budget would help solve the budget deficit (which in itself is a ridiculous thought to anyone looking up the figures).
6) There's a chance the EPA gest removed, and now R-CALFUSA can pollute at will and make more $$$.

As always, MONEY is the real motive, and all means are right to get that, even lying apparently.

THINK people, don't buy into blatant disinfo

failure to conduct operations within areas that are controlled in a manner capable of preventing pollution

And this doesn't necessarily mean hay is the pollutant...and yeah, it's super vague. Those cattle organizations are obviously drawing conclusions on incomplete facts. Everyone can go to the EPA website and see that hay isn't categorized as a pollutant though

Originally posted by MrXYZ

failure to conduct operations within areas that are controlled in a manner capable of preventing pollution

like a barn..... thats what i took from it, but some will just hear what they want to.

reply to post by jibeho


They didn't mention hay, yet they mentioned compostation.
So you are siding with the farmer, who claimed "hay"
12.000 cattle doesn't sound small to me.
Drovers sounds to me like a reasonable source.

Asked specifically what types of feed were stored in the feed stock area at the Callicrate facility at the time of the inspection, Breedlove says the area contained “distillers’ grains, silage and other feeds that could leach pollutants.

They specifically name nitrogen rich stuff. What does nitrogen do in the water, if it finds a sulfur molecule? (From another perp, violating the safe air act) It goes "yay" (NH4)2SO4!
Drovers really put it well in the closing paragraph of that article:

But as the industry confronts and negotiates these genuine regulatory issues, it’s best to stick to the facts and avoid hyperbole. Is EPA stepping up enforcement of rules under the Clean Water Act and NPDES permit system at feedlots? Perhaps. Is the agency enforcing rules regarding runoff from feedstock areas? Yes. But has the EPA suddenly declared hay a pollutant, potentially requiring virtually every cattle producer to store their bales in approved containment structures? No.

reply to post by MrXYZ


The EPA is regulating farmers to death and bankruptcy. Instead of hitting the fields at sunrise they have to check and double check all of their forms and registrations to ensure compliance.

Farmers are being hit for dust pollution, water runoff, and even noise pollution.

The EPA has morphed from simply and enforcement agency and has overstepped its authority by exercising actual legislative power. It's simply wrong and out of bounds. The EPA's Clean Air Act seeks to regulate "coarse particulate material" that's dust to you and me. Ever been on a West Texas farm that does not generate dust. Especially during a current drought? The EPA wants to crack down on particulates less than 10 micrometers in diameter.

According the EPA a Dust violation could net them up to $40,000 a day in fines depending on the scale of the violation. As if food prices are not high enough. Look at the corn markets and the push for Ethanol over food crops.

Farmers are farmers they are not lawyers nor should they keep lawyers on retainer to translate these lawyer generated regulations. Enough is enough. Before we know it, the nations breadbasket will be empty because it was choked to death by overregulation.