Boise, ID — On Friday, EPA closed a public comment period on its revised Clean Water Act National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) General Permit for factory farms in Idaho. Following a 2021 lawsuit by Food & Water Watch and Snake River Waterkeeper, EPA must require Idaho factory farms with NPDES permits to monitor water pollution

In Food & Water Watch drafted comments submitted Friday, the group demanded that EPA strengthen the permit’s monitoring requirements so that it can protect clean water as intended. The comments were joined and supported by Snake River Waterkeeper, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Center for Food Safety. A final permit is expected later this year.

Food & Water Watch Attorney Tyler Lobdell issued the following statement:

“Factory farms are polluters by design, generating enormous quantities of waste laden with excess nutrients, pharmaceuticals, pathogens, and heavy metals that then discharge into our water. Yet for decades, this industry has gotten a free pass to pollute due to a lack of accountability. EPA’s proposed Clean Water Act permit is a step in the right direction, finally incorporating critical monitoring requirements. But unfortunately EPA has only gone halfway, leaving a huge amount of pollution unreported. The Ninth Circuit’s order rejecting the prior iteration of the permit does not allow for such half measures.”

Idaho’s factory farm permits are being revised in response to a 2021 Food & Water Watch and Snake River Waterkeeper legal challenge to EPA’s statewide permit, which led the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to find that the permit arbitrarily let factory farms off the hook for monitoring their pollution discharges into waterways. EPA has admitted it lacks basic information about factory farms’ locations and the magnitude of their ever growing harm to the environment and public health. Effective monitoring, as essentially every other industrial sector is required to conduct and publicly report, is key to fixing that problem.

Idaho is home to at least 365 large factory farms, confining approximately 2.5 million cattle and calves, largely concentrated in the Snake River basin, producing billions of pounds of waste each year. As a result, the Snake River is heavily contaminated with pollutants associated with these operations; American Rivers marked the Snake River as one of the nation’s most polluted rivers this year.

Last month, EPA denied a 2017 Food & Water Watch petition that sought to improve Clean Water Act regulation of factory farms, including by bringing more operations under NPDES permits like the Idaho Permit. The agency has committed to studying the issue further.