IMPLICATIONS OF CARE VS. SOUTHVIEW FARM ON THE US LIVESTOCK AND POULTRY-INDUSTRY

On May 19, 1993, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Western Dis trict of New York found Southview Farm and Richard H. Popp guilty of v iolating the Clean Water Act on five occasions. The violations were th e result of storm water runoff from a site used for disposal of dairy cattle manure from an unpermitted concentrated animal feeding operatio n. The presiding District Court judge later dismissed the jury verdict , and subsequently a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reve rsed the dismissal. The Court of Appeals concluded that the discharges were not exempt as agricultural storm water discharges, and that the manure spreaders involved were point sources. Because the use of anima l manures in crop production activities will result, unavoidably, in t he discharge of some pollutants to adjacent surface waters, a rational and universally applicable basis is needed to determine when such dis charges are point versus nonpoint source. Current statutes and regulat ions do not delineate clearly such a boundary. To address this lack of specificity, I propose that application rates be based on recommended crop nutrient needs.