January 21, 2014

Ms. Betsy Bowles

Virginia Department of Environmental Quality

629 East Main Street

P.O. Box 1105

Richmond, VA 23218

Dear Ms. Bowles:

Thank you for the opportunity to submit written comments regarding the Virginia Pollution Abatement General Permit for Animal Feeding Operations [9 VAC 25 - 192]. The Virginia Cattlemen’s Association represents around 8000 producers and beef industry affiliates around the Commonwealth, with members who operate under the current Animal Feeding Operation permit. Representatives from the Cattlemen served on the technical advisory committee (TAC) that was charged with assisting the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in amending these regulations.

While the Cattlemen supports extending the permit as amended for 10 years, there are a couple key areas of discussion from the TAC we would like to highlight.

The first is that there was disagreement about thresholds that would trigger recordkeeping and utilization requirements for animal waste transferred offsite. One concern that was raised was that thresholds that are too low would actually contradict the purpose of establishing a transfer program. Furthermore, any notions of basing this threshold on the number of acres the waste is applied to by an end-user would complicate this process significantly and effect both compliance and enforceability. The Cattlemen supports the threshold requirements as they are proposed.

Also there were members of the TAC that advocated for the permit to include the mandate of Best Management Practices (BMPs) as listed within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP). However, the Cattlemen, along with many other members of the TAC did not support this proposal, as many operators of AFO’s are utilizing rented land over which they have no control of many practices, such as stream exclusion and vegetated buffers. Furthermore, the Code is explicit in what requirements can be included in a general permit regulation and does not allow for the addition of BMP requirements. This permit also covers operations across the state, not just those that lie within the Bay watershed, making it inappropriate to apply these standards to this regulation. Finally, the BMPs contained in the WIP are meant to be voluntarily implemented, and mandating them would be counter to this specification.   This proposal was not included in the final amended regulations, and the Cattlemen would like to see this remain unchanged.

Thank you again for the opportunity to share these written comments. We urge the Water Control Board’s final approval.