March 27, 2003

As many of you have already heard, the EPA finalized a new CAFO regulation in February 2003. This regulation was issued by EPA headquarters and covers CAFOs nationwide. For existing CAFOs, the regulation gives a deadline of April 14, 2003, to submit a Notice of Intent (NOI) to be covered by a permit issued by the permitting authority (in our case, EPA Region 6).

The existing Region 6 general CAFO permit expired in 1998. Because the general permit is expired, you cannot submit an NOI to be covered by that permit. This is straight from people in both the Region 6 enforcement branch and the permits branch. According to the people we spoke with, Region 6 cannot process general permit NOIs at this time. They can only process NOIs for individual permits. You need to wait until the new general permit is issued, which will probably be later this year. For those of you that are covered under the expired general permit, keep doing what you're doing, and we'll let you know what changes need to be made when the new permit comes out.

In the meantime, everyone (even those of you not covered by the expired permit) should be operating AS IF you were actually covered by the permit. That means operating and maintaining your dairy in accordance with the conditions of that permit and getting together documentation to show that your dairy was designed and constructed to contain process water and storm water from the 25-year/24-hour storm event.