Waterkeeper Alliance Condemns EPA’s Decision to Halt Rulemaking to Reduce Water Pollution From Slaughterhouses
By: Thomas Hynes
This Action Will Leave Tens of Millions of Americans at Risk from Unsafe Drinking Water and Other Contamination
Over the Labor Day weekend, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will abandon its effort to modernize outdated and grossly inadequate water pollution control standards for slaughterhouses and rendering facilities. EPA misleadingly portrays this action as a benefit to the public, while actually permitting industry to pass the significant costs of their pollution onto the public in the form of polluted water or expensive treatment plant upgrades.
Every year, slaughterhouses and rendering facilities discharge millions of pounds of nitrogen and phosphorus, along with heavy metals and dozens of other pollutants, into rivers and streams across the United States. They are the largest industrial source of phosphorus and second largest industrial source of nitrogen pollution, fueling toxic algal blooms, creating “dead zones” devoid of oxygen, contaminating drinking water supplies, and leaving waterways unsafe for swimming and fishing.
This pollution has devastating consequences for human health and the environment. According to EPA, over 60 million people, including disproportionate numbers of people with low incomes and people of color, live within one mile of rivers and streams degraded by slaughterhouse industry pollution.
The federal Clean Water Act requires EPA to set water pollution standards for industries—including slaughterhouses and rendering facilities, which are collectively known as Meat and Poultry Product or MPP facilities—and to review those standards each year to decide whether updates are appropriate to keep pace with advances in pollution-control technology. However, EPA has not revised water pollution control standards for slaughterhouses or rendering facilities since at least 2004. Ninety-five percent of these facilities are not subject to any federal water pollution standards at all, and a portion of the remaining five percent are governed by outdated standards published in the mid-1970s.
Waterkeeper Alliance, Waterkeeper Chesapeake, Cape Fear River Watch (Cape Fear Riverkeeper) and partners filed a challenge in 2019, which targeted the Trump Administration’s decision not to update water pollution control standards for slaughterhouses and rendering facilities. In response to that earlier challenge, EPA pledged in September 2021 to strengthen water pollution standards for slaughterhouses. At that time, EPA reported that 74% of slaughterhouses and rendering facilities that discharge pollution directly into rivers and streams are within one mile of under-resourced communities, low-income communities, or communities of color. Now, by abandoning that rulemaking, EPA has not only broken its promise, it has willfully chosen to side with industry polluters over the health of tens of millions of Americans who depend on clean water.
Members of the Waterkeeper Movement released the following statements in response:
“EPA’s refusal to update slaughterhouse pollution standards is a shocking abandonment of its duty under the Clean Water Act, perpetuating injustice against low-income, under-resourced, and communities of color. By walking away from modernizing these rules, EPA is knowingly leaving millions exposed to harmful industrial pollution,” said Marc Yaggi, CEO of Waterkeeper Alliance.
“EPA deceptively claims that it is protecting the public by abandoning standards that could have cleaned up major industrial sources of pollutants fueling what EPA has deemed one of the most widespread and challenging environmental problems our nation faces, costing federal, state and local governments billions of dollars per year,” said Kelly Hunter Foster, Waterkeeper Alliance Senior Attorney. “The true beneficiaries of EPA’s retreat are the multinational corporations that have squeezed out independent, sustainable farming operations and processors and, through their industry trade groups, joined EPA’s press release in an attempt to essentially convince people that they must be allowed to continue polluting our water in order for everyone to afford their products. This is a false dilemma—we can have both clean water and safe, affordable food.”
“Every day, our communities are exposed to dangerous, contaminated drinking water and our ecosystems are pushed to the brink of collapse by industrial agriculture facilities dumping pollution into our waterways. This is especially true in states like North Carolina, where slaughterhouses and rendering facilities have long plagued folks who are forced to live, work, ranch, fish – you name it – nearby, while facing daily exposure to untreated waste and other toxins,” said Kemp Burdette, Cape Fear Riverkeeper. “Our communities expect EPA to fulfill their public mandate to ensure our most vulnerable communities have access to safe, clean drinking water. Instead, they are giving a boost to industrial polluters and shirking responsibility for implementing basic, data-driven standards that would protect the water we drink, fish, and swim in.”
“EPA’s inaction gives slaughterhouses and rendering facilities a free pass to dump millions of pounds of pollutants into our rivers and bays without consequence. Our communities’ health, ecosystems, local economies, and taxpayer wallets will continue to pay the price for this costly, destabilizing regulatory gap. EPA’s decision to throw away an opportunity to protect our communities and waterways from the onslaught of industrial pollution is a serious injustice to the countless families, local businesses, and wildlife who depend on strong environmental protections,” said Robin Broder, Acting Executive Director at Waterkeepers Chesapeake.