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Thursday, March 03, 2005

Environment - Stories today on farm land and farm air emissions

Farmland Preservation. "Indiana remains slow to protect its farmland: As development swallows up ever more acreage, some critics wonder when the state's priorities will shift." Thatis the headline to a major story today, reported by Jason Thomas of the Indianapolis Star. Some quotes:

As Indiana's farmland gives way to development -- the state lost almost 466,000 acres of farmland from 1997 to 2002 -- efforts to preserve Hoosier soil through federal grants and state legislation have been ineffective. With no barrier to paving over farmland, critics worry whether the state is doing enough to save the land.

In fact, since 2002, officials gave back more than $2.4 million in federal money meant to preserve farmland because they couldn't spend it.

Indiana still has $250,000 available from the program, but, so far, no one wants the money. The program provides matching funds to governmental agencies or nonprofit organizations to keep farmland in productive use.

The payoff for preservation is clear in other states.

Almost 700 miles away, in Voorhees, N.J., Alvin Stafford sits inside a more than 2-century-old farmhouse on land his family has owned since colonial times.

Through a state- and locally sponsored preservation program, the Stafford farm will remain protected from development.

"The main reason to do it: It's been in the family for a couple hundred years," Stafford, 61, said. "We wanted to keep it that way."

In Indiana, a chance to bolster preservation efforts may surface as the transition of power at the Statehouse leads to an overhaul of the state's agriculture policy. So far, however, there has been little sign of a dramatic change.

Meanwhile, other states plow millions of dollars each year into preserving farmland and open space. * * *

The only avenue available in Indiana is the Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program, operated by the USDA. The program buys development rights -- or easements -- and restricts protected farmland from being used for residential or commercial development, although farming can continue. The USDA provides up to 50 percent of the fair market value of the easement. * * *

The General Assembly considered House Bill 1654, which would have created a farmland preservation program. The bill would have put a portion of the county development income tax toward farmland preservation -- similar to measures in New Jersey and Ohio. But the bill died two weeks ago in committee because of the state's budget crisis and the ample supply of farmland. * * *

During the 1990s, Indiana took steps to protect farmland from development. Gov. Frank O'Bannon created the Hoosier Farmland Preservation Task Force in 1997, and its lone recommendation -- to create the Indiana Land Resources Council, which helped local planning agencies craft land use policies -- was enacted two years later.

But Gov. Mitch Daniels dissolved the council about a month ago because the state didn't have the money to run it.

"It was a good start," said Jane Jankowski, Daniels' press secretary, "but what we want to do is create a mechanism that is more cost-efficient and effective, realizing that land use is the number one issue facing farmers in rural communities."

Eric Damian Kelly, professor and acting chairman of the Department of Urban Planning at Ball State University, is a founding member of the council. Having just drafted a growth policy recommendation, Kelly expected to meet with the new administration, but a planned January meeting never happened.

"I thought we were going to make progress," Kelly said, adding that he has not turned in his resignation from the council. "Maybe we still will."

Earlier ILB entries on farmland preservation include: 12/21/04; 12/16/04 (links to excellent, still available, Chesterton Tribune piece); 11/18/04; and particularly 4/8/04.

Farm Air Emissions. "Purdue engineer to lead farm air pollution study" is the heading to a brief story today in the Star:

A Purdue University agricultural engineer will lead a national study of air pollution emitted from huge livestock and poultry farms -- the first step toward possibly establishing emissions standards for such farms.

Al Heber, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering, will lead the two-year, $9 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study.

It will look at dust, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and other pollutants released from farms that sometimes house tens of thousands of animals.

Such emissions have become a contentious issue in Indiana and elsewhere as farms -- and the amounts of waste they produce -- become increasingly larger.

The first step is obtaining good baseline data on emissions, "or we run the risk of having regulations shaped by untimely political and societal pressures without essential facts," Heber said Wednesday in a written statement.

More information may be found in this Newswire story:
Heber will be the lead researcher for the two-year air study required by the Animal Feeding Operation Consent Agreement, published Jan. 31 [sic.] in the Federal Register. Study protocols were developed jointly with scientists from the EPA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, numerous universities and others. Contract terms for the study are now being reviewed.

Part of the difficulty with livestock air emissions is that limited data exist to help farmers or regulatory agencies determine which kinds and sizes of operations and types of management practices might produce emissions exceeding legal limits, Heber said.

"Without good baseline data on emissions, we run the risk of having regulations shaped by untimely political and societal pressures without essential facts," he said. "The issues surrounding agricultural air emissions are complex and affect many different stakeholders. We need to discover how science can help develop fair and accurate air quality regulations."

To conduct the study, Heber will recruit scientists from additional universities and deploy monitoring teams with fully equipped mobile labs. They will collect data at selected farms continuously over a 24-month period on particulate matter emissions, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and volatile organic compounds. Outdoor manure storage facilities also will be monitored.

The mobile labs are trailers outfitted with gas analyzers, pollutant detectors, weather stations and other equipment, which record data on air samples drawn from various locations inside and outside livestock facilities. Data also will be collected on animal size and number, nutrient content of their diet and manure, climate, and routine farm operations that might affect air emissions.

"What's unique about this study is that it will provide continuous, long-term measurements of emissions coming from barns, plus periodic measurements of lagoons and other manure storage facilities," Heber said.

Mobile labs and manure storage monitoring will be established at egg, swine, dairy, broiler hen and turkey facilities, and separate data sets will be developed for each species. EPA officials will use the data to help develop air emissions standards for the livestock industry.

"The EPA will be able to see how emissions change with time of day and season in combination with other factors and incorporate that information into the regulations the agency develops," he said. "Studying emissions from existing commercial facilities is the best way to gather data that will, in the long term, address air quality and other environmental concerns."

Heber has led several studies of practices to control odor, gas and dust emissions from livestock barns and waste storage facilities. He runs one of the only odor labs in the United States and directs Purdue's Agricultural Air Quality Laboratory.

As part of the project, Heber will create and maintain a Web site with information to let the public know how the study is progressing. Odor abatement will not be part of the national study.

Here is Dr. Heber's website. And here is more ILB information on the January 21, 2005 EPA Federal Register announcement, referenced above.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 3, 2005 08:35 AM
Posted to Environment