By LINDA McGURK
Indiana Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new senate bill seeks to prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from charging livestock producers a fee for emitting greenhouse gases.

Introduced by senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) the bill is “taking preventive action to protect America’s farmers” from what has popularly become known as a “cow tax,” according to a press release from Thune. But the EPA claims it never intended to tax livestock emissions in the first place.

Senate Bill 527 was written in response to EPA’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) from last summer, which sought public comments on the potential consequences of regulating greenhouse gases under the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. Greenhouse gases, including methane from livestock operations, are believed to contribute to global warming. The ANPR was not a recommended policy statement, but “intended to advance the public debate and to help inform the federal government’s decisions regarding climate change,” according to the EPA. But the document triggered controversy as it discussed the possibility of regulating and levying fees on operations emitting more than 100 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year.

Many small agricultural producers – dairy facilities with more than 25 cows, beef cattle operations of more than 50 cattle, swine operations with more than 200 hogs and farms with more than 500 acres of corn – would easily meet the threshold and be forced to obtain costly and time-consuming Title V operating permits, according to the USDA.

“The Clean Air Act was written to curb pollution from smokestack industries, not to regulate livestock production in South Dakota or elsewhere,” said Thune in a statement about the senate bill. “Livestock producers do not need another burdensome regulation to worry about, and this legislation would ensure that the ‘cow tax’ never becomes a reality.”

Assuming a price of $45 per ton of methane, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) calculated that a tax on methane emissions would cost approximately $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 per beef cow and $21.87 per hog.

According to Thune’s office, that means a medium-sized dairy farm with 75-125 cows would have to pay between $13,000-$22,000 per year, and a cattle farm with 200-300 head would have to pay between $17,000-$27,000 per year.

The EPA rejects the idea that there ever was a planned tax on livestock emissions.

“There is no ‘cow tax,’ period. We hope to finally put an end to this erroneous issue,” said Cathy Milbourn, EPA spokesperson for air quality issues.

She added the agency just proposed a national system for reporting emissions of greenhouse gases, which would only apply to approximately 13,000 of the largest emitters in the United States, including operations that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of greenhouse gases per year.

“No part of this proposal even requires emissions reporting from livestock,” Milbourn said.

But the AFBF still fears the EPA will pursue regulating methane emissions from livestock, and supports Thune’s and Schumer’s bill.
“I’ll probably give the EPA the benefit of the doubt that (the cow tax) was never intended,” said Rick Krause, AFBF’s senior director of Congressional relations, “but it would be an unintended consequence.”

According to Krause, the EPA plans to publicize a finding in mid-April that states greenhouse gases endanger public welfare. That, he said, could be “a first step toward a cow tax.”

Instead of federal regulations, the AFBF advocates a voluntary approach to reducing methane emissions from livestock operations – for example, through participation in a cap-and-trade system.
“That would give agriculture an incentive to develop offset projects and sell credits to people who need to meet their cap obligations,” Krause said. “If that type of program comes into play, we would encourage people to participate as much as they can.”