West Virginia's Department of Environmental Protection has proposed issuing its first (to my knowledge, anyway) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO. The draft permit can be found here.
CAFOs are places where large numbers of animals are kept, and may generate significant amounts of waste. Production wastewater, or water running off from the places the animals are kept, is subject to NPDES permitting if it runs to a water of the United States. However, agricultural storm water is exempt from NPDES permitting under the Clean Water Act, and the state agencies that issue NPDES permits are still trying to differentiate between production wastewater, which can be permitted, and agricultural storm water, which cannot. For example, regulating animal wastes that are used as fertilizer can become a tricky issue. In this permit, manure from the CAFO production area can be spread on fields if it is done in accordance with a Nutrient Management Plan (NMP), even if some will eventually run to jurisdictional waters, but that same waste cannot run off the production area and into a jurisdictional water in any amount.
Anyone interested in commenting on the permit has until September 12 to do so.
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