House Follows Senate, Introduces Emission Reporting Exemption

The U.S. House, following Senate action, has introduced a bill to stop an unintended regulation of farms.  Introduced this week, ACRE, the Agricultural Certainty for Reporting Emissions Act, would avoid unnecessary environmental reporting for farmers and ranchers.  The Senate version of the bill, the Fair Agricultural Reporting Method, or FARM Act, would do the same.  Under current regulations, approximately 200,000 farms and ranches could be legally required to report emissions from animal agricultural operations, even though those rules were written to cover industrial emergencies, rather than emissions from farms and ranches.

American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall said “Congress never meant to include agriculture” in the reporting requirement, as part of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, known as CERCLA.  The EPA under both the Bush and Obama administrations supported exempting agricultural producers, but a federal court found the law did not clearly exclude farms and ranches.

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