Dust rules from EPA

[QUOTE=silverbackMP;3659177]Smaller and better works for climates and evironments that support it--Japan, Korea, Washington State, etc, etc. This primarily means vegetable, fruit, and in heavily, heavily gov subsized regions (japan, korea) rice production. Smaller and better, IMHO, does NOT work for corn, wheat, and other grain production. Real world vs starry eyed mother earth news neuvo back to landers.


I live in Washington state, specifically the Palouse empire, it's all dryland farming. Crops produced: lentils, dry peas, chick peas(garbonzo beans) barley canola, wheat, and hay. Odds are those lentils or split peas in your soup came from this region. Washington state isn't all truck crops.

Anything under 500 acres isn't worth owning machinery, with the exception of hay. Subsidies aren't all they are cracked up to be A neighbor down the road starved out, his combined subsidies for no till and lentil rotation was 1500 dollars. That's like what, an new tire for the combine?

This has been an interesting thread, I must admit I didn't realize until after I opened my big mouth that it was generally about the state of California. It's not the first time I've gone off half cocked. We do it different here in the Palouse empire because conditions are different. Sorry if I hacked anyone off.

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The best of men is only a man at best.

From the referenced article, "Under rules imposed in 2006, rural areas would be kept to the same standards as urban areas for what the Environmental Protection Agency calls "coarse particulate matter" in the air."

There is something fundamentally wrong with this. Urban areas are not the same as Ag areas. The reason that there is Ag zoning, as opposed to urban zoning is to allow areas of less population density, which permits more particulate matter pollution per person, averaging over a general area. If a person works in a high particulate area then the person can use a dusk mask. Ag zoned areas not only support farming but they also support gravel/rock quarries. Both these activities are inherently dusty. Those that wish to live in those areas must live with those consequences.

"Episode" pollution level standards, ie. serious, harmful to children and elders pollution levels, are not nationally universal. Adjacent counties in California call NO2 "episodes", or CO2 "episodes", etc. at different values from one county to the other. This is the case in Los Angeles County vs. Ventura County. Once you cross the county line the standard level of critical, ie. "episode", changes for pollutants. (granted, this article talks about particulate matter, not "pollutants"... still the concept is the same).

There is much political, duplicitous goings on here. As I said before, stay aware of this and stay politically vocal.

added: Let me reiterate. These clown politicians are trying to change the purpose of Ag zoning. In Ag zoning, you are expected to live within the realm of Ag activities. If you work in an area with high particulate matter you must adjust accordingly. Use a dusk mask. Another example is working under high electricity power lines. If you are in those areas then you must expect exposure to higher magnetic fields, even though this may be considered harmful to a person's health. Only extreme conditions/situations are not considered exceptable.

I farmed 10,000 acres and it has been farmed for over a century and is still going. What do you mean by sustainable? The ground and weather determines how many animals you can have on a area not some person that has no idea what you are talking about. The number of animals on a farm is not a good idea. You can have 50 cows on a 100 acre farm but I may have 500 on 10,000 acres so limiting how many cows on a farm is just a pipe dream. On my farm I let the waste from the other crop stay in the ground and replenished the top soil and even raised some green manure to till under in the spring. All of this requires you to till. Any short cuts will affect the yield and will make you go bankrupt. I made a good living on my farm but not what you think you would make if you just look at the figures. I got out of farming and went to work for the government to make a living and my lifestyle didn't change. I had a lot of money tied up and didn't get much in returned.As for monoculars I don't know of any except the hobey farms that only raise one crop.

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God must have loved stupid people because he made so many of them.

everything I've stated is easily verified. For example all you need to do to document the rice straw burning is a quick search for the history of rice cultivation in California. The burning of 400,000 + acres of rice straw (estimated 2 million tons) all at once did have a impact on air quality and human health. You can also quickly determine that if you draw a 30 mile circle around the town of Gridley you encompass 98% of the land mass under rice cultivation in California. Another simple and easy to do check is look at weather conditions within the Central valley and the problem becomes very obvious to pretty much anyone. Go ahead and check for yourself and tell us what you find out or is it just easier to say 'no it isn't' with a complete lack of knowledge of geography, history, and a host of other blank spots.

that depends on how far the material is transported off the ag lands. In the Central valley that means everyone in Sacramento and the surrounding urban areas will need to wear masks since they receive the dust and smoke from the farm lands situated to the north.

the reason there are differences is that, in this case, that LA sits in a basin prone to inversions while Ventura does not. Under certain geographical and atmospheric conditions air quaility can deteriorate rapidly and persist until conditions change. Continuing to add to the burden of particulates, or pollutants, under these conditions only worsen things.

sebastes,
That's absurd. The real world doesn't work that way. Zoned areas are planned to gradually transition from Ag to urban, ie. rural, to less rural, to urban. In the real world, people don't wear dusk masks unless the environment's particulate matter is extreme.


Your answer is nonsense. The real reason that standards are relaxed in Los Angeles is due to political pressure. Different areas of the country have different pollution standards because it suites their particular situation.

That's why a onerous and restrictive federal standard for pollution levels, even particulate matter, in anything but a very generalized manner, is rather absurd.

BTW, a large amount of particulate manner from Los Angeles makes it's way over the hill into Ventura County. If the issue at hand is people's health, and only people's health, then it geographics shouldn't be germane.

no, the real reason the air quality standards are different is because Los Angeles county has over 30,000 point sources of pollution compared to 1,000 in Ventura county. It is adaptive management something which you seem to acutally be in favor of.

The problem is your local planning department for lack of foresight. You shouldn't extrapolate your local problem into a generalized, national problem. It's poor planning.

The amount of pollution sources is irrelevant. It's accumulated pollution source effects that must be addressed. Each region addressed it's pollution sources in a different manner. To generalize this is folly, and disingenuous. Politics is the real motivation for this play.

I haven't extrapolated anything anywhere. I have only made the case that agricultural activities can, and do, have significant impact on air quality. In some cases it is a lack of foresight but mostly it is economics. Large areas of land suited for agriculture is not going to be left fallow by people who own it and want to make some money off of it.

I am not sure of your stance. First you complain about generalizations (none of which I have seen) and then you complain when different areas develop different standards to suit the local conditions, i.e., adaptive management. Is it that regulations of any type are bad?

I am not sure what the political nature of PM 10 standards would be? .

Dang, I tell ya this is a great little debate we are having here. I really should be working.

Again I live in Washington so it's probably different elsewhere. To change your zoning in my county from agricultural to residential the land has to stay out of production for three years.

Fact is agriculture isn't encroaching on residential property it's the other way around. People hopped into covered wagons and trekked across the country to California because they heard the farm ground was like no other.
It never ceases to amaze me how people will buy a little piece of land "out in the country" to get away from the rat race. Then complain about the farming that goes on all around them.

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The best of men is only a man at best.

You're kidding! Have you listened (ie. read) your own replies? And BTW, OF COURSE AG HAS SIGNIFICANT IMPACT TO AIR QUALITY. So do many things. But, EPA has made a blanket statement that urban air quality standards must be the same as AG air quality standards. AND YOU SEEM TO AGREE!!! THAT'S WACKO... ABSURD!

"One size fits all" solutions very rarely work. In this EPA rule case, it's a mess and will only hurt farmers.

And BTW, you don't seem to see anything wrong with your replies. The land of denial is a very comfortable place. Stay there.

I spent 25 years in regulatory compliance for a major global adhesives company. I've had to monitor stack emissions for years. Granted, I've been out of it for 6 years now, but I think you all are getting riled up over nothing. Unless your county is out of compliance (not likely in a rural area) nothing will happen. The clean air act is unusual. Certain rules and technologies don't kick in until the county has been non-compliant for a period of time.

If your county is out of compliance they will start to regulate point sources. How will they prove that the dust is coming from one source or another? They will need to prove that your farm is emitting excessive dust. Now, if it were to become an issue (as in continual complaints from neighbors) they would likely monitor, and if you were found out of compliance you would be regulated based on technology, rather than to a specific emission level. Then, and only then, you might get in a situation where someone is telling you how to farm. I don't believe that is very likely at all.

Air is air. They are correct in that the regulations must be consistent or they would face legal challenges from other regulated industries (quarries, cement plants, etc.) But those industries are emitting dust as part of their daily operation. Any farm will emit dust only on rare occassions, thus averaged over time the emissions will be minimal.

Frankly, I wonder why the scare tactics by the lobbyist? Are they trying to get money out of you guys, or something?

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The government can't give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
--Dr. Adrian Rogers

I think that you do not realize the potential problem. Look at the newest Organic Certification regulations to see the extent that the government is willing to over-regulate. Many people don't agree with these government certification rules. They believe that it is excessive. So, those persons are labeling their product as "natural", instead. Now, the government is trying to create a "voluntary" specification for "natural". Can you guess why? Some people actually think that this is good!!!??!!! In actuality, the government "think tank" policymakers are working to actuate their agenda.

Regulatory requirements for large corporations are enforced differently than regulatory requirements for small entities. In the real world, this is so. Government agencies have no problem, government ethics-wise, bullying small business/farmers by any means necessary to employ it's agenda. This may entail legal threats, creating pressure from customers, or blocking/limiting resources. Those in the real world has seen this.

It's not enough to react to government excess after it occurs. In those cases, it is too late. You must litigate for remedies, which is expensive. Oppose these "green" policies before they are enacted because they will ruin the rural lifestyle.

There is nothing contained in the proposed regulations that suggests it is a one size fits all situation and to think otherwise is just naive. Are you denying that the burning of 400,000+ acres of rice stubble 30-60 miles upwind of a major city will have an impact on air quality? During the periods of high wind it looks like the pictures of the dust storms of the 30's over a broad landscape. What these regulations address is that on these windy days we don't need farm equipment out there adding more particulate on those days.

No one is saying that that scenario would not cause issues. They are concerned that the rules to limit that pollution will be applied to a soybean field in Northwest Iowa with no residences within one mile or a Kansas wheat field that may not have a home within 5 miles of the combine.

Jim

given some of the responses ( a little smoke; nonsense) I think there are some who either don't realize the actual problem or just refuse to accept that some things need to be regulated. Out here one mile or 5 miles doesn't make a difference. At certain times of the year discharges from ag lands impact people up to 30-60 miles away. But that a result of local geography and conditions. I would certainly oppose any regulation that did not take local conditions into consideration and that is one reason they have stakeholder meetings to hammer out what is, and is not, feasable.

I have not seen anything that would indicate people would all of a sudden need to purchase new and improved EPA certified equipment nor anything indicating that there would not be regional and local cisrcumstances being addressed.

You are absolutely correct. Regulate the farmers out of business and get them for all their pollution all of it comes from farm lands anyway so close them all down and just rely on a garden to feed everybody or let them starve. That is good reasoning. It looks good on paper and you won't have to see another farm.

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God must have loved stupid people because he made so many of them.

And what they DONT address is they wouldnt be out there if THEY didnt need to be.
You can keep repeating the same lines endlessly, but we dont WANT more regulations.

I'm NOT calling the Govt to ask if its "OK" if I plow today.

If, on the other hand, they want to RENT my land and PAY me a salary, I'll plow when THEY want it plowed

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

the rice farmers have gone out of business since they've been regulated. Yikes! Oh wait that has been proven to not be true. Oh well nice try anyhow!

hey. bearfoot. Did you ever check the veracity of my claims about rice stubble burning or anything else?

If you don't want any more regulations you had better come up with a better strategy for addressing PM 10 regulations than 'we don't want any more regulations'. That simply is not going to be received very well and anyone saying it without being able to provide an alternative will not be given much consideration in the regulatory arena..

You might want to check the stats on that - California rice is down over the past 20 years. The demographics of it has changed a lot too....

The sugar farms of Florida are leaving too. They saw the writing on the wall, & took a buyout offer from the govt down there. All the sugar land is to be turned into wildlife areas. The govt is so proud of itself.

What they don't say is that the sugar growing is moving to Mexico & Brazil, along with the jobs, and GNP and food resources the USA had over thenext 10 years.

Is that really something to pride yourself in?

The industries you mention have point source regulation. That it bothersome, but managable.

Farming is non-point source. A whole new game, and the EPA is heck-bent on making farmers pave the way for the new technologies. Here's the rule, you must comply, we don't care how or what it costs, just comply this month. Period.

The part about a fella in California sitting behind a desk deciding when a farmer can till or plant or harvest is a _real_ idea some of these people had. Do you know anything about farming, anything about how _absurd_ that idea is?

Iowa got into reporting fumes from hog operations this winter - were notified of that and each farm had 30 days to comply. The places you had to report to didn't know what to do with a hog farm - the forms didn't fit the reports - the hog farms didn't know what they were producing because no one knew, no one tested for it - it was just, hey, if you make certain levels of gases we never thought of before, you need to comply with reporting or we will fine you to oblivian.

You think farmers are worried about this junk for nothing???? You think some lobbiest is coming after us?

No, we've been down this path before. Wetlands takings, wildlife takings, the thousands of regulations we are under already.

This is something new, and it is not a good thing. It has nothing to do with rice straw smoke in California.

It is about ending food & feed production in the USA.

USSR used to have a lot of farm land and very low food production and bread lines in the stores, waiting for food to appear on the bare shelves.

Socialized, govt run farming does _not_ work.

That is where this country is headed - and I'm not trying to be political, I don't care which party is in office; the problem is the regulation of ag driving it out of this country, or into a govt run thing

In Texas they are smashing old engine blocks at govt expense. This means if you can't afford new $200,000 tractors with tier 4 exhaust with the Nitrogen emissions deal, you can't find older reliable tractors either, and you are done for.

Nais was small potatoes. These EPA rules are going to end independent farming.

It will be just like the Soviet Union. Instead of political, it will be EPA motivated, but it will be the same results - hungry people.

--->Paul