National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) 

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) Reporting Rule

Analysis under Executive Order 12898:

Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice 

in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations 

October 3, 2011

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Office of Water

Office of Wastewater Permits

Water Permits Division

Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds

Assessment and Watershed Protection Division
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National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Concentrated Animal Feeding 

Operation (CAFO) Reporting Rule

Analysis under Executive Order 12898:

Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and LowIncome Populations

1. Overview of Executive Order 12898 

Executive Order 12898 establishes federal executive policy on environmental justice (59 

FR 7629 (Feb. 16, 1994). Its main provision directs federal agencies, to the greatest extent 

practicable and permitted by law, to make environmental justice (EJ) part of their mission by

identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or 

environmental effects of their programs, policies and activities on minority populations and lowincome populations in the United States. 

2. Environmental Justice Impacts from the Proposed Rule 

EPA has determined that the information collected by this rule would benefit minority

and low-income populations by providing easier access to information on nearby CAFOs with 

potential effects on neighboring communities. In addition, the Agency anticipates that the 

information to be collected under the rulemaking will aid these communities by supporting 

consideration of environmental justice concerns as the Agency moves forward with future 

implementation of the NPDES CAFO program. 

3. Analysis of Geographic Regions for Focused Rulemaking Outreach to EJ Communities

As part of EPA’s continued effort to meet its obligations under E.O. 12898, the Agency

conducted an analysis to identify portions of the country where there are both large numbers of 

CAFOs as well as concentrations of minority and low-income populations. These regions 

include parts of the Carolina lowlands, central California, the Delmarva Peninsula on the 

Chesapeake Bay, and the border area between Minnesota and Iowa. The Agency plans to 

conduct outreach as part of the rulemaking process, including outreach to these communities, 

with the intent of informing these communities about the rulemaking and newly available 

information on CAFOs. 

More specifically, the geo-spatial analysis that the Agency conducted for the rulemaking 

combined data from USDA on large livestock operations with data from the U.S. Census on 

minority and low-income populations to develop maps that highlighted geographic regions that 

have both many CAFOs and high densities of populations of concern. 

4. Analysis of Regions with High CAFO Densities

To identify regions in the U.S. that have high densities of CAFOs, EPA requested a 

custom tabulation from USDA of 2007 Census of Agriculture data on farms with high numbers 
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of animals. USDA has available on its Census website an on-line application for members of the 

public to generate datasets on U.S. farms using Census of Agriculture data. Although these

datasets show numbers of livestock operations by size for the major animal sectors, these preformatted data are stratified by size bands that do not match exactly with EPA’s NPDES CAFO 

thresholds for large operations. To address this discrepancy, EPA requested USDA to perform a 

custom tabulation that re-aggregated the Census data to match the size thresholds for large 

livestock farms specifically as laid out in NPDES regulations. This custom tabulation on 

numbers of farms did not contain any instances where USDA was barred from disclosing data 

due to confidentiality, nor did this tabulation contain any data not otherwise available to the 

public upon request to USDA.

One important caveat regarding the custom tabulation is that EPA based its analysis on an 

assumption that the resulting number of large livestock operations could be used as a proxy for 

CAFOs. This assumption was necessary since the USDA Census of Agriculture does not 

distinguish between confined and unconfined livestock operations, meaning that any totals also 

include farms that are not CAFOs. These operations, although they are large farms, are not 

CAFOs because they are either pasture or range-based operations or they do not confine animals 

for the number of days laid out in EPA's definition of an Animal Feeding Operation. EPA 

believes this assumption to be valid since the Agency’s field experience strongly suggests that 

most operations above the EPA size threshold for large CAFOs would meet the definition of an 

AFO. The one exception to this assumption would be the beef sector, where operations can have 

a comparatively large number of on-farm animals and still be range-based. EPA addressed this 

issue, however, by using the Census category of “cattle on feed” rather than the more generic 

classification of “beef cows” to determine numbers of large beef CAFOs.

To map the resulting dataset showing CAFOs by county, EPA elected to control for 

county size by using density of CAFOs rather than number of CAFOs. To perform this 

normalization, EPA first added all the CAFOs in each animal sector for a county, and then 

computed the county-level density of CAFOs by dividing the total number of CAFOs in a county

by the size of the county. This was made possible by importing the dataset into the ArcGIS 

mapping application, which allowed for easy computation of CAFO densities based on county 

shapefiles.

The resulting map, displayed in Figure 1, shows counties in the U.S. that have the highest 

densities of CAFOs. This map reveals clustering of large livestock farms in certain geographic 

areas, such as northwest Arkansas and the central mid-west. In general, this clustering tends to 

be driven by particular animal sectors; for example, chicken operations are known to be the 

dominant sector for Arkansas and the Delmarva.
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5. Analysis of Regions with High Densities of Populations of Concern

To develop an understanding of regions in the U.S. that have high densities of minority

and low-income populations where environmental justice concerns from CAFOs might be a 

consideration, EPA performed a comparable mapping of U.S. Census statistics on census tracts 

with minority populations and populations reporting income below the poverty level as defined 

by the Census. 

When EPA first examined the resulting mapped census tracts showing populations of 

potential concern, it determined that the mapped areas were unlikely to overlap with any counties 

with high densities of CAFOs. Upon further examination, EPA determined that data on minority

and low-income populations were heavily dominated by populations in urban census tracts. To 

allow for a more targeted focus on rural populations, EPA re-indexed the Census data for 

minority and low-income populations to exclude urban census tracts, and then re-mapped the 

resulting data. This mapping exercise yielded the map displayed in Figure 2 showing rural 

census tracts in the U.S. that have the highest densities of minority and low-income populations. 

Figure 1: GIS data layer showing counties w/ highest density of large CAFOs
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6. Analysis of Mapping Showing Areas with High CAFO Densities and Populations of 

Concern

As a final step in the analysis, EPA then overlaid the maps of CAFO densities with the 

maps of high densities of potentially impacted populations. This new map then revealed 

geographic regions in the U.S. where the Agency needs to target its rulemaking outreach to 

address potential environmental justice concerns based on the fact that these rural areas have 

both large numbers of CAFOs and large numbers of minority and low-income populations. This 

map, as shown in Figure 3, reveals that EPA should concentrate its outreach for the new 308 

rulemaking to communities in four key regions of the U.S.:

1. The Delmarva peninsula, in particular Dorchester, Wicomico, Somerset, and 

Accomack counties

2. The Minnesota-Iowa border area, in particular Martin, Watonwan, Blue Earth, 

Freeborn, Steele and Mower counties

3. The Carolina lowlands, in particular Wayne, Lenoir, Duplin, Sampson, Bladen, 

Robeson, Dillon, Scotland, Richmond, and Anson counties

4. The California central valley, in particular San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, 

Kings, and Tulare counties.

EPA looks forward to working with these communities as the rulemaking is finalized.

Figure 2: GIS data layer showing rural census tracts with high densities of populations of concern
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Figure 3: GIS data layer showing overlaps of areas 

with high densities of CAFOs and populations of concern