Mr. Harrick has been working the 800-acre family farm, decorated with signs promoting pork, for 20 years. He hopes to raise about 1,000 pigs this year. It's my prediction that we will take our initiatives to the court system. In February 1998, the Clinton administration released a Clean Water Action Plan designed to reduce the runoff of pollutants from farms. Last August, the EPA proposed guidelines to states that would require more feedlots to get EPA permits and encourage the rest to come up with voluntary anti-pollution plans.
Regulators say runoff from farms can kill fish and contaminate drinking-water supplies.
Mr. Fox said that states have been interpreting existing pollution regulations differently and that the EPA guidelines are an attempt to make sure the rules are applied uniformly. There are 450,000 animal-feeding operations in the United States. However, Mr. Fox said, only 3,000 to 4,000 of those operations have such permits. Mr. Fisher said the farm bureau could take the EPA to court over how much it is leaving to its own interpretation. They're wanting to keep lowering the threshold down to smaller and smaller operations.