An Evaluation System to Rate Feedlot Pollution Potential

Excerpts from the Introduction: A uniform means of objectively evaluating potential pollution problems from animal feedlots has long been needed in Minnesota. Since 1971, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), the State water quality agency, has had a permitting program for regulating feedlots. No standard method exists, however, for evaluating abatement measures of water pollution from feedlots and, consequently, MPCA felt a need for objective criteria to evaluate the water quality impacts of open feedlots. Four Federal and State agencies —the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), the State Soil and Water Conservation Board, and the MPCA—recognized the need to coordinate their animal waste control programs so that Federal and State cost-sharing funds, the Federal technical assistance program, and the State permit program could all work together to efficiently combat this source of potential pollution. MPCA, using a section 208 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, gathered these agencies together, along with the cooperative extension service, in an advisory committee and contracted with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, to develop an animal waste-hazard analysis system. As a result, a system was developed that is impartial, relatively simple to operate, reasonably accurate, and is based on current research data. This system can be applied to any of the approximately 90,000 animal feedlot operations in the State of Minnesota.