The Environmental Protection Agency plans to hold a meeting with livestock producers in the northwest Iowa town of Arcadia next week. “There’ll be a whole variety of issues come up I’m sure dealing mostly with the Clean Water Act and with cattle producers’ permits and how they can comply with those permits,” according to Karl Brooks, the administrator for E.P.A. Region 7 which includes Iowa.
The E.P.A.’s surveillance flights over feedlots have gotten a lot of attention and they are sure to be a topic of discussion at the meeting. “I’m sure that there will be questions about it. For the last couple of months we’ve been explaining how we use light aircraft in Iowa to make sure that people are complying with the Clean Water Act,”Brooks says.
“We will share a variety of different kinds of photos and probably will share maps of watersheds that we’ve flown. So yeah, we look forward to that discussion.” Brooks says there likely won’t be any new flights over Iowa operations in the next couple of months because of the summer drought.
“There just isn’t the risk of overflow or runoff that you’d see in a wet weather year. We mostly have flown in Iowa at the start of the winter when there’s rain and snow events, and then in the springtime when you’ve got melt plus rain going on. Right now there’s just not enough water to justify it,” Brooks explains.
Brooks encourages anyone who is interested to plan to attend the meeting at the American Legion Hall in Arcadia on August 30th. The meeting is from 6:30 to 8:30 P.M.