State tells livestock producers about new fees

Iowa livestock and poultry producers will soon get a letter from the Department of Natural Resources outlining new fees for filing manure management plans with the state. D-N-R environmental specialist Julie Nelson says there’s a 250-dollar filing fee, and a compliance fee. If producers already have a plan on file, they don’t have to pay the filing fee. The annual compliance fee is based on the number of animal units. She says it’s a fee to ensure spills get cleaned up. She says it’s 10 cents per animal and will be used if someone abandons a site and the state has to clean up the manure storage facility. The filing fee helps fund the officers who do compliance checks on the plans. There are some three to four thousand operations out there, but Nelson says they’re trying to gradually bring everyone up to speed on the required fees. She says they’re sending out letters this week to tell each producer when their management plans are due, so they don’t all come in at once. Nelson says the manure management plans themselves aren’t changing.She says they have to determine how much manure is going to be generated, the manure’s nitrogen content, they also have to decide how many acres of crops it will take to absorb the nitrogen. The plans are required for all operations of over 500 animals.