Judge orders clean up of Indiana rivers

INDIANAPOLIS -- A judge has given the state four months to begin enforcing regulations aimed at keeping livestock waste out of Indiana rivers and streams or risk losing authority over the pollutant.\nU.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker made the ruling Tuesday in a 1999 lawsuit alleging that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allowed confined-animal operations to violate the Clean Water Act.\nFeedlots are prohibited from discharging pollutants into state waterways without a valid permit under federal law, but IDEM never issued any such permits prior to January 2002, Baker found.\nState officials also apparently failed to inspect feedlots or try to enforce the rules until 1999, according to the ruling. In 2000, IDEM inspectors found 51 violations at 316 sites.\nIDEM deputy commissioner Tim Method said Wednesday that Indiana has had a program to regulate confined feeding operations since the 1970s. He said the ruling asks the state to issue federal permits in addition to state permits in some situations.\n"With the federal permits, EPA can enforce them," Method said. "For state permits, that's not the case."\nSave the Valley, an environmental group, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Jae and Tom Breitweiser, who wanted to stop a confined hog-feeding operation from opening near their tree farm near Madison.\nSave the Valley President Richard Hill said he believed the lawsuit was the only way to end the lack of regulation.\nBarker gave the state four months to bring its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program into compliance with the Clean Water Act, or the EPA would withdraw approval of the program.\nThe EPA worked for at least three years with the state agency to try to bring the program in compliance, Barker found.\nAs of Jan. 1, 2001, there were 2,998 approved confined feeding operations in Indiana. A 1998 investigation by The Indianapolis Star found that over a 30-year period, Indiana hog farms were responsible for 201 animal waste spills that killed more than 750,000 fish.\nBarker ordered IDEM to establish a permit for livestock feedlots, or require feedlots that have discharged pollutants in the past or plan to do so in the future to apply for a permit. She also said IDEM could revise its program by submitting a confined feeding rule to the EPA.\nIf IDEM fails to carry out the order in five months, the EPA will conduct a public hearing. It will withdraw approval if the state does not act within three more months.