The Project

Partners include: County Extension Agents in East, North and Northwest Texas; owners of small feedlots and grazing operations; Texas Cattle Feeders Association; Texas Farm Bureau.

The "Feedyard Air Quality Management Program" project team is working with a stakeholder/producer group representing over 25 cattle feedyards with a combined capacity of 1.5 million head in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado. This pilot project, part of the "Partnerships for Livestock Environmental Management Systems", will develop an odor and dust management tool to help producers prevent nuisance air pollution.

Updates

Final Summary - December 2005:

View the Final Report Summary.

March 2004:

View the Summary Interim Project Report.

Summer 2003

The Texas LEMS pilot has moved away from a comprehensive EMS approach toward targeting dust and odor management issues in its work with cattle operations in that state. In its work with the feedyard community, the Texas LEMS project has found that operators see a need for a voluntary odor-and-dust management tool to help them address community and neighbor concerns about nuisance odor and dust, reduced visibility and the adequacy of existing air-quality regulations. This focus also allows the project to avoid overlap with and unnecessary duplication of management provisions already required or prescribed under Texas' existing NPDES permit program. Working under the title, "Texas Feedyard Air Quality Management Program (FAQMP)," Texas' LEMS project now focuses solely on development of a Toolkit to help operators improve the management of airborne emissions (dust, odor, major gases) from cattle feedyards in the Texas Panhandle. Feedyard managers have expressed a need for a quick and easy way to measure air quality to help them make management decisions. Even a tool as simple as a multicolored rod installed in the feedyard can help managers measure changes in visibility early in the day and assess the dust potential for that evening, when cattle typically rise from their afternoon lethargy and engage in dust-generating behaviors.

The project is currently working with a stakeholder group representing more than 20 cattle feedyards in Texas and the High Plains. Together, the Texas pilot team is developing a FAQMP Toolkit, which includes an air-quality risk matrix to help producers focus their attention on what emissions they need to be concerned about as a function of who or what is affected by which types of emissions. The team is also creating streamlined checklists to help employees detect risk factors for dust and odor such as excessive manure accumulations, poor drainage conditions, and poor or non-uniform performance of sprinkler systems. Working with the Texas Cattle Feeders Association and cattle feeders representing 1.3 million head of one-time capacity, the FAQMP team has held two internal workshops and recently published the first edition of its project newsletter, "Clearing the Air."

January 2003:

The Texas project team is currently concentrating on displaying Agricultural EMS at the Amarillo Farm and Ranch Show (December 3-5, 2002). We hope to obtain useful feedback from producers through the use of a survey distributed at the Farm and Ranch Show. The Texas project team is also adjusting the assessment tools to work with permitted operations in Texas (especially feedyards).

November 2002

A one-day EMS training session was attended in November, the training was provided by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The Texas project team is currently concentrating on displaying Agricultural EMS at the Amarillo Farm and Ranch Show (December 3-5, 2002). We hope to obtain useful feedback from producers through the use of a survey distributed at the Farm and Ranch Show. The Texas project team is also adjusting the assessment tools to work with permitted operations in Texas(especially feedyards).

September 2002

The Texas Beef pilot is developing a Beef EMS, Texas specific brochure for Texas beef producers. The Texas pilot has also been reviewing state rules with Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) staff and familiarizing ourselves with TCEQ Chapter 90 regulations (relating to EMS). We are in the process of developing a diagram/flow chart (for visual ease) incorporating various steps of an EMS for beef producers. The Texas pilot is contacting Texas Farm Bureau-requesting regulatory status assistance with insurance and credit for producers (possible incentives).

The Texas pilot is also contacting the Natural Resource Conservation Service for information on EMS considerations in EQIP cost-share application scoring procedures. TCEQ has developed a new regulatory structure providing a basis for incentives known as a Compliance History. The compliance history will categorize 5 years back. There will be 3 Tiers in the compliance history - High, Average, and Poor. A 10% reduction in score will be present with an EMS. Also a 10% reduction in penalty will be present with a basic EMS.

The Texas project's success relies on support from the Texas Cattle Feeders Association which currently is expressing skepticism about the excitement Livestock Environmental Management Systems seem to be engendering within regulatory communities before the contours of an LEMS are well described and understood. In this view, an ineffective or overly intrusive LEMS may be worse than none at all. The project is striving to communicate to TCFA the trial and error aspect that is fundamental to the development of any new policy framework, like LEMS, and still hopes to implement the pilot testing with small feedlot operators under the TCFA umbrella. More concrete plans await the outcome of this dialogue.

The Texas pilot is predicated on sustaining the support of key stakeholders for the Livestock Environmental Management Systems concept, the contours of which are not yet fully described. The recent excitement over the LEMS concept in Washington meetings involving USDA, EPA and the National Center for Manure and Animal Waste Management has "shifted the ground" somewhat underneath the LEMS project in Texas, and so the Texas project team is negotiationg the trial and error aspect that is fundamental to the development of an LEMS framework. (Concerns are that an ineffective, overly intrusive or overly presciptive LEMS may be considerably more onerous than the status quo.) More concrete plans await the outcome of this dialogue, which is proceeding constructively.

© 2006 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.