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FARM & HOME ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS
This quarterly electronic newsletter of FARM & HOME ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS aims to inform interested readers about voluntary pollution prevention programs around the nation and about new research and policy impacting the management of environmental risk on farms and in homes. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this online newsletter, for more information, or to contribute to this newsletter, please refer to our website (http://www.uwex.edu/farmandhome/), or email editor Mrill Ingram mingram@wisc.edu We welcome comments and feedback!
USDA-CSREES, USDA-NRCS, and the U.S. EPA provide support for our programs.
Farm and Home Environmental Management Programs
Room 303
Hiram Smith Hall
1545 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI
53706
Phone: 608-262-0024
FAX:
608-265-2775
Website:http://www.uwex.edu/farmandhome/
STORIES
Protejer El Rio - Home*A*Syst Materials Support Multi-media Rio Grande Pollution Prevention Effort.
As New Mexico State University Extension Specialist Craig Runyan knows, multimedia outreach efforts can be a lot of work. He has recently completed a two-year project to increase citizens' understanding of the environmental effects of improper disposal of household chemicals. Funded by the USDA/CSREES 406 Water Quality Initiative in 2000, the "Protejer El Rio" (Protect the River) project targeted eight New Mexico counties and worked with government officials, teachers and schools, merchants, chemical manufacturers, utility companies, Extension agents and others to spread the word about home-use chemicals. Many challenges arise when coordinating with such a range of partners, and it is also often difficult to determine which aspects of such a campaign are more or less successful.
"It is the nature of Extension that we shoot at anything that flies and claim anything that falls," jokes Runyan.
Yet Runyan has some hard evidence to support his strategy of a broad based educational campaign to improve water quality. In the mid-1990s the city of Las Cruces faced a serious problem with high levels of diazinon in water issuing from its wastewater treatment plant. The EPA was about to issue a cease and desist order, and the city was facing multi-million dollar investments for capital improvements to the plant. Working with the city's environmental officer, Runyan developed a multimedia pollution prevention campaign for the city.
"We discussed the option of having the city just remove diazinon from the shelf," relates Runyan. "But we figured we would simply see malathion, or some other chemical replace it." For an issue like household hazardous waste, which is produced by many different households in different situations, they decided a broad based educational campaign that took advantage of numerous outlets for information might be just the ticket.
The outreach effort, which lasted about 9 months, was an impressive success, and subsequent biomonitoring for 18 months showed only 2 failures of tests for diazinon, whereas prior to the multimedia campaign, only 2 in 18 biomonitoring tests had passed. The city and county have continued to pursue the educational effort as a foundational piece of their strategy for insuring clean drinking water.
"The project totally turned things around," says Runyan. "It also laid the groundwork for "Protejer El Rio," which addressed water pollution issues in a larger area of the river corridor." Several different municipalities have had water pollution issues, relates Runyan, and because of drought and the fact that certain areas of the river have been considered as habitat for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow, people were aware of flow and discharge issues. "Right now you can drive a vehicle down the bed of the river, and when the flow is that low, quality becomes a very big issue," he says.
The larger scale outreach project developed a homeowners household hazardous waste risk assessment modeled on Home*A*Syst materials. The assessment both ranked user scores and offered alternative practices to common household chemical use. The assessment was also part of a supporting school curriculum that included a teacher resource notebook and a website, and Master Gardener training. Over 4,500 assessments were distributed through schools, libraries and civic groups. They were also placed with local Soil and Water Conservation Districts.
Besides public television service announcements, residents were reached through 28,000 brochures on household hazardous waste, which were written in a question/answer format. Brochures were distributed through stores where lawn, garden and other household chemicals are sold. Quarter page inserts were also included in utility bills and sent to over 200,000 utility customers. The inserts displayed several messages, such as "cut the grass but don't spill the gas," and "when in doubt don't pour it out," along with information about the impacts of household chemicals and proper disposal.
Runyan relates that store merchants were excited about the program and very cooperative. "We actually tested their participation by visiting several outlets in cognito and saw the inserts going into customers' bags." Perhaps the clerks in Walmart hadn't read the brochures, says Runyan, but they were putting them into the bags. "The store owners would continue to distribute the information if someone found funding," he says. Runyan adds that the campaign was made easier by coordinating different efforts so that everything went out at the same time. His office continues to answer requests for information, he says, which come especially from schoolteachers.
EMS Lowers Insurance Rates for Manure Haulers in Wisconsin
With business names like Royal Flush, Dairy Aire, Knee-Deep, and After All, you might not realize how seriously Wisconsin manure haulers take their work. Manure hauling has become an increasingly critical business here, as well as in other states, as expanding livestock operations struggle to figure out how to handle larger amounts of manure, residents of new rural subdivisions complain about messy roads and odor, and manure spills generate bad press. In response to increasing certification requirements, environmental and safety legislation, as well as equipment and insurance costs, a group of Midwestern manure haulers joined together in 2001 to form the Professional Nutrient Applicators Association of Wisconsin (PNAAW). Working with the support of the UW-Extension's Nutrient Management Team, including Kevin Erb, PNAAW's members have developed spill response and voluntary certification programs, as well as numerous education and training opportunities on field application and manure control.
Along with environmental risk, PNAAW has also been concerned about the rising cost of manure spills and of pollution insurance for haulers. The group has worked closely with insurance agent Dave Anderson of Vincent, Urban Walker, who has been successful in dramatically reducing insurance premiums for haulers. A major piece of this success, Anderson reports, has been an EMS.
"Manure haulers can have a million dollars invested in their hauling equipment," explains Anderson. "They want to protect that equipment and to have insurance. Manure spills are expensive -- in some cases, people have figured out a cost per fish."
Only a few years ago, pollution insurance for manure haulers was $12,000 a year for $1 million in insurance. When Dave Anderson was approached by the manure haulers, he decided a first step was to inform insurance carriers about what the business involved. "We simply took insurance company representatives out in the field to see what people actually do," says Anderson. "As a result they dropped insurance rates to $2,600 to $3,500 a year."
Despite this dramatic achievement, Anderson felt he could do more. He had been working with the International Standard Organization's certification program for product quality, ISO 9000, and had just learned about the environmental standard, ISO14001. "I was inspired to look further at the EMS process," he explained. "We saw it as another service we could offer our clients."
Anderson used the 12-page introductory EMS booklet produced by Farm and Home Environmental Management Programs as a starting place to develop his own five point EMS process for manure haulers. It is an informal EMS -- he does all the training and the audits. It has also been very successful. "Our first EMS was done just this past summer," he reports. "We had anticipated that, as a result of the EMS, the insurance company would offer us a cut of 15 percent -- they gave us 22 percent.
Anderson explains that the insurance companies like the fact that the manure haulers' EMS is a "living document," and that all employees, not just the business owner, sign off every year. "This isn't something you finish with, put on a shelf and forget," he states. Anderson has designed the EMS process to unfold over five years of continuous improvement. "The last thing these guys want is more paper," relates Anderson. "We started with the environmental policy and goals, and the first year the focus was on the spill response plan. The second year we focus on document procedures."
Anderson says he has already seen specific results from EMS implementation in terms of process and prevention. "These guys use lots of technology," he explains. "There is an 8" hose that is 2 to 3 miles long, through which the manure is injected into the ground. No matter how careful people are, hoses can break or leak. If no one is checking the line every 15 minutes, you can have a real mess." The standard check time is fifteen minutes, Anderson explains, but as a result of the EMS, this process is in writing and employees record their checks. "I make unannounced visits," Anderson says. "I can see these checks happening every 15 minutes - the process is working." Anderson also reports that the EMS requires maintenance and improvement of trucks, including cleaning the equipment more often, and that haulers have told him that they feel more efficient and are taking their jobs more seriously as a result.
Anderson is also serious about his EMS. "I've already had one guy who hadn't reached his stated goals and was showing no improvement. I refused to work with him and said he could find insurance elsewhere." Anderson reports that the hauler eventually came back to him, ready to work on his EMS, because he'd been unable to find insurance rates as low. "I have some teeth to make this thing effective," Anderson states.
Anderson says he has also seen interest in EMS from farmers he insures, especially those milking over 150 animals a day, and who have more visible manure holding sites and visible applications of fertilizer and nutrients. He is working on developing an EMS for dairy producers and is also planning on working with feed mills soon. "We don't charge for the EMS, he says. "We think it is time well spent."
LEMS Project Updates: National Forum Date & Agenda Set; Texas Pilot Continues Clearing the Air; WI Announces New Online Dairy Pest Management Tool.
The Partners for Livestock Environmental Management Systems project is planning a National Forum on Agricultural EMS in Arlington, VA, March 3-4, 2004. The public gathering will allow people involved and interested in EMS to share information on successful projects and evaluate lessons learned from the process of implementing Agricultural EMSs in the U.S. Experts will also discuss how public policy can be utilized to address environmental concerns through EMS. Joining the LEMS Project partners will be policy makers, US EPA and USDA representatives, university researchers, and representatives from commodity groups and businesses involved with agriculture. Visit the Ag EMS website www.uwex.edu/AgEMS or call (608) 265-2772 for updates to the agenda and other details.
The Texas Livestock Environmental Management Systems project team continues to target air quality management for cattle feedyards in the High Plains. The group is developing several new technologies as part of its Feedyard Air Quality Management Program toolkit, including a passive, color-based visibility rod that assists operators in monitoring dust during peak dust periods. Other projects include a "water curtain," an open-air wet scrubber designed to rinse feedyard dust from the air before it crosses the property line, and a new monitoring technology known as "open-path transmissometry." A transmissometer measures the average change in visibility over a long distance (>1 mile), and is currently used in National Parks to measure visibility. The pilot group is adapting the transmissometer for feedyards to evaluate best management practices for dust control, determining, for example, the effectiveness of certain manure-harvesting frequencies on reducing dust emissions.
The Wisconsin pilot team has recently posted a new module on its Wisconsin Dairy Environmental Management Website. This module focuses on dairy pest management, including sections on the control of insects, rodents and birds. The module complements others on drinking water, manure storage and regulatory review. The site includes a feedback survey, and the team welcomes comments. Please visit at: www.uwex.edu/AgEMS/dairy/wisems/.
For more on these projects and others involved in the Partnerships for Livestock Environmental Management Systems Project, please visit, http://www.uwex.edu/AgEMS/livestock/
More and Better Conservation on America's Farms and Ranches.," Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service, at the NRCS Conservation Security Program Workshop, St. Louis, MO on October 6, 2003. http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/news/speeches03/knight.cspworkshop.html
Organic Agriculture Symposium. A two-day symposium on organic agriculture was held on 4-5 November in Denver CO at the 2003 American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America (ASA-CSSA-SSSA) Annual Meetings. Presentations include over 30 oral and poster presentations covering research and outreach associated with organic production techniques, policies, and statistics in the United States. The entire proceedings are available online at the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture website:http://www.misa.umn.edu/
New Sustainable Agriculture Web Site. The Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems Funders working group has launched a site to further their mission of fostering communication, shared learning and information exchange among funders about issues connected to sustainable agriculture and food systems. The site features funders profiles, upcoming event information and publications designed for those interested in sustainable agriculture and food systems issues. Visit http://www.safsf.org/
NACD Survey Reports Mixed. District employees are very optimistic about the potential for the new Conservation Security Program (CSP) to change the face of private lands conservation. But their experiences with the conservation programs rolled out since the 2002 Farm Bill was signed over 18 months ago, represent a mixed bag. In this NACD "Field Feedback" survey of about 120 employees and officials conducted October 28-31, 2004, the majority rated their experiences as "fair." In an effort to get more conservation on the land and make existing programs work more smoothly, most respondents would like to see additional technical help and increased program funding. http://nacdnet.org/special/survey/
New Publication: "Water on Tap: What You Need to Know." The EPA Office of Water has released "Water on Tap: What You Need to Know," an updated report for students, teachers, concerned citizens, water professionals, and anyone who is interested in drinking water issues. Hard copies can be obtained from the Office of Water Resources Center or by calling the Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 1-800-426-4791. For more information, please contact Harriet Hubbard at (202) 564-4621. http://www.epa.gov/safewater/wot/index.html
New Guide for CAFOs. On November 14, 2003, EPA issued guidance to help producers comply with the revised Clean Water Act regulations for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).The guide is now available electronically at http://cfpub1.epa.gov/npdes/afo/compliance.cfm. EPA will be printing the guide and making it available through its regional offices, state agricultural agencies and other sources. Copies will be available in December from the National Service Center for Environmental Publications at 800-490-9198 (for multiple copies) or from the Water Resources Center at 202-566-1729 (for single copies). For further information contact Nina Bonnelycke at 202- 564-0764 or via email at bonnelycke.nina@epa.gov.
New EPA Science Database. The EPA has established a new searchable database for more than 4,000 scientific studies and other research at an EPA Science Inventory website. The Scientific Inventory has been used internally by the EPA to coordinate, plan, and develop scientific work funded with EPA research funds. The site also documents which studies have undergone outside peer review, with information on the peer review process. Visit: http://www.epa.gov/si
Australian National EMS Training Kit Available. The Commonwealth has funded the development of an Environmental Management Systems (EMS) national training kit to increase the availability of EMS training for interested landholders and to ensure a nationally consistent approach to the development of EMS. The kit includes: An 102-page national course manual; Case study notes to provide examples that farmers can follow when developing their own EMS; a video titled, Australian farmers' experiences with EMS; A biodiversity resource guide, with up to date information on legislation, strategies and guidelines relating to biodiversity and the environment for all states and territories; a CD of visual presentation of course material including an eight module PowerPoint presentation series; and an instructor notes booklet for trainers and training providers of the Introduction to Environmental Management Systems in Agriculture course. For more information and to order, visit Australia's Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Program at: http://www.affa.gov.au/corporate_docs/publications/pdf/nrm/ems/ems_training_kit_flier.pdf
New Expanded FHEMP Directory Ready For Business. Farm and Home Environmental Management Programs has released its updated online database of people working in pollution prevention. The database includes Healthy Homes, the Water Quality Pollution Assessment And Prevention team, State and Regional Water Quality leaders, Environmental Management Systems project affiliates, and Farm*A*Syst and Home*A*Syst associates. The database is fully searchable, for example, by program, name, topic area and other subjects. Reports can be generated in either web or Word format. Visit us at: http://www1.uwex.edu/ces/farmasyst/directory/
CONFERENCES & MEETINGS
Water for a Sustainable and Secure Future, 4th National Conference on Science, Policy, and the Environment, January 29-30, 2004, sponsored by National Council for Science and the Environment, in Washington, DC. Contact Craig Schiffries, Conference Chair, NCSE, 1707 H St., NW, Ste 200, Washington, DC 20006; (202) 530-5810; conference@NCSEonline.org; http://www.NCSEonline.org
Agricultural Outlook Forum 2004, February 19-20, sponsored by USDA agencies, in Washington, DC; contact Raymond Bridge, Office of the Chief Economist, USDA, (202) 720-5447; rbridge@oce.usda.gov http://www.usda.gov/oce/waob/agforum.htm
First Global Conference on Animal Welfare, February 23-25, 2004, organized by World Organisation for Animal Health, in Paris, France; contact Antonio Petrini, animalwelfare-conference@oie.int http://animal-welfare.oie.int
Environmental Health Impacts of CAFOs: Anticipating Hazards, Searching for Solutions, March 29 (public event) and 30-31 (scientific workshop). Sponsored by University of Iowa Environmental Health Sciences Research Center, in Iowa City, IA; contact Michal Hampton, EHSRC, University of Iowa, 100 Oakdale Campus, #124 IREH, Iowa City, IA 52242; (319) 335-4418; michal-hampton@uiowa.edu www.ehsrc.org
Association of Natural Resource Extension Professionals (ANREP) Fourth National Conference. "Extension Outside the Box. Natural Resources Programming Across Landscapes." May 16 to 19, 2004 in Wheeling, WV. http://www.conted.vt.edu/extprof/
Best Education Practices For Water Outreach Professionals Symposium, June 3-4, 2004. Call For Papers, Deadline January 30, 2004. The University of Wisconsin - Environmental Resources Center invites educators and researchers from all regions of the United States to submit proposals for papers and posters to be presented at a June 2004 Symposium on Best Education Practices (beps) for water outreach and education. Proposal deadline is January 30, 2004. Submission and registration details are available on-line at http://www.uwex.edu/erc/waterbeps
MSWG EMS Workshop. "The 7th Annual Learning Together Workshop on Environmental Innovation & EMS: Shades of Green - exploring the range of proven and emerging environmental strategies to foster better environmental stewardship practices across diverse sectors in a challenging economy." To be held June 28-30, 2004, Charleston Marriott Hotel, Charleston, West Virginia. One-page abstracts are due January 14, 2004 to Dave Bassage, Office of Innovation, West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, 7012 MacCorkle Avenue, Charleston, WV 25304 or by e-mail to dbassage@wvdep.org or fax (304) 926-3637. Also visit, www.mswg.org
Riparian Ecosystems and Buffers: Multi-Scale Structure, Function, and Management, summer specialty conference of American Water Resources Association, to be held June 28-30, 2004, in Olympic Valley, CA. Paper submission deadline January 30, 2004. http://www.awra.org/meetings/Olympic2004/abstracts.html
"Working Together for Sustainable Land-use Systems," the First World Congress of Agroforestry, June 27 to July 2, 2004, Orlando, FL. This event has significant global importance with expected outputs helping to plan future strategies in agroforestry research, education, training, and development. Visit: http://conference.ifas.ufl.edu/WCA/
Agriculture as a Producer and Consumer of Energy Conference, sponsored by Farm Foundation and the USDA Office of Energy Policy and New Uses, will be held in Arlington, VA on June 24 to 25, 2004. The conference will examine farm energy use and production. A technology roadmapfor agricultural energy consumption and production will be developed, including barriers to technological advances, research needs, investment opportunities and economic (price) relationships. See http://www.farmfoundation.org
Soil and Water Conservation Society 2004 Annual Conference, July 24-28, 2004, in St. Paul, MN. Nancy Herselius, SWCS, 945 SW Ankeny Rd., Ankeny, IA 50021-9764; (515) 289-2331; nancy.herselius@swcs.org www.swcs.org/t_what_callforpapers04.htm
Sources for this newsletter include: "Alternative Agriculture News" from the Henry A. Wallace Center for Agricultural & Environmental Policy at Winrock International; "Agriculture And Natural Resources News" from the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service; "The Recharge Report" from the Groundwater Foundation; and "Wildlines Report" from the State Environmental Resource Center. Thank you!
