I was told that several years before we bought our farm, the former owner put turkeys on the land that defoliated the whole place and polluted the local stream. The EPA came in, shut them down, and fined them. That works for me. Punish those that are rude, not the rest of us. There is however a balance. IMO, the new rules step way over that line. Good intentions are not enough. Do-gooders kill people every day. Sorry to be so snarky. But I get fired up by bad regulation. And this is bad regulation.
Isn't it interesting though that "farms" are supposed to be exempt from all EPA regulation? Yet another minor technicality in the law that is ignored. I lived near a moderately sized chicken growing operation in North Central Arkansas. The family farm was well run and managed, yet the EPA was there often testing for elevated nitrite and nitrate in the spring fed mountain stream that wound through both the chicken, and my properties. One visit, the nitrates were elevated and a $25,000 fine levied on the farm, but it was my downstream neighbor that had bought the liquefied poo and sprayed his hay fields, along with elevating the nitrates. Oddly, the farm did nothing wrong, and could not appeal (EPA regulation forbids that). The spraying of the poo made the area stink like crazy for a couple day, but it dissipated, his fields looked amazing and produced more than ever, plus the "polluted" stream began supporting more fish than I'd seen in my 6 years there.
