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The Texas Institute for Applied Environmental Research (TIAER) at Tarleton State University 

 was created by the Texas Legislature to develop alternative environmental policies to benefit the 

 State of Texas and the entire nation. Since its inception, TIAER has expended considerable 

 resources analyzing alternative policies and institutional arrangements to assist agricultural 

 producers faced with increasing environmental compliance obligations. TIAER includes 

 interrelated programs in the environmental sciences, economics and public policy to help insure 

 that the alternative policies developed by the Institute are based on sound scientific and economic 

 data. As a result of its work in the Upper North Bosque River watershed in North Central 

 Texas, TIAER has developed detailed, watershed-based strategies for preventing and abating 

 agricultural nonpoint source pollution in watersheds across the country, and has incorporated 

 those strategies into proposed legislation for CWA reauthorization. The following material 

 summarizes those strategies and the rationale on which they are based. 



The Need for Alternative Policies for Agricultural Environmental Compliance 



Many agricultural operations are fundamentally different from the industrial point sources of 

 pollution for which prevailing environmental policies, institutions and compliance strategies were 

 developed. Although economies of scale tend to create increasingly larger operations in most 

 agricultural production sectors, the traditional "small farmer" still exists, and actually thrives, 

 in many parts of the country. The administrative law process that mushroomed in the wake of 

 legislation to control point source pollution is foreign to most agricultural producers. While big 

 industry created legal and engineering departments to deal with mounting environmental 

 regulation, most agricultural producers cannot afford that tack. As long as environmental 

 regulations and the administrative process underpinning those regulations remained predictable, 

 industrial and municipal point sources could internalize the costs of environmental compliance 

 and pass those costs on to the public as higher prices or tax increases. 



Concentrated livestock operations include both point and nonpoint sources of pollution within 

 a single facility. Animal confinement and processing areas are point sources subject to state and 

 United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) permitting processes. On the other hand, 

 many such livestock operations apply manure to crop or pasture land either to provide nutrients 

 for plant growth or simply as a waste disposal method. These manure application fields exhibit 

 the same nonpoint source pollution characteristics as agricultural fields not associated with 

 livestock production. Even relatively small livestock operations are now required to obtain point 

 source discharge permits in many states. For example, in Texas, the Texas Natural Resource 

 Conservation Commission (TKRCC) requires dairies with 250 milking head or more to obtain 

 a discharge permit through an administrative hearings process. Permit applications are often 

 contested, with legal and expert witness fees running as high as $100,000 for two weeks of 

 hearings. When producers attempt to represent themselves within the administrative law process 

 rather than paying for professional legal or engineering services, the time spent away from their 

 operations can produce serious consequences due to insufficient farm management. 



While row-crop farms are not categorized as point sources requiring a discharge permit, the 

 owners of such facilities share many of the same frustrations experienced by livestock producers 

 in dealing with existing regulatory institutions. Small agricultural producers have limited credit 



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