EPA Brings Closure to 20-Year-Old Air Compliance Agreement Affecting Thousands of American Farms
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in Washington on October 30 that it will not develop emissions estimates as part of the 2005 Animal Feeding Operations Consent Agreement and Final Order, known as the 2005 Air Compliance Agreement, and that its enforcement office will work to end obligations under that agreement. Together, the actions bring closure to an agreement that has left thousands of American farmers without clear answers for more than two decades, the agency said.
In 2005, following a National Academy of Sciences report calling for better ways to estimate air emissions from animal feeding operations (AFOs), EPA offered livestock and poultry farms that raise animals in confinement the chance to sign a voluntary agreement and take part in the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study (NAEMS), whose goal was to develop methodologies farms could use to estimate their emissions. In the two decades since, many participating farms have changed hands, closed, or modernized their barns and manure systems, while farmers raising hogs, broiler chickens, egg-laying hens, and dairy cows waited without knowing what permitting or reporting obligations might follow.
After evaluating the NAEMS data collected from 2005 to 2007, EPA concluded the data are too old and too limited to support reliable methods, reflecting barn designs, herd sizes, and manure practices that no longer represent how many farms operate today. As a result, EPA will not finalize the methodologies under the agreement. Today's actions do not change EPA's implementation of the Clean Air Act or its commitment to clean air for all Americans, the agency said.
"Good science requires good data, and these data are too old and too limited to support methods that farms could rely on," said EPA Acting Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation Abigale Tardif. "We would rather tell farmers that plainly than issue numbers we cannot stand behind."
EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Jeffrey Hall said farmers had lived for two decades under the threat that EPA could issue a new emissions framework treating farms like major industrial facilities, and that the action advances the rule of law by resolving the long-obsolete obligations. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Alexander Vaden said the uncertainty for farmers ends today.
EPA will work to notify the approximately 2,600 AFOs subject to the agreement and then terminate it. About 2,600 AFOs, representing nearly 14,000 farms, joined the 2005 agreement. EPA released updated draft methodologies for public comment in November 2024; after the comment period closed in August 2025, the agency identified key limitations in the representativeness and age of the data that could not be resolved. EPA said it will continue to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, land-grant universities, and producers on practical, science-based ways to understand and reduce air emissions from farms.
Source: GSM · USA
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：美国环保署总部威廉·杰斐逊·克林顿联邦大楼（素材库 federal-core 固定图）。Moreau1 摄，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / The William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building, headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (GSM asset library, federal-core pack). Photo by Moreau1, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
