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After working with our Advisory group, we are pleased to announce that the next chapter for the Voluntary Clean Water Guidance for Agriculture is available for review: Livestock Management-Animal Confinement, Manure Handling & Storage. The guidance is a technical resource document for agricultural producers, and describes our recommended best management practices (BMPs) to protect water quality.
Our goal is to support healthy farms and help farmers meet clean water quality standards. We understand that each farm is unique and each producer is managing a differing set of site, soil, and climate factors. The vision for each chapter in this guidance is to help producers identify the BMPs and implementation strategies that best fit their farm’s needs.
We submitted the following four chapters to EPA for approval at the end of 2022, after public review. Read the following chapters online:
- Cropping Methods: Tillage & Residue Management
- Livestock Management — Pasture & Rangeland Grazing
- Sediment Control: Soil Stabilization & Sediment Capture (Structural)
- Riparian Areas & Surface Water Protection
We plan to complete all remaining chapters by the end of 2025, offering opportunities to provide feedback on the chapters along the way.
We welcome your feedback
We are accepting comments on the draft: Livestock Management-Animal Confinement, Manure Handling & Storage until June 23, 2023. Please use our online comment form for comments.
Informational Webinar
We are hosting an informational webinar where we will go over the chapter and our recommended BMPs. This chapter focuses on how farmers can help prevent negative impacts to water quality from animal confinement areas, manure management facilities and other high traffic areas used by livestock. This chapter focuses on BMPs to help prevent impacts to water quality from these types of areas and provides recommendations on where to locate, construction, and set-up of sacrifice and confinement areas. The goal is to prevent pollution from leaving the site by locating confinement areas, and waste storage facilities appropriately, diverting clean water around these areas and containing stormwater that is generated within these areas to prevent it from discharging to surface water.
When: June 14
Time: 9 a.m.
Please register using the Zoom link
You can access the materials and meeting information on our Voluntary Clean Water Guidance for Agriculture webpage.
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