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Air district rule doesn't attack ammonia from dairies
| Sunday, Mar 12 2006 11:30 PM
Last Updated: Sunday, Mar 12 2006 11:34 PM
The valley's existing dairies aren't being regulated for ammonia emissions.
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Dairy cows produced 219 tons of ammonia each day in the San Joaquin Valley in 2005, more than all other sources combined, according to the valley air district. Ammonia reacts with nitrogen oxides to form fine particles, which university researchers have repeatedly linked to premature deaths.
Even so, ammonia is not being targeted by a rule released recently by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. The rule is aimed at ozone, and it attempts to change dairy practices to reduce ozone-forming volatile organic compounds.
The district would go after ammonia if it would improve air quality, said Dave Warner, director of permit services for the air district.
When manure and urine mix, ammonia results. The compound is a fact of life on a dairy, and it's so widespread that trying to control it doesn't have much impact, Warner said. Regulators would have to cut ammonia emissions by 50 percent in order to make a 10 percent dent in the resulting fine particle pollution, according to the district.
Instead, the district goes after nitrogen oxides -- the other side of ammonia's fine particle equation -- which come from power plants, engines and other combustion sources. The valley's nitrogen oxides emissions have dropped by 30 percent since 1975, according to state air data.
"There is so much ammonia in our air that removing some of it doesn't do much to the dynamics of the chemistry of our valley," Warner said. "If you take (nitrogen oxides) out of the equation you start reducing the amount of particulate that forms."
The district does require ammonia controls on new dairies, Warner said.
Environmentalists aren't swayed by the district's reasoning.
"The law now says (regulators) have to control everything period," said Brent Newell, attorney with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment.
That law is known as SB 700, which was shepherded through the Legislature by state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter. It was written to include ammonia as one of its target pollutants, according to Florez's staff in Sacramento.
Dairymen aren't wild about the idea of more rules, but John Dunlap III, who lobbies for dairy industry groups, said he'd rather know now if dairymen should expect ammonia regulations in the next few years.
"It's disingenuous to develop a control scheme today and three, four, five years later to come back with something different that's going to be costly," he said.
Dunlap also represents a company trying to market ammonia-cutting technology to dairies.
The proposed rule isn't yet final, and the district is holding two public workshops this week to discuss it. The rule would let dairymen and other animal feedlot operators choose from a menu of pollution-controlling options, from housing animals in emissions-capturing buildings to changing the way manure is collected and stored.
If it's approved, the rule would apply to the valley's large animal feeding operations -- 233 dairies, six beef feedlots, five cattle operations, and a few pig farms. Its controls would cut their smog-forming emissions by more than 20 percent, said the district's George Heinen, who worked on the rule.
The district must adopt the rule by July 1, according to state law.
The law is purposely flexible, Heinen said, because scientists are still trying to figure out if most dairy emissions come from cow digestion, animal feed or elsewhere.