Office of the Chief Clerk, MC-105
TCEQ, P.O. Box 13087
Austin, Texas 78711-3087

I (your name), being a concerned citizen of Texas, would like to submit the following comments on TCEQ's proposed CAFO general permit TXG920000. The TCEQ's proposal of a statewide general permit offers an important opportunity to address some long-standing water quality pollution problems associated with CAFOs in Texas. The TCEQ should utilize this opportunity to draft a permit that will help solve some of the many pollution issues associated with CAFOs with a comprehensible, fair, and enforceable permit that will meet the needs of both industry and the environment. Unfortunately, as proposed, this general permit fails to incorporate the necessary measures to protect water quality in many Texas rivers and lakes from polluted runoff from CAFO waste lagoons and application fields.

My first concern with the proposed general permit involves the continued authorization of legal discharges of highly concentrated liquid waste from CAFO lagoons. The proposed permit (like the former permit) continues to allow discharges during chronic or catastrophic rainfall events.

The previous and currently proposed design capacities (25-year, 24-hour rain event) for CAFO permits are historically inadequate to contain the rainfall runoff in many areas of the state. The incorporation of a larger design capacity in the Bosque river watershed individual permits is a positive step toward addressing this problem, and should be applied to all areas of the state with similar rainfall averages (i.e. the Leon River watershed, which is adjacent to, and has very similar climatic conditions to the Bosque River.)

The second concern with the proposed permit is the continued allowance of waste application to fields saturated with nutrients, specifically phosphorous. The proposed permit allows virtually unlimited application of solid and liquid waste to fields in accordance with a nutrient management plan. Even on fields over 200 ppm phosphorous, waste application is still authorized with a detailed nutrient management plan. The permit fact sheet states "research in 1996 demonstrated that a concentration of about 200mg/kg phosphorous in surface soil is the critical level above which the concentration of phosphorous in runoff becomes environmentally significant." Indeed, application of waste above this level ceases to be beneficial agricultural use and becomes waste disposal. However, the permit states that "land application of wastes at agronomic rates shall not be considered surface disposal and is not prohibited," and that "precipitation-related runoff from irrigation areas is allowed." In effect, the proposed permit authorizes unlimited application of solid and liquid waste to fields and the discharges associated with over-application.
These permit conditions will result in the continued application of waste to fields already overloaded with nutrients that in turn will leach off-site into waters of the state, further degrading water quality. Again, this is especially true in the Leon River watershed, which is home to roughly the same number of CAFO facilities and head of cattle as the Bosque (and with many historical waste application fields). The permit should not allow under any circumstances application of waste to fields with greater than 200 ppm phosphorous.