Meat and poultry processing plants would reduce their emissions of water pollutants, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, by 100 million pounds annually under proposed wastewater rules, said the Environmental Protection Agency. It would be the first update of effluent limitation guidelines in a generation.
The guidelines are intended to represent the greatest pollutant reductions that are economically achievable for an industry using proven technology. The EPA said it would accept public comment on the proposed regulations following publication in the Federal Register.
Under a court agreement, the EPA is obliged to publish its final version of the standards by Augusts 202, said environmental law firm Earthustice. It sued the EPA during the Trump era when the agency decided against an update of the regulations. The new regulations would apply to a minority of the meat and poultry plants in the country because most of them send their wastewater to public sewage treatment plants rather than discharging the water directly into rivers and streams.