Committee hears bill to require methane reporting from dairies and feedlots; industry and scientists urge caution

House Bill 16-30, a proposal to require annual reporting of methane emissions from dairies and feedlots to the Washington Department of Ecology, drew a mix of support and concern at a committee hearing.

Matt Sterling, staff to the committee, explained the bill’s intent and the statutory context. "Under state law, greenhouse gas reporting is regulated by ecology under the state Clean Air Act," Sterling said, and he summarized that Ecology currently collects GHG reports from large facilities and may charge a fee for reporting.

The bill would require owners and operators of Washington dairies and feedlots to submit an annual methane report to Ecology. Representative Partially, the bill’s prime sponsor, said she brought the measure because "we need to start with data," stressing that monitoring would rely on established algorithms and not on direct sensors attached to animals. She said monitoring could show whether the dairy sector is a material portion of state emissions and noted that management practices vary across farms.

Industry witnesses urged delay or more study. Jay Gordon, policy director for the Washington State Dairy Federation, told the committee Washington has about 1.1 million head of cattle today versus a peak of about 1.5 million in 1984 and said the dairy sector already pursues numerous emission-reduction actions driven by market demand. Jack Field of the Washington Cattle Feeders Association said feedlots and dairies help reuse food byproducts that otherwise would go to landfills and cautioned against unintended consequences from reporting requirements.

Researchers and technical witnesses emphasized measurement uncertainty. Brent Auverman, an agricultural engineer, and Galen Erickson, a ruminant nutrition specialist, described gaps in available data and the regional variability of emissions. Auverman cautioned that methods used in some reporting algorithms are derived from studies that may not scale to U.S. production systems; Erickson said feed, animal size and management can change emissions markedly and predicted substantial mitigation technology advances in coming years.

Joel Creswell, climate pollution reduction program manager at the Department of Ecology, provided technical detail on implementation. Creswell said Ecology’s current methods estimate methane from manure management and from feedlot surfaces but do not measure enteric fermentation (the methane produced directly in an animal’s gut). Ecology would need to adopt new methods during rulemaking to capture enteric emissions, he said, and Ecology would charge reporters an operating fee. Creswell told the committee Ecology currently identifies 10 licensed certified feedlots and 257 dairies that would be in scope and noted the program’s reporting fees: $429 per year for basic reporters and $2,269 per year for entities requiring third‑party verification.

Committee members also raised fiscal and equity concerns. Representative Dye cited a fiscal note estimate of more than $3,000,000 in fees associated with the bill and asked who would pay; Creswell said fees are assessed to entities required to report. Representatives from the Farm Bureau and individual dairy operators described highly variable on‑farm practices (feedstocks, manure handling, composting or worm‑bed systems) and warned a single statewide reporting approach could be inequitable without accounting for those differences.

The committee recessed the hearing after testimony; no floor or committee vote on HB 16-30 was recorded at this meeting. Staff and witnesses indicated multiple technical questions (which emissions categories are included, whether enteric versus manure management emissions would be reported, and how sequestration or offsets on a particular farm would be counted) will be resolved in rulemaking if the bill advances.

The hearing record includes requests from industry for state-funded measurement or pilot programs, and several members suggested stakeholder work to align any reporting approach with existing industry data and market-driven mitigation efforts.