One of the most significant shortcomings of the Illinois law regulating factory-sized livestock farms is its near total reliance on the state Department of Agriculture.

Agriculture is no more prepared to oversee Illinois' burgeoning corporate livestock industry than a steer is to birth calves. The department is too closely tied to the agriculture industry to regulate it effectively, and it lacks the technical expertise, or even the authority, to monitor the environmental concerns.

The job properly belongs in the hands of the Environmental Protection Agency. It houses the state's experts in protecting against groundwater contamination or air pollution and is responsible for preventing problems as well as correcting them. Moreover, it does not suffer the conflicts inherent to the Department of Agriculture, whose job it is to help sell the state's farm products around the world. Cheap, factory-oriented production makes that job easier. Nor does the EPA director's brother operate a mega-hog farm, as does the brother of ag director Becky Doyle, who comes from a farming family. Agriculture directors generally do.

Unfortunately, the Livestock Management Facilities Act gives little responsibility to the EPA. In fact. it appears to put roadblocks in the agency's way. For example, the act establishes an advisory committee of the directors of the departments of agriculture, EPA, public health and natural resources to review and evaluate the law's effectiveness. But the recommendations from the panel are given to its chairman, the Agriculture Department director, before they can be forwarded to the Pollution Control Board.

Moreover, the act limits the EPA to receiving groundwater complaints and then notifying the Department of Agriculture about them. The agency isn't specifically authorized to inspect construction of waste lagoons, analyze how much manure to spread over farm fields, review plans to dispose of animal waste or oversee closure of lagoons. All of these duties are left to the Agriculture Department. There, even director Doyle suggests her department doesn't have the resources to enforce a more stringent mega-livestock farm law.

So what difference does it make which hand of the state protects people and water from damage by hog sewage?

Plenty.

Just recently the EPA, using its powers under the Environmental Protection Act, checked out a Greene County factory farm under construction and found three substantial problems. A few weeks later Department of Ag inspectors toured the same farm and found no violations. Who was right? It's not clear. What's clear is that the EPA lacks authority to do anything about its findings.

This makes no sense. Nor does it make sense for the Department of Agriculture to be responsible for making sure that factory farms don't pollute, while leaving the EPA, under powers granted by the Environmental Protection Act, to clean up the pollution it wasn't permitted to prevent.

So it shouldn't be surprising that Illinois' approach is unique. All other major pork-producing states put their environmental agencies in charge of regulating the safety of water and air from factory farms.

Illinois should, too. When lawmakers reconvene this fall, one of their first tasks should be to relieve the Department of Agriculture of its oversight of factory livestock farms and give those responsibilities to the EPA.