While we hesitate to hail any plan to increase state regulation as good news, the Washington Department of Ecology’s plan to overhaul how it regulates the storage and spreading of manure at dairies and other concentrated animal feeding operations has a silver lining for producers.

Currently, DOE issues pollution discharge permits to only a small number of CAFOs. The permits combine federal and state laws and apply only to pollutants discharged to surface water.

The department has proposed giving dairies that discharge to groundwater only the option of obtaining a permit based solely on state law. That’s good news. Because the permits are based on state laws they can’t be challenged in federal court, the preferred venue of the environmental lobby.

DOE has also proposed exempting dairies with fewer than 200 mature cows, an acknowledgment that small dairies would have faced financial hardships in complying with the new rules.

By the state’s estimation, the number of CAFO permits will increase as much as 20 fold — from about 10 today to as many as 200.

And it won’t be cheap. A permit would cost 50 cents per animal unit, an adult cow and calf, up to a maximum of $1,670 a year in 2017.

Ecology rejected a push by environmental groups to make dairies line manure lagoons with synthetic material and drill wells to monitor pollution in groundwater.

Ecology says its trying to balance protecting the environment and allow the dairy industry to prosper.

None of this sits well with Washington environmentalists, who claim state officials haven’t been tough enough on agriculture. They say they need to be able to sue in federal court to ensure accountability.

Please.

Washington farmers have an entirely different point of view about the severity of state regulation of agriculture. We find it unlikely that a state regulatory agency controlled by a governor who is actively vying to be the environmental conscience of the Pacific Northwest would go easy on polluters.

And even though producer groups are somewhat encouraged by what they know of the permitting scheme, they don’t expect it to come without additional bureaucratic hassles.

“We’re already regulated, and my concern is still the sheer volume of regulations this is going to add,” Jay Gordon, Washington State Dairy Federation policy director, said. “It is an addition to what we’ve already been doing.”

It’s always healthy to be wary of new regulation. While having environmentalists lining up against it isn’t enough to recommend the plan, it is the silver lining in a proposal that could have been much worse for producers.