CAFO SUNDAY!

In the Davidsen case, the concern is real when it comes to groundwater, said Fleming, who researched the case. There, Fleming said, the sandy and gravel-filled soil would allow manure used as fertilizer – often as liquid as water – to slip through easily. With the property at a higher elevation than Lake Wawasee, the manure would flow with water that drains off the farm, right into the lake.

Nitrate, a compound found naturally in trace amounts in many vegetables, can be harmful in high levels and is also found in animal and human feces. Ingesting high levels of the element was blamed for eight miscarriages by four LaGrange County women in the early 1990s. Three of the women lived near a hog farm which had been documented in 1989 as producing more than five times the nitrate allowed by federal guidelines.

Since Jan. 1, 2005, applications have been filed with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to build or expand four confined feeding operations (CFOs) and 17 concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to create new capacity for more than 100,000 sows, nursery pigs and finishing pigs in the three counties.

Fifteen of the 21 applications came from Jay County, four from Randolph County, and two from Wayne County.

The 21 applications in the three counties are the most in any year during the period 1996 through 2005, which is how far back The Star Press asked IDEM to search its database.Link.

Across the land, and now in Marshall County, squeals of protest are rising from rural neighbors saying stop hogging the land.

A neighbor who wished to remain anonymous has clear convictions why 8,000 pigs, and the waste they create, are too much for the neighborhood.

“The area they want to build, we think it’s too sandy a soil. It will go into the ground and it will get in our water system, but they have proven that property values go down 50% to 90%,” said the neighbor.

Marshall County commissioners say there will be some costs, but overall the farm will be a positive addition to the area.Link (WDNU)

Kathleen Neal, a stay-at-home mom who lives about a half-mile east of the site, is leading the grass-roots fight against the project. Since learning about the plans a month ago, she has held meetings in her home, organized a special meeting this past week with county commissioners, circulated hundreds of fliers, and scoured the Internet for information on the developers and CAFOs.

“We are scared,” Neal told the commissioners. “We don’t want to be against all economic development and all CAFOs, but they have to be in the right place and run by the right people.”

But as of now, commissioners have little authority over the operations, which are regulated by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Neal is lobbying the County Council to quickly pass an ordinance requiring any land use that needs IDEM approval to also obtain a special use permit from county officials.Link (Southbend Tribune)

He would especially like to mend fences with longtime friend Ken Carbiener, a farmer who was working with Neal to lead the opposition. Carbiener, whose family has farmed near the proposed site since the 1880s, was unavailable for comment Friday because he was in Fremont, talking to folks who lived near van der Vegt’s former operation.

Senate Bill 360 (Introduced Bill) which creates a water storage and quality task force; &

 

House Bill 1364 (Introduced Bill), a much more insidious piece of legislation aimed at prohibiting local water and air, and pollution control boards from passing rules or standards that are more stringent than corresponding federal provisions, basically gutting the power of these boards to address local issues.

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