More of The Same: CAFO’s in LaGrange and Wabash Counties
Bob Hedges of the Wall Lake Association gets good coverage in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette over the plan to put a 3,250 head mega-dairy in LaGrange County, just about a mile from Wall Lake and its aquifer: “Where this proposed dairy is is the absolute worst place in the county it could be situated,” he said. Link.
The story also covers an 8,000 head hog operation going in over in Wabash County, where local residents are worries about the impact on nearby Salamonie Reservoir and ultimately the Wabash River. This has some in the county looking for a moratorium on CAFO’s until tighter local regulations can be put into place, including the person who lives across the street from the proposed CAFO:
[Sharon] Adcock, a licensed animal rehabilitator, owns four baby cows and a horse, but she said they don’t create the same amount of pollution as 8,000 hogs.
“We accept farms,” she said. “Eight thousand hogs is not a farm. It’s a factory.”
Again, the focus of the opponents to CAFO’s in this circumstance is a role for local oversight of large scale animal farms. IDEM’s role is limited to the discharge of manure under the NPDES permitting process. Thereafter, IDEM has 15 inspectors across the state to look after the 2,200 confined feeding operations, plus all the land fills, junk yards and other industries with discharge permits. IDEM does not specifically monitor well water quality, nor does it have any role in air quality around CAFO’s.
