Big News: Mississippi CAFO Moratorium
From Joel Palmer’s Livestock & Ag Waste Intellegence, comes a story of a statewide moratorium on the issuance of NPDES permits for CAFO’s in the state. Joel says that a Mississippi resident brought what is basically a nuisance suit over the odor coming from a neighboring hog CAFO. As part of the suit, the allegation was made that the system of statutes and rules used by Mississippi to permit CAFO failed to adequately protect the air and water of the state.
Joel cites a story in the Clarion-Ledger about the disputing neighbors:
Two Oktibbeha County men who were childhood friends both believe a landowner should have the free use and enjoyment of his property. But for more than a decade, they’ve battled each other in court over how one of them chose in 1996 to use his land as an industrial hog farm.
It’s a dispute that has landed the pair before the state Supreme Court in a lawsuit mired in hog manure, money and misery. The suit challenges the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality Permit Board’s 2002 decision to approve permits for the 7,000-head hog farm.
The article notes an interesting, Mississippi angle to this story, of the 63 hog CAFO ’s in the state in 2002, 57 of them were built in majority African-American communities.
The action on the permit is still pending before the state’s high court, so it appears that the moratorium, if there really is one, has been self-imposed at the administrative level, putting 40 pending permits on hold.
