IDEM Talk In Orange County

A new hog facility in Paoli is generating some conversation. Some will be by way of an official IDEM talk (standard format) tonight at the Orange County Community Building at 7PM, but in the meantime, the Times-Mail has nice coverage of the issue. THis includes some quotes from the local farmer putting in the 2,000 hog finishing operation, some distressed neighbors, and Rae Schnapp from the Hoosier Environmental Council:

“There is no credible oversight of the manure handling process,” she said. “Animal factories produce as much waste as a city, but nutrient (manure) management plans are viewed by IDEM as unenforceable guidelines only and there are no public records about where manure is dumped. So, it becomes difficult to document problems when they occur.”

Link. As well as someone from the Indiana Pork Producers:

Greg Slipher, as director of industry services and development for the Indiana Pork Producers Association, said Indiana, with support from Gov. Mitch Daniels, is trying to reestablish its once-prominent place in the pork industry.

Slipher reported IDEM-issued livestock permits were up 84 percent in August over the same time period from last year. Swine permits, specifically, were up 119 percent from last year.

Slipher suggested the impact of hog waste would be minimal as production increases. “If all the manure,” he said, “from approved livestock operations in Indiana was applied at an agronomic rate to all available cropland in Indiana, there would be only enough manure to fertilize 3.2 percent of our cropland.”

That is an interesting claim.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 2:48 pm and is filed under CAFO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.