The Pal-Item posts this nice update on Indiana’s legislative efforts:

Bills discussed in a Senate committee meeting Monday:

431: Increases fees for confined feeding operations; requires notifications to people living within one mile of the proposed manure storage facility, etc.

447, authored by Sen. Allen Paul (R-Richmond): Establishes a three-year moratorium on the start of construction for confined animal feeding operations.

570: Provides that local ordinances adopted after May 15, 2007, regulating confined feeding operations may not exceed requirements of confined feeding control statutes and rules.

The bill sponsored by Rep. Phil Pflum (D-Milton) and Rep. Tom Saunders (R-Lewisville) that would put restrictions on where large farms can be built has been referred to the House Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.

Conveniently, just when the trouble starts, the company is able to prove to the EPA that it does not own the diary anymore:

On Jan. 4, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 announced it had issued an administrative order to comply with a state-issued discharge permit to Vreba-Hoff Dairy Development,  Wauseon, Ohio, and De Jong Dairy LLC, Fremont, Ind.   Vreba-Hoff has since provided documents to EPA demonstrating that it has transferred ownership of the dairy.  EPA has sent a letter to Vreba-Hoff notifying the company that it is not responsible for complying with the EPA order.  Dairy operator Simon De Jong has told EPA that he intends to comply with the order.

I don’t know what is more troubling here: The fact that a major company was able to shift responsibility for an allegedly polluting dairy off to some dude, or the fact that the regulators are so clueless as to who is in charge of such a major operation that it takes them over 25 days after a public announcement to figure out that someone else is responsible.

Marty over at the the Big Eastern has an article up about Code 32-30-6-9, Indiana’s nuisance statute. Marty notes the 2005 alteration to provide protection for farm operators who take farm property and put in a CAFO. The 2005 amendments effectively say that installing a CAFO in not a significant change, and the neighbors to the CAFO will not be permitted to bring suit. Marty’s take:

I’m not opposed to ‘right-to-farm’ legislation that doesn’t unduly erode common law property rights. The concept that one can’t complain when one moves to a nuisance has long been recognized. Therefore codifying that concept to protect farmers engaged in conventional agriculture from nuisance lawsuits is reasonable. However, the 2005 change went beyond that, granting to CAFO operations an easement to damage their neighbors property. No reasonable person could honestly say a CAFO isn’t a significant change from a bean field in terms of its impact on neighboring properties.

Marty also has an update on legislative activities surrounding the CAFO issue.

CAFO’s seem to be coming to the forefront of discussion, at least is has made the mainstream blogs: hBig  Factory Pig Farms are Some of America’s Wortse Polluters on boingboing.

There are several bills bubbling up in the Indiana legislature this winter, as several of the commenters to this blog have noted. They run the gamut from CAFO moratoriums to additional limits on local counties regulating factory farms. The Pal-Item has an article up today about some of them:

Three wide-ranging bills targeting the state’s largest livestock farms are expected to draw spirited testimony Monday from supporters and opponents when they go before a Senate panel.
Sen. Beverly Gard, who chairs the Senate’s environmental affairs committee, is sponsoring the most sweeping of the bills — one that would significantly increase permit fees for new livestock farms to help the state hire more inspectors to monitor the farms for violations.

Link.

Well, on Sunday, the Pal-Item ran a letter in opposition to the recent call for a CAFO moratorium in Indiana. Local clean water advocate Barbara Cox has put together her own letter on why the moratorium deserves serious consideration. As the hearing on the bill is coming up, and the Pal-Item might not get to Ms. Cox’s letter, I will share it here.

The bill referenced is Senate Bill 447, proposed by Senator Paul:

In this Legislation Session there will be the opportunity to place a moratorium on the building of CAFOS (confined feeding animal operations). The question is why. Here are the reasons we desperately need a moratorium in Indiana.

First, Indiana does not have a financial assurance package. Without having the package, any operator who either decides to quit or fails due to financial difficulties can walk away and leave millions of gallons of manure for the State to clean up. Who pays for this? We the taxpayers. Many of the CAFOs are owned or contacted by large corporations from out of state. If they want to do business in Indiana, they should be willing to put up a bond for cleanup.

The second concern is for the health of the residents who are forced to live next to them. In Indiana there is not even an air monitor for monitoring the air around CAFOs even though the facts have been studied and the emissions contain hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. In fact, last year five people living near a CAFO were ill and IDEM did not have a monitor for agricultural use. If you are living near a CAFO you are on your own to protect your health.

Third, our waters in Indiana are impaired with e-coli, certainly not all the pollution is caused by CAFO, but until we have deeper setbacks from waterways when spreading manure, we can expect to see more pollution.

Fourth, the operators who haul and spread the manure are not required to have any training or license. All septic waste haulers must be licensed, yet you can haul thousands of gallons of manure contaminated with cleaning solutions and medicines with out a license? My vehicle was sprayed with manure on a state highway last summer and I know others who have had the same disgusting experience.

We need deeper setbacks from all residences. It is a sad fact that farmers have worked their whole lives to build assets in a farm and home only to see it devalue because a CAFO moved in next door.

In Indiana, there has been a push to double the pork production. What they did not do was have the proper regulations in place before starting the program. This is why we must have a moratorium to stop, study, and regulate before allowing any more to build. North Carolina has a moratorium and some other States have good regulations. It seems the citizens of Indiana deserve better than what we are seeing happen now. INDIANA NEEDS A MORATORIUM ON CONSTRUCTION OF NEW CAFOS.

Barbara Sha Cox

P.O. Box 1572

Richmond, Indiana 47375

As soon as the Indiana Department of Education released its reconfigured graduation rate for Richmond Community Schools at about 50%, the agenda for the school system has been clear:

1. Dispute the accuracy of the figures;
2. Call on community support and involvement (it’s not me, it’s you);
3. Find some deck chairs; and
4. Rearrange them.

Well, we seem to have found something to do: RCS leader to offer grade reconfiguration. Don’t get me wrong, this might very well be a great proposal for the school. The school board will meet tonight to hear about it from Superintended Bourff, as well as the upcoming switch to trimesters in the high school (an idea that predates the graduation rate release).

In fact, the reconfiguration might qualify as a “great” idea. The problem is not that the school system has not had “great” ideas to get it moving forward. In fact, the school has had an endless series of “great” ideas washing over it.  Nothing was wrong with any of these “great” ideas, but as any veteran teacher will tell you: this year’s great idea will be forgotten in the rush to next year’s great idea (so, don’t waste your time going to that meeting).

The school has experimented with all the trendy curricula, structures, visions, etc. Most of them were well conceived and had the distinction of working in other places, with other people. Each great idea was carefully implemented through meetings and study. Each of them was left collecting dust on the shelf when someone came in with their own new idea to try.

My diagnosis is that the system suffers from an abundance of vision, without enough long range responsibility. I think the responsibility for this falls on the board who are quick to rely on the experts in education in adopting change.

A reader brought my attention to an update on and issue I had been following in La Porte County. 2 8,000 hog CAFO’s were up in front of the BZA for special exceptions, and last week the BZA turned them down:

N & L Pork had received approval for the facilities from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), but its petition to the county zoning board was postponed twice in 2006, in September and October, before finally being denied Tuesday. N & L attorney Bob Welsh said the zoning board was legally obligated by IDEM to judge the case by rules that were in place when the application was first filed. His concern, he said, was that the board postponed earlier hearings in order to put into place regulations to block the CAFOs. But according to attorney Steve Snyder, who represented several residents opposed to the CAFOs, the petition could still be denied if it endangered public health, safety or welfare, which the zoning board eventually decided it did.

Link. (Herald-Argus).

The appeal on the permits issued by IDEM for those CAFO’s is still pending, and it sounds like the CAFO operator will not give up his fight just yet. Head over to the linked article and catch the lively discussion on CAFO’s in the comments to the article.

Speaking of discussion, this Sunday the Pal-Item posted an opinion piece from a farmer, Joe Meyer. Mr. Meyer toes the industry line on CAFO: minimal impact, future of farming depends on them, great technologies make pig poop A-okay . . . :

Universities, seed researchers and agricultural entrepreneurs are working diligently to reduce the objectionable aspects of animal production, which are mainly manure application and odors. Imposing moratoriums on new animal facilities will jeopardize these efforts to make livestock production more environmentally compatible. As older farmers retire and those remaining are prohibited to expand by CAFOs, who then will produce our milk, meat and eggs? South America stands ready to expand if we here in the U.S. falter. Do we want to be dependent on a foreign country to supply us with these staples of our food?

I would like to see Mr. Meyers understand that we are already dependent on foreign countries to supply us with staple foods: oil producing countries. Without oil there is no diesel for the tractors, trucks, trains and boats that make modern food production work, nor are  there many of the fertilizers, herbicide or pesticides that go into the process. 

No news is news today in Randolph County, at least for the Pal-Item. The paper continues to track Randolph County’s efforts to decide the fate of the run down courthouse that many had given up on:

Commissioners once had favored tearing down the 130-year-old building and possibly moving county employees into a former Wal-Mart store, but reversed that decision last spring under opposition highlighted by a seminude calendar featuring female members of a local bridge club.

Link.

I do not think that this story would have gotten nearly the press it has if it was not for those naked ladies.

A listening session to gather feedback on the Indiana Land Resources Council’s proposed county CAFO regulations gathered some negative responses according to the Pal-Item’s front page Sunday story:

“If you think it’s fun to live there, just come out and see how fun it is,” said Corvin Coats, a Randolph County retired farmer. “You need five miles to be safe from air pollution.”

Richmond resident Barbara Cox told the ILRC its setbacks are “way off. You can’t start at 600 feet,” said Cox, whose has traveled statewide to help opponents fight CAFOs.

Link.

Well, as expected, the 8,000 hog CAFO was approved last Thursday by the Wayne County zoning board. The ordinance in Wayne County does not give the board much of a role to play.

It’s depressing, but it is coming. The parcel is in a agricultural area, but it is also near an area that has been pretty built up with residential lots: The area around Pottershop and Philomath Roads, for you locals. It will be interesting to see if there is any local political fallout from the county’s inability to control this type of growth.

In statewide news, Indiana’s hog numbers went up 2% last year , but some area lawmakers are pushing back on the Governor’s long-term pork plans:

In the Senate, Allen Paul (R-Richmond) has introduced a bill that would put a three-year moratorium on building any new CAFOs in the state. “We’re going to have to do something to give locals a chance to negotiate with the owners (of CAFOs),” Paul said

Public hearings are set this month on model rules for local regulation of large livestock farms says the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. The Indiana Land Resources Council hopes to craft ordinances for local officials to consider for regulating CAFO’s:

The public hearings are set for:

•Wednesday, 7 p.m., at the Hamilton County Fairgrounds in Noblesville

•Thursday, 7 p.m., at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds in Goshen

•Jan. 22, 7 p.m., at Scottsburg High School

I admit, I was too discouraged to follow-up with a post on the recent entry of a hog CAFO in my home county. I decided to catch up on my links today because I read Jean Harper’s recent post: The Pig Equation:

I have a new theory about the relative economic, social, and educational wellbeing of any given community.  This wellbeing can be calculated in direct inverse proportion to the number of CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) in or proposed to be in any given community. That is: the worse off you are, the more CAFOs you will find.  The CAFOs are not the cause — necessarily — of decline; they are, moreso, the symptom.

A good writer can inspire.

When? The hearing before the Wayne County BZA is tonight at 6:00PM. Wayne County’s regulation require a CAFO to get BZA approval before going forward:

The Wayne County Board of Zoning Appeals will consider whether to approve allowing a large hog operation in southern Wayne County at its monthly meeting at 6 p.m. today.The proposal for the hog farm includes two buildings that could each hold up to 4,000 hogs and would be located at 8198 Union County Line Road near Willow Grove Road. Manure storage tanks would be underground.

Link (Pal-Item).

The article doesn’t say who is requesting approval to install the hog operation. The parcel identified in the article is a 76 acre parcel that used to be owned (and may still be owned) by Linn & Dorothy Snyder of Greensfork, Indiana. Nice looking creeks on this parcel:

Newspapers have done a pretty good job of ignoring the impact of the web as the web has come to play a bigger and bigger role in people’s lives. Print media keeps a steady drumbeat of criticizing blogs, mixed in with sudden spurts of online activity. The Pal-item creates blogs and a “community forum,” then scraps them, then relaunches them.

Frequently, the local Gannett papers seem to decide that they need to be doing something online and throw up a site completely ignoring the local online community that has already been in place. The problem with this is that, although the papers have plenty of advertising power for their online sites, by ignoring existing online efforts they alienate the very folks who would be most likely on get online and make use of their site: those folks already online.

For a flavor of what I am talking about, head over to the Muncie Free Press and check out this editorial by Kpaul

A new ordinance in Orland, Indiana restricts CAFO’s within 10 miles from the town’s jurisdiction. The first issue is whether this will apply across the county line over in LaGrange County where plans are underway to build a 3,360 head dairy CAFO:

The town’s attorney, Kevin Bruns, told council members he’s concerned they don’t have the ability to enforce a town ordinance across county lines. If approved, the Toll Tail Dairy will be only about two miles from Orland, but it will be built in LaGrange County. Orland is in Steuben County.

“It was not that they should or should not pass an ordinance, but they need to be aware that I have questions of being able to enforce it,” he said.

Bruns said while he didn’t know of any towns or cities in the state that have passed similar ordinances against confined feeding operations, LaGrange County had considered a similar ordinance about 10 years ago but never adopted it.

Bob Hedges, a member of the citizen action group who created the ordinance, lives less than two miles from the proposed dairy site. He said the group believes the regulations would stand in court. Hedges lives on Wall Lake and is president of the Wall Lake Association, which represents about 90 year-round and 75 seasonal residents at the lake.

Link (Fort Wayne Journal Gazette).

LaPorte County is facing its own CAFO issues. 3 days after the federal EPA notes the runoff from CAFO’s typically has dangerous contaminates, the owner of a CAFo calls fears of contamination unfounded.

N & L Pork obtained approval last year from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), but still needs approval from LaPorte County. The zoning appeals board will consider the special exception at 7 p.m. Jan. 16 at the LaPorte County Complex. A handful of homes are within one mile of the sites. Residents are against the CAFOs because they claim the proposed sites fall within a flood plain, would be within one mile of the Kankakee River, and emit an offensive odor. They also fear the possibility of improper operation of the facilities. Kenneth Czarnecki represents the fifth generation of his family that has lived on the Walkerton property, and he doesn’t want to move due to an operation that will permanently employ only several people and provide little tax revenue for the county.

Link. (Herald-Argus).

The article quotes the LaPorte County environmental Health Supervisor, Tony Mancuso saying that his department would not inspect CAFO’s unless a complaint is made.

That’s right folks. Just as we had got comfortable with the idea that the Indiana Legislature was safely back in its box on the shelf, back they come.

So if you got out of the habit of check Doug Masson’s feed on a daily basis, it’s time to load it up. I’d offer commentary as this proposed bill is in my field of interest, but I think Doug has it covered:

SB 173 - Nuisance actions. Sen Jackman:
Requires a court to award reasonable costs and attorney’s fees to an agricultural or industrial operation that successfully defends a nuisance action.

This looks like a follow up to Sen Jackman’s bill a couple of years ago that immunized agricultural operations when they changed from smaller part-time affairs to bigger full-time affairs, defining that not to be a “significant change.”

Under the new law, I suppose, if a neighbor were to file a nuisance suit against an agricultural operation which had been in continuous operation for more than a year but then switched owners and switched to a major confined feeding operation and then the neighbor lost because of the immunity conferred by Sen. Jackman’s prior legislation, then the neighbor would have to pay the attorney’s fees of the confined feeding operation. Nice.

Link.

At the state level, folks are fond of saying that CAFO’s do not discharge wastes. Meaning that the manure is completely contained. Neighbors will tell you “yeah, right,” but Ag officials, community leaders and IDEM inspectors seem satisfied with the zero discharge myth.

So what do we say about this press release issued today from the Federal EPA:

(CHICAGO - Jan. 5, 2007) - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 has ordered Vreba-Hoff Dairy Development LLC Wauseon, Ohio, and De Jong Dairy LLC Fremont, Ind. to stop all unauthorized discharges and meet all the requirements of the dairy’s state-issued discharge permit. De Jong Dairy is a large concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) with approximately 900 mature dairy cows. The dairy has submitted an application to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for a construction permit to expand the operation to 1,800 cows.

The dairy is required to install and maintain markers on all manure and wastewater storage structures, at all times maintain a minimum of two feet between the stored manure and the top of storage structures, conduct weekly inspections of waste storage structures to see whether they are in good working order, keep records and report to permitting agencies, submit plans that demonstrate that the dairy has enough storage to prevent discharge, perform best management practices, and develop and implement a nutrient management plan.

The facility is owned by Vreba-Hoff Dairy Development and leased by the De Jong dairy. Storm water run-off discharged from CAFOs typically contains very high levels of nutrients and pathogens that can pose a threat to public health and harm aquatic life. The Clean Water Act requires CAFOs to comply with their permits.

EPA News.

So, the federal government is telling us that storm water run-off from CAFO’s poses a threat to public health. Why aren’t Indiana’s county health departments passing regulations to protect the public from this “known” threat?

Delaware County real estate appraiser Gary Alexander, an outspoken critic of CAFO’s and the proposed Ag Bio Vision Park, was just appointed to the county planning commission:

Alexander’s goal as a plan commission member is to “listen to people and make sure when we make zoning-change recommendations that we take into account how it’s going to impact the area positively or negatively as far as property values and quality of life.”

Link. (Muncie Star Press).

Not everyone is happy. Republican county commissioner Tom Bennington called Alexander’s appointment to be politically biased. Bennington served on the committee last year that steered the county away from passing a local CAFO ordinance, determining that state level control was sufficient.

Take 1 cautious BZA, add it a chicken turned cattle CAFO, 300 local concerned residents, and members of the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department for good measure and you get: compromise. The CAFO was approved but conditions were installed.

What conditions? 10,000 maximum population, manure stored under a roof, incorporation within 48 hours of spreading, liquid manure composed with dry waste, dust control, a screen, impermeable barrier under the cattle, 3 monitoring wells and fly control. Interestingly, one additional condition was for the owner to obtain a permit from IDEM.

Link. (Kankakee Valley Post News). THis should please all, no? Let’s see what Karen has to say.

The ability of the “organic” market to generate profits continues to drive standards of production. At least one major producer of organic meats wants to be sure consumers don’t think they will be getting cloned organic meats:

The nation’s largest organic cooperative wants the U.S. Department of Agriculture to clarify the use of products from cloned animals. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a preliminary approval for the use of meat and dairy products from cloned animals in the human food supply. Organic Valley CEO, George Siemon wants to know if that includes the organic food supply. Siemon says he assumes it does not, given the fact that national organic standards do not allow the use of products from genetically modified organisms, but he wants a clear statement from USDA.

Siemon also states that no matter what the Ag Department says, “Consumers can be assured that Organic Valley and its meat brand, Organic Prairie, will never allow the use of cloned animals on our farms and in our products.”

Founded in 1988, Organic Valley has 922 member farms in 27 states and one Canadian province. The cooperative had sales of over $320 million in 2006.

Link. (Bob Meyer in Brownfield Ag News).

Yesterday, I mentioned that the newly calculated graduation rate for Richmond Community Schools was up at the state government site, and the posted rate was just over 50%. Today this stunning statistic gets play in the Pal-Item, as expected.

What I did not expect was that the paper would get a comment from the school superintendent, Allen Bourff. He told the paper that:

1. The graduation rate was “intolerable.”
2. He hopes to enlist the entire community to support improving it. and
3. “What we’ve been doing is checking those figures for accuracy.”

I wonder how much time they will be spending on checking the figure versus trying to improve the rate. What is amazing to me about this reaction by the superintendent is that these numbers on the graduation rate are not new: The state did not come up with a new way of tracking kids through the system, the came up with a new formula for calculating the graduation rate.

The data used to derive the graduation rate is the same old data the school has been turning into the state for years. Only the formula used to  report the graduation rate to the public has been altered.

The truth here is that the school, including Mr. Bourff, has known for years what the actual success rate was for the system. They would talk about it in hushed tones, and never acknowledge it in public, but they knew it. Why keep it secret? Well, the stated reason was for economic development.

That’s right, there could be no public acknowledgement that the school system was failing because it would scare potential employers away from the community. This is the same reason the adult literacy rate for the local community was buried as well: Who wants to set up a factory or office park or even a warehouse in a town where only a third of the adults can even read the local newspaper and the school can only manage to graduate about 1 out of every 2 kids?

So if the numbers are not new, what is Mr. Bourff reacting to? It’s called public accountability.