La Porte County Update: BZA Says No
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.
January 24th, 2007 08:51
Agreed that Mr. Meyer may be a little over the top in his evaluation, but the opposition to corporate farming tends to carry to the extreme also on occasion.
Middle ground is hard to come by in such cases.