Union County Dairy Reaction

The Pal-Item’s Pam Tharp has coverage of a community meeting held yesterday in Union County. The group heard from clean water advocate Barbara Sha Cox, and expressed their concerns about the announcement of the dairy CAFO going in in the northern part of the county:

Most attending Thursday’s meeting live near the dairy proposed for Green Meadow Farms on U.S. 27 North, but the entire county’s at stake, said Patterson Road resident Brian Seals. “We’re very upset. We saw them drilling holes and heard rumors the property was for sale,” Seals said. “Greed has taken over.”

Clifton Road resident Lora Snyder said the manure from the big dairy could be spread anywhere in the county, not just on the north side of the county. Resident Tom Carr had a county hydrology map that showed the county doesn’t have an abundant water supply. Dairy cows require a lot of water for drinking and for washing milking equipment. Some residents are worried about the dairy’s impact on their wells.</P.

Union County resident Krista Carr, who is the Lewisville postmistress, said the Henry County megadairy located a mile from the post office doesn’t go unnoticed. “Besides the smell, you wouldn’t believe the nasty big flies,” Carr said. “They’re all over the door and they come in with people.”

Officials touted the economic impact of the megadairy on Monday, but Cox said most CAFOs don’t buy feed locally. Local dairy employees in Lewisville have been replaced by immigrants who live in company-owned houses in town, Carr said. Tourism is important to Union County, which has two state-managed lakes, but a proliferation of CAFOs could impact their water quality and the area’s esthetics, Cox said. She urged the group to bring watershed information for the lakes to Monday’s meeting.

Link.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 8:49 am and is filed under CAFOs!. 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.