> I think I remember reading somewhere that one of the Dakotas had
> legislatively prohibited the factory hog (or chicken?) farms that are
> becoming standard in the midwest/south (and coming to washington state,
> apparently - on a recent drive through eastern wa I saw, on one side of the
> road, the beginnings of a intensive cattle operation and on the other, a
> farmhouse, with a "for sale" sign and a handmade protest billboard pointing
> to the operation: "site of proposed open cesspool"). Anybody know anything
> about this kind of legislation in the Dakotas? Or anywhere else, for that
> matter?
That doesn't appear to be the direction things are going here in Minnesota, at least not without an uphill fight, as the big farms are too much an entrenched part of the economy at this point. But there's been an increasing level of activity on the part of residents who have to suffer with the odors. It's no small affair, it's almost a matter of self-preservation - the stench is tremendous near these pools, and these people live with it from the time they get up in the morning to the time they drop off to sleep (and I'm sure they're not spared in their dreams).
It reminds me of a drive I took through the Carolinas a few years back, when I came over a rise into a broad valley surrounded by hills with a large factory town smack-dab in the middle. The factory emanated a pungent, acrid aroma that permeated the air throughout the entire town 24 hours a day - as if every one of the residents had been fitted with a heavy iron headpiece at birth, and went about their daily lives as if it were the most natural thing, even as they visibly suffered. Of course with the hog and chicken farms, it's virtually impossible to adapt to the sickening smell - it's unbelievably bad.
My impression is that the violations of air-quality standards are rampant given the scale and widely-dispersed nature of the farms, with woefully inadequate state and community resources allocated to monitor them. Successful challenges to their running roughshod over air-quality standards will come only with some kind of collective effort linking residents of the various widespread communities into larger organizations on a state/national level, as without that the legislators' ears will always bend to those that speak the loudest, currently and for the forseeable future the agribusiness lobby. What's more, with cooperatives like the one mentioned in the attached article and column, neighbors are pitted against neighbors to some extent, adding yet another dimension to the conflict. Either way, it's a situation begging for some serious organizing activity, not least because the farms are increasing in number.
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/ dave /
Attorney general goes to Olivia to check feedlot odors Published Saturday, June 23, 2001 Terry Collins / Star Tribune
OLIVIA, MINN. -- Not only did Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch hear Renville County residents complain Friday about odors coming from a hog-raising cooperative's two manure lagoons, he got a good whiff himself.
"You mean it gets stronger than this?" Hatch asked during a stop at a house a few hundred feet from a lagoon.
"Yeah, and today is a good day," replied Claude Lippert, 70, of Olivia. "Come back when the wind is blowing."
Hatch's office is getting a whiff itself, too, with its own odor-monitoring equipment, even though the hog co-op already submits readings to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). During his tour, Hatch checked out three hydrogen sulfide monitors his office installed this week near the lagoons, owned by ValAdCo in Renville County.
ValAdCo has violated state air-quality rules more than 270 times in the past two years since promising the MPCA that it would increase air monitoring.
This month, the co-op reached an agreement with the MPCA to pay $125,000 in penalties for those violations. In addition, ValAdCo said it would place covers with felt-like fabric and several inches of straw over a dozen lagoons at several sites where it raises hogs.
But the agreement still has to be approved by the attorney general's office, Hatch said, adding that his office's study is independent from the MPCA.
"We're not undermining their efforts. But we thought it would be appropriate to observe under our own authority," Hatch said. "We've received enough complaints. We're here to learn and to understand.
"We're not going back to St. Paul and forget about this situation."
Hatch said the devices, which cost about $50,000 to operate, will monitor continuously and report findings by satellite to an environmental consulting firm in Kansas City.
A state standard allows no more than an average of 50 parts per billion of hydrogen sulfide during a 30-minute period. The majority of ValAdCo's violations were at least 90 parts per billion, the maximum reading possible on the MPCA's monitoring devices.
The odorous gas can cause nausea, dizziness and respiratory problems, and at high levels can cause heart palpitations, shortness of breath and even death.
Along with three staffers from the attorney general's office, Hatch went to another home in Olivia where he was greeted by about a dozen residents who shared their smelly tales.
"People think because we live out here, we must be kooky. We're not guinea pigs," said Patty Tisdell, of Olivia, adding that the odor worsens at night. "Farming is our livelihood, too. But what we put up with is inhuman."
At a town meeting, Hatch heard more complaints and found himself in the middle of a heated exchange between angry residents and the co-op's top official, whom Hatch hopes to meet with next week.
"Is there an odor? Yes. But we have the best technology available in the hog farming industry to control it," Eddie Crum, ValAdCo's chief executive officer, told more than 50 people in attendance. "We're doing everything we can do."
Olivia resident Doug Elbert responded, "No, you're not. You've been doing this to us for six years. Shut it down."
Crum said that the co-op consists of more than 100 farmers who also live in Renville County and don't consider themselves bad neighbors.
"We're not ignoring the issues," he said. "We're not ignoring you."
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Hog farm fouls the air, and MPCA responds with a clothespin Published Sunday, June 17, 2001 Doug Grow / Star Tribune
Which is stronger: The stink emanating from the ValAdCo hog farm in Renville County or the smell coming from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency headquarters in St. Paul?
In Thursday's Star Tribune, there was a report showing that ValAdCo, a massive farmer-owned hog cooperative, violated state air-quality rules 158 times last year and 122 times last month.
Staggering as those numbers are, they reflect a small portion of what's happening. State testing at the plant has been conducted only when the wind is out of the southeast, and those tests measured only hydrogen sulfide, a foul-smelling gas that escapes from the millions of gallons of manure stored in lagoons. People in the area who have paid for some of their own tests say they have found that the hog farm is filling the air with 200 other chemicals, many of them highly dangerous to health and sanity.
To make matters more startling, nobody has even begun to test ground water. And the Renville County site is the only site in the state where serious monitoring is taking place.
But the most stunning part of the Renville County story is that the once-esteemed MPCA had been doing almost nothing to force ValAdCo to change its act until a negotiated settlement was reached late Thursday night. For years, the agency's behavior was so indifferent that the state Department of Health and the attorney general's office finally took steps aimed at prodding the MPCA into action.
Even Thursday's deal has left lawyers in the attorney general's office leery of the agreement's ability to address the problems in Renville County.
All of this isn't merely about smell. Or quality of life. This is about people getting sick while watered-down regulations are routinely being violated.
Those who had been attempting to get the MPCA to act chuckled at what happened when a representative from the attorney general's office went to the county to converse and get a first-hand whiff of the problem.
"The plume that day was awful. He got sick while he was here," said Monica Kahout, who, with her husband, operates a small hog operation near the site of the ValAdCo giant.
But since ValAdCo first started applying for permits to build its operation in 1993, there has been little for locals to laugh about. Residents have raised concerns, but most government officials have shrugged them off.
How many times over the years did Kahout contact the MPCA?
"How many grains of sand are there in the desert?" she said.
What was the MPCA's response to her entreaties?
"Every time, they assure me it will get better."
Local people say they couldn't even get the MPCA to monitor the air in the early years of ValAdCo's operation.
Julie Jansen lives near the site and works with Clean Water Action, an environmental organization. She begged the MPCA to get involved. "After trying all of 1995 to get them to do some decent monitoring, myself and five other women took it upon ourselves to do it in 1996," she said.
The results of their monitoring were so dramatic, the MPCA was forced to at least feign interest.
People such as Jansen and Kahout acknowledge that the MPCA is only part of the problem. Agribusiness -- as opposed to small farming operations -- has a mighty voice throughout the state and through all levels of government.
Though agribusiness is particularly powerful within the Republican Party, it also carries clout among DFLers. For example, when Jansen tried to get former Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III to wake up and smell the pig manure, she said, she was told that the problem wasn't bad air but rather that air-quality standards were too tough.
Agribusiness has shrewdly been able to portray issues such as those faced by the people in Renville County as a dispute between "wacky environmentalists" and farmers.
More importantly, agribusiness has friends in the state Department of Agriculture, where the prevailing attitude is bigger is better. And it has been able to dilute legislation that would protect people and the environment.
In 1996, for example, a rookie legislator, Rep. Gary Kubly, DFL-Granite Falls, was a leader in a fight to put some teeth in feedlot law. Legislation was passed. Hopes rose.
"But most of what we did has been totally undone," Kubly said.
The MPCA has done almost nothing with the regulations that remain.
Odd behavior for an agency whose middle name is Pollution Control.