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Sunday, January 29, 2006

Environment - Group tackles runoff at Lake Wawasee; Much more on Confined Feeding

"Group tackles runoff at Lake Wawasee" is the headline to this story today by Kara Hull in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Some quotes:

Although he officially retired from the medical field in 1997, David Brandes willingly continues to care for one large patient: Lake Wawasee and the surrounding area.

Brandes, chairman of the Wawasee Area Conservancy Foundation and a neighbor of the state’s largest natural lake, becomes animated when he talks about the work the group is doing, often pointing his fingers and using hand gestures while visiting and describing several project sites recently near his lakeside Syracuse home.

Talking with Cromwell farmer Kevin Davidsen and trying to persuade him not to build a confined feeding hog farm on his property less than a mile from the east edge of the lake has been Brandes’ latest task. The group fought against Davidsen when he applied for the permit in February 2004 that Davidsen ultimately received.

For now, Davidsen has agreed to hold off building the hog farm after he learned from experts that manure created on his farm could destroy the lake he’s grown up near.

The dangers of mixing manure and water – whether it’s drinking water from wells or flowing in lakes and streams – is often the first concern people cite against large farming operations, often called confined-feeding operations.

While some local officials say contamination is often an exaggerated threat, farms’ opponents say that the Indiana agency that is supposed to monitor these farms is too trusting.

This is a lengthy and knowledgeable article that should be read in full.

The Muncie Star-Press has a story today by Seth Slabaugh on how the "number of applications to build or expand industrial-style swine farms [has] increased considerably last year in Jay, Randolph and Wayne counties." More:

Since Jan. 1, 2005, applications have been filed with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to build or expand four confined feeding operations (CFOs) and 17 concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to create new capacity for more than 100,000 sows, nursery pigs and finishing pigs in the three counties.

Fifteen of the 21 applications came from Jay County, four from Randolph County, and two from Wayne County.

The 21 applications in the three counties are the most in any year during the period 1996 through 2005, which is how far back The Star Press asked IDEM to search its database. * * *

Some of the applicants are from Ohio, North Carolina, and Iowa. On Jan. 17, IDEM granted permission to Goldsboro, North Carolina-based Ivey's Spring Creek Farm of Indiana, to build an operation containing 700 sows, 2,000 nursery pigs and 4,000 grow-to-finish hogs at 4105 N. Ind. 1, Hagerstown. * * *

One of the reasons for a company like Goldsboro to move to Indiana is that in North Carolina, "they just mushroomed, exploded their hog populations before the state caught up with the need to regulate the environmental consequences of that," Hurt said. "So North Carolina placed a moratorium on any further expansion, which is reasonable."

On Jan. 18, IDEM issued a permit for Natural Pork Production II, Harlan, Iowa, to build a CAFO with a total capacity of 17,072, including 2,400 weaned pigs, 11,712 gestating sows, 2,160 lactating sows, 600 replacement gilts and 200 cull sows. The facility, which would generate an estimated 8.5 million gallons of manure a year, will be north of Williamsburg near the Randolph-Wayne county line.

Each gestating sow can produce about 20 pigs a year, Hurt said, meaning Natural Pork would produce more than 230,000 pigs a year. Natural Pork is part of Audubon, Iowa-based AMVC, the nation's 13th largest pork producer.

Andy Miller, director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture (ISDA), was among the supporters in the audience last summer when the Wayne County Board of Zoning Appeals approved the Natural Pork Production project.

ISDA this year announced a strategic plan that included a goal of doubling Indiana's pork production. As of Dec. 1, 2004, Indiana trailed Iowa, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Illinois in the number of hogs on hand.

Officials in Randolph County have decided not to adopt any local zoning ordinances to regulate CFOs or the larger CAFOs. "We decided to pass on that," said Randolph County Commissioner Ron Chalfant, a farmer. "We're just going to let the state take care of it. A number of farmers said they were just over-burdened now with state regulations. If the county adds to those, it makes it difficult to entice livestock entities."

"Bovine battle brewing: Neighbors fear impact of planned mega-dairy near Lakeville" is the headline to this story in Saturday's South Bend Tribune. Some quotes:
As longtime friends and neighbors unite against him, Dave Schrock admits he's paying a steep price for partnering with a Dutch farmer to build a sprawling mega-dairy east of Lakeville.

"It's sad. Very sad. It's not a happy day for me," Schrock said. "I know I've lost friends over this, but I think it's good for the community and it's good for agriculture. Every industry in America is upsizing and consolidating. If I don't make a stand now and say, 'This is the future of farming,' my children are not going to be able to farm."

Schrock and Peter van der Vegt, a fifth-generation dairy farmer from Netherlands, want to build and operate a 3,500-head dairy operation on 103 acres Schrock owns on Riley Road, west of Ironwood Road. They say today's dairy industry requires producers to be more efficient and maximize volume, and they promise that area grain farmers who sign on to supply feed for the cows will net 10 percent to 15 percent more income, partly by cutting shipping costs.

The dairy would store up to a year's worth of manure the cows generate in a 10 million-gallon concrete lagoon, spreading it as fertilizer on the surrounding fields. Opponents argue that the area's relatively high water table could allow the manure to seep into groundwater. * * *

[A]s of now, commissioners have little authority over the operations, which are regulated by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Neal is lobbying the County Council to quickly pass an ordinance requiring any land use that needs IDEM approval to also obtain a special use permit from county officials.

Marshall County officials are considering such an ordinance, as a Mishawaka farmer plans a large hog CAFO there.

IDEM's administration decides whether to hold a public hearing or meeting in such cases. State law limits the agency's scope to safeguarding surface water quality. That leaves out concerns over roads, air pollution and property values, Neal said.

South Bend's WNDU 16 also had a story yesterday, titled "Mishawaka developer causes unrest in Marshall County," about "a Mishawaka developer who wants to use his land for a hog farm, bringing 8,000 hogs to the neighborhood."

The mention of North Carolina recalled to me some stories from years back. On Oct. 17, 1999, the NY Times published a nearly 2,000 word story (paid subscription required) headlined "Hurricane Reveals Flaws in Farm Law as Animal Waste Threatens N. Carolina Water." Once you read these excerpts, you will see why I remembered it so vividly:
KENANSVILLE, N.C. - In the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, loose regulations that helped eastern North Carolina become the nation's biggest producer of turkeys and the second biggest of hogs have come back to haunt the state's public health and its environment.
Officials say that the September storm that hit the region harder than anywhere else, killing 48 people and leaving behind more than $1 billion in largely inescapable damage, also left a vast amount of damage that might have been averted: incalculable and continuing hazards in ground water, wells and rivers from animal waste, mostly from giant hog farms.

For years, farmers had been free to build hog and poultry operations as big as they wanted and wherever they liked. They were allowed to dig huge pits for animal waste, without regard to the water table or the health and sensibilities of neighbors.

In the hurricane, feces and urine soaked the terrain and flowed into rivers from the overburdened waste pits the industry calls lagoons. The storm killed more than two million turkeys, chickens and livestock in the region, and waste from the farms is expected to keep leaching into the water supply until next spring. * * *

In Duplin County, of which Kenansville is the seat, and across the rest of North Carolina east of Interstate 95, Hurricane Floyd has exposed the hazards of one of farming's great innovations of the 1980's and 1990's and the political liaisons that helped it develop. That is the practice of industrial farming, or raising livestock and poultry in close and confined quarters.

It allows farmers to raise thousands of hogs on land where they could once raise only scores and gives them tight and automated control over their livestocks' diets, health and growth. The farmers raise pigs under contract to major hog processors, known in the business as ''integrators,'' like Murphy Family Farms of Duplin County. The processor supervises the construction of barns, supplies the pigs and their feed and medicine and hauls them off to slaughter after the four or five months it takes for them to grow to 250 pounds.

In eastern North Carolina, this assembly-line production of hogs and turkeys has come as a savior for tobacco farmers whose incomes plunged with the decline in smoking. But Hurricane Floyd has stirred controversy over a means of capturing the wastes of a hog, which produces four times that of a human.

Human waste in North Carolina and most of the nation must be captured in public sewers and private septic systems to prevent the spread of disease. But the state lets the waste of hogs, which carry many human diseases, be captured by nothing more than a cesspool. * * *

The state had few rules for industrial farming until 1993, when it enacted a law to prohibit livestock farms from intentionally contaminating the public water supply. Then, two years ago, it put a moratorium on hog farms. * * *

Even before the hurricane there had been flooding and ruptures of the waste pits that contaminated rivers and killed millions of fish. And with public fury rising over the acrid, ammonia-laden odors from the waste lagoons, which carry for more than a mile, Governor Hunt had begun to call for restraints on an industry he had long allowed free rein.

Mr. Hunt, a Democrat, backs the Legislature's 1997 moratorium on construction of new and expanded lagoons, which remains in effect until July 2001. In April, the Governor proposed a plan to phase out the lagoon system over 10 years while engineers devise safer methods for disposing of the hog waste. * * *

Nowhere is the industry more entrenched, or its political power stronger, or the hurricane's farm damage greater, than in Duplin County. With 48 hogs for every resident, the county has the densest concentration of hogs in the country.

The rectangular lagoons of reddish-brown waste, many of them covering more than an acre, dot the flat countryside. Enclosed within dikes, the lagoons sit behind rows of single-story, gray-metal structures as large as football fields that house the hogs. The hog waste flows through slotted boards in the barns to a cellar, and then is carried by plastic pipes to a waste lagoon. The lagoons now and then burp with the bubbles that mark the natural transformation of feces and urine to the nutrients that farmers spray over pastures and fields of corn, tobacco, soybeans and rye.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 29, 2006 11:31 AM
Posted to Environment