Great editorial on "Ag-Chemical Cabal" in Storm Lake Times

[rurallib]

Most should remember hearing of Art Cullen who won a Pulitzer Prize with the Storm Lake Times
http://www.stormlake.com/articles/2018/05/23/how-much-more-manure-can-we-handle

How much more manure can we handle?

A rapid and significant expansion in swine facilities here and across Iowa — with unheeded calls in the legislature for a moratorium on more building — causes one to wonder just how much manure we can handle.

Even the Buena Vista County Board of Supervisors is starting to push back against plans for new hoghouses — such as one just across the road from where a family intended to build its dream retirement home. There is no local control, the supervisors are getting heat and the state law ignores their concerns. Iowa Select will come in wherever it pleases.

This is the result of the pork industry insisting that any regulation of agriculture must be under the purview of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. We remember then-Rep. Russ Eddie, R-Storm Lake, himself a pork producer, declaring that you cannot have 99 sets of rules for agriculture. Hence, the supervisors can only stand on the sidelines and complain, and perhaps ask themselves why we have 99 counties, and why we pay all those supervisors to stand on the sidelines. The system was set up so it could not be controlled. When the IDNR confined feeding coordinator, Gene Tinker, started to advise counties on how they might effectively object to new permits, Tinker’s job was eliminated.

Now that statewide duty falls to Ken Hesenius of the Spencer IDNR office, who already was supposed to oversee 8,000 confinements in 10 Northwest counties.

None of us are actually certain how many confinements are in those 10 counties, or the 89 others, because IDNR cannot keep track of them all. Manure management plans are put on paper in a file cabinet and are kept dark so they do not decay.

Much much more at the link and well worth the time.