DRA member testifies on factory farms

Member Testimony by Nick Nemec, Dakota Rural Action

(Editors Note: In early September, Dakota Rural Action member Nicholas Nemec testified in the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to urge continued federal jurisdiction of polluter pays laws and community right to know for large factory farms.)

In early 1997, Tyson Foods approached our county commissioners with a plan to construct over 100 hog confinement barns that would feed nearly 520,000 hogs each year and plans to build more barns in future years. All this in a small county of only 860 square miles and 1,600 people. The county commissioners and the city council both passed resolutions welcoming Tyson and their hogs to our county under the guise of “economic development”.

People were concerned about the pollution that could be caused if the dikes around one of the manure cesspools at the proposed hog barns would fail. That manure would run into our lakes and streams, killing wildlife and vegetation and contaminating our shallow aquifers.
We are rural people and used to and not afraid of the smell of a little manure. But we also know that the more manure you have, the worse it smells and we didn’t want to wake up every morning and spend every day smelling hog manure. Promises by Tyson to be a good neighbor and glowing testimonials from Hughes County, Oklahoma, where Tyson had a similar operation, did not allay our concerns. With very little difficulty we were able to contact citizens of Hughes County who told a very different story about living amongst tens of thousands of hogs. They told of being prisoners in their own homes, unable to open the windows because the stench of manure cesspools permeated everything and was so overwhelming that it made their eyes water and gave them headaches.

The opponents to the Tyson plan began meeting to determine what, if anything, could be done to slow or stop it. Eventually an initiated ballot measure was written that prohibited locating a manure management system for livestock housed in barns closer than four miles from any existing residential structure.

The hard fought election divided our county. The ordinance passed by a margin of 56-43% overall. The rural vote of 75-25% versus the town vote of 46-54% reveals the divisive effect this issue had on our small community pitting urban against rural, with the rural residents, mainly farmers and ranchers, supporting stricter controls for factory farms.

I call these new operations “factory farms” to distinguish them from traditional family farms. I do not use this as a negative term to pass judgment on the individual owners or farmers who are developing these large-scale farming operations. I know that there are many responsible, conscientious people who work diligently to prevent their factory farming operations from having the environmental consequences that my neighbors and I are so concerned about. However, I also know that, regardless of these efforts by some factory farm operators, these operations inherently have impacts and pose risks that traditional family farms do not.

The unplanned, unregulated expansion of these operations threatens the very communities that their proponents claim they will enhance, yet they have expanded dramatically over the past 30 years.

Take Action Call your Senators and urge them to oppose S. 807 and H.R. 1398 that would exempt large factory farms from the Superfund (Comprehensive Environmental Response and Liability Act CERCLA) and the Emergency Planning Community Right-to-Know (EPCRA).

Townships, counties and even states across the nation are struggling to handle these impacts. Hyde County, South Dakota, is not unique in setting tough standards for factory farms.
I understand that there are some proposals to exempt factory fa

rms from our federal clean air and water laws, as well as those that ensure that toxic waste sites are cleaned up, and that the public is given information about toxic releases. Madame Chair and members of the Committee, I oppose these efforts.

As a farmer and rancher, I do not feel threatened by these laws, and I do not believe that any factory farm operator need fear them either. They are not designed to punish responsible farmers of any size or type, and I am not aware of a single instance when they have been used to do so.

These laws were designed to insure the health and well-being of my family, my land, and my downstream and downwind neighbors. Today more than ever, we need to maintain and even strengthen them to protect the communities in which factory farms are operating.