The Star Press reports here that the farmer suspected of being responsible for the Little Mississinewa River fish kill has a lengthy history of violations in Ohio. If this is true, it might lead one to ask how IDEM could possibly approve him to operate in Indiana. I am not certain of the specifics, but the situation does bring up the fact that Indiana’s NPDES approval process for CAFO’s does not include any “good character” requirement - meaning that each permit application is judged on its specific merits, with no reference to the history or experience of the proposed operator.

Here is the Star Press’s list of Stateline Agri, Inc owner Rick Kremer’s Ohio history:

A summary of the state’s accusations:

Last weekend, Stateline Agri Inc. (also known as Stateline Farms and Kremer Family Farms) applied 27,000 gallons of hog manure to a field about a mile south of Ind. 32. Heavy rains Monday washed that manure off the field and into a drainage tile into the river, said IDEM spokeswoman Amy Hartsock. Link (Star Press)

Delaware County is considering them:

For the third consecutive year, the city-county planning commission is debating whether or not to regulate concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Star Press (Seth Slabaugh).

And also in Randolph County, which is kicking off its new CAFO committee:

The nine-person committee will meet at 6:30 p.m. in the boardroom at the Randolph Economic Development office, 111 S. Main St.

This, the latest in a series of committees appointed to study and ultimately develop a CAFO-regulating ordinance, was created by the Randolph County Board of Commissioners. All three commissioners will serve, as will three representatives of Randolph County Farm Bureau (Jerry Warren, Gary Foulke and Tom Chalfant) and three members of Environmentally Concerned Citizens of Randolph County (Rachel Carpenter, Ralph Dalzell and Curtis Ramer).

Star Press

On May 29, 2008, Brian Zimmerman wrote in the Pal-Item that the school board voted to forgo the $2,000 annual stipend they get paid for being on the board if the school fails to meet 3 key benchmarks:

Six of seven board members agreed to be paid only if Richmond High School’s graduation rate in 2009 is at least 71 percent and if 81 percent of students pass the reading and math portions of Indiana’s standardized test this fall. Richmond Community Schools’ Board Secretary Rick Ahaus, whose term ends in July, was not present to vote.

Board member still get their $112 per meeting, and still get health, dental and vision insurance via the school system, but the bet has been made.

So now that there is money on the table, let’s look at these numbers. Mr. Zimmerman reported that the official graduation rate in 2007 was 60%. Remember, Indiana altered its accounting for graduation starting with the 2005-2006 school year, causing Richmond to post some really poor numbers, including 60% in 2007 (or 57.6% according to the state, link) and 52.8% in 2006.

Now, at least on the graduation rate, the board likely feels pretty confident on their bet: On April 11, 2008, Mr. Zimmerman reported that school superintendent Allen Bourff told the board that the administration was predicting that 300 out of 348 seniors might graduate this year - this would be an 86% graduation rate:

“We do expect to improve on 60 percent,” Superintendent Allen Bourff said Thursday night. “I can’t say that we would be at 86 percent. That’s going up 26 percentage points. But we would be thrilled if we could see that.” RHS hasn’t seen consecutive increases in graduation rates in recent years.

But this is all a numbers game, with those at the top of the school system pressing hard to end the negative press they get with an almost 50% “failure” rate, and the administration scrambling to work the numbers to get the heat off.

The fight over the numbers obscures the real issues with local education, and that is the actual result - things that do not look good in press reports, like below 50% literacy rates in town - literacy rates - not high school graduation rates. When these numbers make it to the paper, the folks in the economic development arena complain to the paper and the school about scaring away new businesses from the town due to the quality of the workforce . . . Not pleasant things.

But the question I have with all these numbers is this: In the 2002-2003 school year, Richmond High School had 467 freshman enrolled. The school reported in April 2008, that it had 348 seniors in the class of 2008 - These are the same students, so what happened to the 119 students between 9th and 12th grade?

The administration will say, “Hey, people move away.” But people also move into town. I can understand some loss to to overall population losses, but a quarter of the students moved away? No.

The bulk of those 119 students are still in town, they are just not enrolled in school. You can find them working, hanging out, taking care of their kids, etc. One thing the school has learned about the new accounting system is that, if a kid tells the school they are withdrawing from school to be “home schooled,” the school does not have to count that student in their dropout figures - So you can imagine the discussions that occur when a student says they want to “drop out.”

In order to home school, the parent has to send in a form to the state - I wonder if the state has 119 home school forms from these missing students - I seriously doubt it. I also have to wonder how it is that a community with a 25% literacy rate has the resources to home school so many high school students.

Anyway, the way I see the numbers, the class of 2008 started Richmond High totaling 467 - If they do manage to graduate 300 next Sunday, that would be a 64% graduation rate. Let’s see if they make that.

No surprises here; Hog born dust can be bad for you: Exposure to hog barn dust alters airway epithelial ciliary beating, a study from the University of Nebraska Medial Center via the European Respiratory Journal.

The US EPA is blogging, or at least people at the EPA are being permitted to post at the “Official Blog of the US EPA.” It is called Greenversations, and today’s question is Why are you or aren’t you buying green power?

It is a WordPress blog with comment moderation. Either the awareness of the blog is limited, or the comments are over-moderated as there are few on the site. I like that it dual posts in English and Spanish.

I also liked learning that the EPA’s press secretary, Jonathan Shrader, is a bike commuter.

This is weird, but probably just a function of division of government powers. I’ve seen local office holder doing battle before, but typically not with firearms:

A judge has begun carrying a gun at work after ordering a court employee to stay away from him. Miami County [Ohio] Municipal Court Judge Mel Kemmer filed an order last month banning bailiff Scott Niesley from his courtroom and chambers, his assistant’s office or anywhere else the judge is in the courthouse.

Mysterious death of starlings reported in February in Randolph County near the Union-Go Dairy was instigated by the dairy, and was completely “legal:”

The use of starlicide on a flock of 20,000 starlings infesting Union-Go Dairy followed label instructions and did not violate the Indiana pesticide use and application law, the state chemist’s office has ruled. On Feb. 14, dozens of dead starlings dropped out of trees at the residence of Allen Hutchison, a neighbor of the dairy. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had applied starlicide at Union-Go, a concentrated animal feeding operation, the day before.

The Bush administration is fighting against a natural beef producer’s plan to test all of their cows for mad cow disease - instead of the 1% of cows tested under USDA guidelines:

The Bush administration on Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, but a skeptical judge questioned whether the government has that authority.

Link. The government says that there is no science showing additional testing assures that the meat is any safer, and may generate false positives that would scare consumers. The real issue is that other producers don’t want a specialty label like Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to be able to advertise 100% testing - giving it a market edge.

Maxwell Farms’ trouble with transmissible gastroenteritis (TGE) infections at one of its Randolph County pig facilities hit the news this week, prompting a post, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, from Karen Myers on WAHM.

Bike commuting gets noticed on the eve of Bike to Work Day (I bike in most days, but not Fridays - have to get the kids to school): Muncie’s Star Press: Biking to Work and the front page of the Indy Star: A New Spin on Commuting. Video:

Animal rights groups, who gained national headlines for the undercover video of a “downer cow” being mistreated at a slaughter plant are trying to follow up with chickens: Mercy for Chickens is an undercover video shot in a California egg house. So far, the response has not been there - chickens aren’t cute and fuzzy . . . .

Animal “extremist” groups, while often well intentioned, often adopt tactics and positions that undercut the effort to bring more reasoned review of the issues involved in factory agriculture: The extremists provide the AG industry with the brush to paint the entire anti-factory farm movement with.

For example, Growing IN Agriculture (GINA) is a web site funded by the Indiana Soybean Alliance and the soybean checkoff with the purpose of promoting Indiana agriculture in general, and factory farming in particular. The site has a Myths & Facts section that rebuts each and every concern you have ever had about factory farming, from the myth that factory farms are putting small family farms out of business, to the myth that factory farms are not regulated by the state:

FACT:  The livestock industry is highly regulated by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of the Indiana State Chemist, and the state Board of Animal Health.

Not only that, but in other good CAFO news: Large Livestock Farms Prove Responsible is the title of the article by Tom J. Bechman in the Indiana Prairie Farmer about Maxwell Foods effort to contain a manure spill into Martindale Creek in Randolph County. Martindale Creek is on IDEM’s current list of impaired waterways for E. Coli (2006 list) as well as the proposed 2008 list (Microsoft Excel file: Draft 2008 Integrated Report: Categories 4 and 5 (Proposed) [XLS]).

Marcia Oddi over at the Indiana Law Blog always has good continuing coverage of how the state of Indiana makes its laws, court decisions and other “public records” available to the public. This is an area that has undergone significant change with the rise of the internet. Today, she gives a preview of one of her Res Gestae articles, this time on the sorry state of the state provided online version of the Indiana Code, a version which is so out of date, inaccurate, and lacking of basic features, that we attorneys have no option but to purchase access to the code from Lexis or Westlaw (Wait, that couldn’t be the point, could it?).

Read Marcia’s coverage: How much can you rely on what is in the Indiana Code? Marcia already warned us off of the online Indiana Administrative Code.

On the same general subject, Marcia also posted an update on the Indiana Supreme Court’s effort to provide “free”* online access to trial court case information, called JTAC.

[* "free" meaning that hundreds of millions of additional dollars will be charged to those who file cases in trial courts so that online access can be provided without charge]

Marcia’s recent coverage of the effectiveness of this provision of online records can be found here: Update on Supreme Court’s case management system plans.

Indiana is far from alone in its struggles with providing electronic access to public records. All states have confronted the issue to some degree, creating a patchwork quilt of public access laws across the country. One state, Oregon, has even gone to the extremes in claiming that its laws are copyrighted and baring secondary publication:

The State of Oregon is sending out cease and desist letters to sites like Justia and Public.Resource.Org that have been posting copies of Oregon laws, known as the Oregon Revised Statutes.

Carl Malamud via boingboing.

UPDATE: Marcia contacted me with a clarification on her new article, which in my mind makes the issue even more distressing:

This new article looks at problems that transcend the medium used for publication – these new, insofar as these discussions are concerned, problems exist with both the online and the printed versions of the Indiana Code.

In other words, no matter whether you look at an online or printed version of the Indiana Code, there is stuff that you need to know that was in an Enrolled Act, but is not in the Indiana Code. Part I looks at simple sections that are left out, In Part 1 I give an example - the law requiring defibrillators in health clubs - was passed in 2007 and has been in the Code as the law since July 1, 2007. However, a provision that is not in the Code provides that the defibrillator requirement is not applicable until July 1, 2008.

The Gary Post-Tribune has run a long series of articles calling IDEM to account for its varied short comings. Gitte Laasby continues this process today, covering the BP Plant permit:

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management refuses to answer certain questions about the timing of a public hearing on BP’s air permit.

Among them: Who at IDEM was responsible for ignoring state law and providing inadequate notice of the hearing?

As the Post-Tribune revealed in April, IDEM’s chief of the permits branch of the Office of Air Quality, Matt Stuckey, e-mailed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in January to ask how long was the required notice. He was told state law applies.

State law specifies it’s 30 days, but IDEM scheduled a hearing with 18 to 20 days notice.

Now IDEM won’t say who at the agency made the call to ignore state law.

Link.

Well, I’ve been out for a week, so let’s catch up:

First off, as Doug Masson says, VOTE!

On the CAFO Front, the PEW Center’s long-awaited report came out last week, the PDF is here: report. Big agriculture has been criticizing the report for months before it was released. From the looks of the report, they have cause to be concerned. . . .

Union County is looking at CAFO regulations more carefully in light of local uproar over a new dairy: Pal Item coverage.

Meanwhile, Randolph county is stuck in navel gazing mode while CAFO’s proliferate across it: Will Fourth Randolph CAFO Committee Make a Difference is the title of a piece in the Star Press by Joy Leiker:

The creation of this latest committee was announced Monday as commissioners gave reports on areas they had been asked to study in January, the same day they approved a CAFO moratorium. Following legal challenges, the moratorium was lifted two months later after the county conceded it never had the legal authority to impose a moratorium in the first place.

This group, like at least two others in the past, will include both proponents and opponents of CAFOs, specifically, representatives of Farm Bureau and Environmentally Concerned Citizens of Randolph County. But this new committee also will include a county commissioner.

“We’re not going to reach an agreement just sitting here,” Commissioner Kathy Beumer said, noting that a commissioner should join the discussion, and negotiations, since ultimately a county ordinance will need commission approval.

Last week Ms. Leiker reported on CAFO’s role in local politics: CAFOs Rule Randolph Commissioners Race.

IDEM clears backlog of 263 wastewater permits, nets award from the EPA:

IDEM received a two-gold-star award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, one of eight states in the nation. IDEM received the award for addressing the historical permit backlog and prioritizing issuing permits. The goals were achieved two years in a row, in 2006 and 2007.

(Post-Tribune). The lesson - crank the permits out.

In Michigan, the Sierra Club won a victory at the Michigan Court of Appeals:

The case, Sierra Club Mackinac Chapter v. Department of Environmental Quality, dealt with large farming entities known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, and the manner in which the DEQ issues permits for the use of manure as a fertilizer. There are 198 CAFOs in the state of Michigan, facilities where farmers raise and feed thousands of pigs or cows at a time, or upwards of 100,000 chickens or more. Such facilities generate an enormous amount of manure and farmers often try to reduce the amount they have to dispose of by using that manure as fertilizer on nearby pastures and farmland.

(Michigan Messenger story by Ed Brayton). The decision agreed with the Club’s contention that the public has the right to access not only the original proposal in the permit process, but also the Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan (CNMP), so the public can see what the farms are doing with the manure.

Also in Michigan, check out the Michigan DEQ’s Statement of its Case against mega-dairy Vreba-Hoff filed last month. In it, the DEQ lists several violations and lists thousands of dollars in fines the environmental enforcer is seeking against the dairy for alleged violations of a prior consent decree.

The Union of Concerned Scientists just release a report raising issue with the way Congress has streamed billions of dollars into the pockets of big agriculture concerns - leading directly to the bloom of factory farming around the nation. The report, CAFOs Uncovered: The Untold Costs of CAFOS, claims that the federal farm bills have shifted the true costs of these mega farms to local governments and communities who have to deal with the byproducts:

Misguided federal farm policies have encouraged the growth of massive confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, by shifting billions of dollars in environmental, health and economic costs to taxpayers and communities, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). As a result, CAFOs now produce most of the nation’s beef, pork, chicken, dairy and eggs, even though there are more sophisticated and efficient farms in operation.

“CAFOs aren’t the natural result of agricultural progress, nor are they the result of rational planning or market forces,” said Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist in UCS’s Food and Environment Program and author of the report. “Ill-advised policies created them, and it will take new policies to replace them with more sustainable, environmentally friendly production methods.”

The PEW report is due to come out next week.

The Star Press Reports today:

About 600 gallons of hog manure entered Martindale Creek when a hose broke Tuesday as Goldsboro, N.C.-based Maxwell Farms was land applying manure to a farm field.

The incident was reported to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management by Maxwell at 9:17 a.m. Maxwell constructed a dam to prevent the manure from spreading downstream.

“Some made its way under a bridge at U.S. 36 near Modoc,” said IDEM spokesman Barry Sneed. After being contained, the manure was removed from the creek by a vacuum truck.
“They did a great job of responding, so it did not have an impact,” Sneed said.

Asked whether Maxwell faced a fine over the incident, Sneed said, “i doubt it because they were so responsive. It was just an accident — equipment failure.”

Seth Slabaugh.

Word was that local anti-CAFO activists and local farmers were going to sit down and come to an agreement on proposed CAFO rules for Randolph County. That was a few years ago, but several CAFO’s later, a moratorium and a retreat from a moratorium and there are still no real CAFO rules in Randolph County.

Where does the “bipartisan” group stand? Well, this month county commissioners have heard a proposal from the Farm Bureau and a counter proposal from Rachel Carpenter, a member of Environmentally Concerned Citizens of Randolph County (ECCRC):

ECCRC members are focused on the environmental affects of the hog industry, and the group includes residents from all corners of Randolph County.

In the suggestions submitted by Farm Bureau and ECCRC, the two biggest issues are lot sizes and setbacks.

The ordinance rejected by the county earlier this year provided for a 40-acre minimum for CAFOs and CFOs. The Farm Bureau wants to cut that in half, while ECCRC wants to maintain the 40-acre minimum.

With setbacks, the Farm Bureau wants to go back to the original Area Planning Commission ordinance, which included a 1,000-foot barrier between a CAFO and home, or other protected use. At the last minute before the ordinance’s approval in late December, that setback was increased from 1,000 to 1,320 feet, a move farmers opposed, saying it dramatically cut the total acres available for CAFO and CFO development.

ECCRC wants to maintain the 1,320-foot distance, but measure it from property lines, rather than from a neighboring home, as has been the plan.

Commissioners took no action on either plan.

Star Press, Joy Leiker, reporting.

I generally leave the coverage of new Indiana Appellate decisions in the capable hands of Marcia Oddi over at the Indiana Law Blog, but I wanted to highlight an appeal dealing with a CAFO issue that Marcia covered last Friday. I think you can see some of the challenges facing both the farmers and the surrounding property owners through a case like this.

Robert & Melinda Sexton, Stephanie & Craig Flinn, David & Gail Helt, et.al. v. Jackson County Board of Zoning Appeals and members, et.al. is an Indiana Court of Appeals decision that reversed a decision by Judge William Vance in the Jackson County Circuit Court.

Judge Vance found that the petitioners did not have proper legal standing to challenge the BZA’s granting of a permit for construction of a CAFO in the county - an important issue - because they were able to show that the granting of the permit would cause them a loss of property value. The court said:

Here, the issue is the operation of an 8,000 hog CAFO—the odors associated with such an operation alone presents a much different set of acts than the setback variance.

The petitioners had called a former township assessor at the hearing before the BZA, and he said:

The first thing that has to happen if this hog operation goes in, is the neighborhood value will have to be lowered from a good to a fair or a poor. . . . [T]here’s some houses like Flynns [sic], Bowmans and Jerry Marsh’s, David Helt’s there’s some of them that the Sexton’s house, there’s two of them there that are pretty new houses, Steve Bowman’s sister just built a new house up there. I wouldn’t be surprised if they wouldn’t drop 30 percent, I don’t think it would be out of the question. So the property values will decrease in this area.

The appeals court found this sufficient to establish standing to sue. The second issue asserted a peculiar violation of Indiana’s open door law (IC 5-14-1.5-1, et cetera):  The petitioners claimed that members of the BZA started mumbling during the hearing - keeping the public and the recording devices from picking up on what was said. The trial court did not consider this 20 minutes of blank tape (sound familiar) issue, and the appeals court held that they should have.

At this point, the decision of the appeals court will not become final until May 18, 2008, and before that time either party might ask the court to reconsider the decision or seek to send it to the Indiana Supreme Court. If the decision does become final, the case goes back to Judge Vance for reconsideration.

One lesson from this case is that these things can grind on for a very long time: The original BZA hearing occurred on October 11, 2005, so 2 and a half years later, folks are still waiting to see what will happen with this CAFO.

Yesterday, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production released a survey of state laws governing factory farming, a survey prepared along with the National Conference of State Legislatures. The survey is the warm-up for the release of the much-anticipated full report from PEW. From the pres release:

The survey highlights the patchwork of regulation from state to state, and in many cases, a complete lack of regulation in areas that are essential to protecting public health and the environment.  While many states do have regulations beyond federal requirements, it is clear that the regulation has not caught up with the CAFO model of food animal production.  Kentucky, for example, is contemplating whether or not to even continue regulating CAFOs.  And other states, like New Mexico, have limited policies on animal feeding operations and rely on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate CAFOs in their states. What is actually being done to regulate CAFOs within the EPA delegated states is obscure.  South Dakota refused to respond to the survey and Mississippi responded only minimally.  It should be noted that all information requested from state agencies is supposed to be available to the public.

The Pal-Item put up an featured editorial today: A State Role for CAFOs. Not only does the title not make any sense, the opinion piece misses the point of much of the local outcry over CAFO’s. I would boil the errors down to 3 big ones:

Taking the 3rd point first, I have said again and again, when you meet the folks who are upset with a CAFO, you generally find out it is people who are closest to the big farms. These people tend to be rural folks who have lived out in the country for decades - if not generations. Many of them have farmed and farm themselves. The picture of CAFO opponents as uninformed city folks is used to to undercut the complaints: “You just don’t understand farming.” This is far from the case. I have worked with dozens of Indiana residents fighting factory farms and this picture is just not true.

The most offensive claim along these lines comes with this sentence: “Environmental activists have every right to imagine farming under a more romantic, 19th century ideal. But does that drive us any closer to actual policy?” So people who are concerned with ground water contamination, clean air and healthy streams and rivers are automatically Luddites?

The editorial argues for state level CAFO control and says that state policy makers should rely on science, specifically, research from Purdue, a predominant ag school. But why should local communities trust the state to protect the quality of life (and property values) of its citizens after the last 4 years of CAFO promotion by the state? Further, what advice would you expect to come from an Ag school about CAFO regulation? Why wouldn’t we want our state policy makers to hear from scientists who study ground water contamination? Watershed protection? Air quality and health?

What policy makers need to do is throw aside the “emotional” claims about the “right to farm” and face up to the full impacts of factory farming. Only once you consider the needs of all citizens and the environment they live in in relation to these mega farms can sensible policy be made.

The Madison Courier has a piece up today from Peggy Vlerebome covering state democratic races, from the presidential campaign to the governor’s race. The piece quotes Jim Schellinger and Jill Long Thompson, the 2 democratic candidates for governor. The piece claims that it is not only the interesting presidential nomination fight that is attracting Republicans to the democratic primary, but CAFO backlash:

Not everyone in the audience was a Democrat. Several local people who usually vote Republican were there, such as Jae Breitweiser. She said it was her second Democratic Party annual dinner and that she has voted back and forth between parties.

One issue that seems to have figured in to that is confined animal feeding operations, a hot topic in Jefferson County, as several veterans of the CAFO conflicts were at the dinner. Both Democratic candidates for governor mentioned CAFOs.

Schellinger said he would “crack down on the CAFOs.”
“This isn’t farming,” he said. “This is industry, and it should be regulated as industry.”

Long Thompson said she would “make sure they are in compliance with the law, and I think we need to strengthen legislation.”

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear is the title of the May Vanity Fair article by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele. The piece tracks the company’s grip on the seed business and its move into the milk business through rBGH.

Continuing it’s focus on IDEM, the Gary Post-Tribune asks if the agency’s failure to fill the position of environmental liaison for the last year is hampering citizen access to information about the agency: Vacant IDEM post inhibits info flow, some activists say.

World trend against CAFO’s? Ben Block with the Worldwatch Institute says consumer backlash is changing some minds in the world of big Ag: More Companies Discontinuing Farm Animal Confinement.