Mega-dairy
Approved; Opposition Continues
by Sehvilla Mann
The Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDA) has granted
permission for a mega-dairy to be built in rural McLean
County, although opponents are continuing to fight against
it.
The IDA is allowing the dairy, called the Stone Ridge
Dairy, to be built despite organized opposition from
many people who live near the site of the proposed facility.
Citizens from McLean, Piatt, DeWitt, and Champaign Counties
formed the Quad County Clean Air and WaterCoalition,
which held a press conference on September 7 to urge
the Illinois Department of Agriculture not to approve
the dairy plans. The IDA was also aware of resolutions
against the dairy from Champaign County, the villages
of Bellflower, Fisher, Mahomet, and Mansfield, and the
township of Blue Ridge.
Stone Ridge, if built, will be the largest dairy in
the state of Illinois. It will have 6,105 head of livestock
and be established on 90 acres of land in McLean County,
near Bellflower. Included in its plans are two quarter-mile-long
barns to house the milking cows, a milking parlor, and
other livestock facilities.
At the heart of the issues surrounding the Stone Ridge
Dairy is its plan for waste management. The Stone Ridge
Dairy would utilize a 26-acre 'lagoon' to store the
waste produced by the cattle. Residents are worried
that the lagoon might leak or spill. Leakage from the
lagoon could contaminate wells in the Bellflower area
and then contaminate the
Mahomet Aquifer, the underground source of drinking
water for most of east central Illinois.
Factory farms in Illinois have contaminated water systems
before. Last February, at the Inwood Dairy near Elmwood,
Illinois (which has fewer animals than Stone Ridge will
have), employees pumped more than two million gallons
of waste from the dairy's lagoon into a ravine. The
ravine then overflowed into Kickapoo Creek.
Opponents also point out that the dairy developer who
wants to build Stone Ridge, George Kasbergen, has a
less than perfect record with regard to pollution control.
Last spring, he was cited for 10 water pollution violations
at his Spring Grove Dairy inWisconsin. According to
the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the dairy
"failed to submit semi-annual reports on samples
of liquids flowing out of the farm; modified its manure
storage channels without notifying the state or obtaining
required state approval; built new manure storage facilities
without a permit; created new outdoor animal lots without
adequate runoff control; failed to maintain a feed storage
leachate and runoff collection system; failed to report
major manure spills..." and committed other violations
as well.
Residents of McLean County and nearby are also concerned
about foul odors that would emanate from the Stone Ridge
lagoon. In the August 16 issue of the Indy, a newspaper
published in Bloomington-Normal, Karen Hudson, a family
farmer who lives near the Inwood Dairy, wrote, "
In 1998, a dairy factory was built in our community.
Recently I visited a neighbor of the dairy factory whose
home is legally beyond the minimum setback distance
from this operation. Candles burn frequently in this
home in an attempt to quell the stench that permeates
the walls. They are compelled to keep perfume bottles
in the bedroom nightstand, androutinely 'spray the perfume'
in an attempt to mask the stench that often becomes
worse in the early morning hours."
Other problems surround factory farms like the one
planned for Bellflower. Some opponents of the Stone
Ridge Dairy are worried about the treatment of the animals
there. Animal rights and anti-factory-farm groups have
documented the poor treatment of animals at many large-scale
animal facilities. Because factory farms are designed
for
maximum efficiency and profitability, these organizations
say, their livestock are often treated more like machines
than like living organisms. These groups have found
that at many factory farms, animals are confined indoors
for most of their lives. The animals are often in poor
health and, as a result, their feed must be laced with
antibiotics. They are also injected with drugs and hormones.
Dairy cows are often treated with recombinant bovine
growth hormone (rBGH or rBST), a genetically engineered
product which increases the amount of milk a cow produces,
but which also makes cows more susceptible to diseases
like mastitis, an inflammation of the udder. When residents
of McLean County visited Mr. Kasbergen's Spring Grove
Dairy near Brodhead, Wisconsin, they observed cows with
swollen udders from hormone treatments. The cows at
the Spring Grove Dairy are treated with rBGH.
Finally, opponents are concerned about the impact of
mega-dairies such as Stone Ridge on family farms. Family
farms have an increasingly hard time surviving today,
partially because of factory farms like the Stone Ridge
Dairy. Small farms owned by just one family find it
extremely difficult to compete with large-scale operations,
which produce cheaper meat and dairy products at the
expense of the environment, our health, and their livestock's
well being. Control of farming is slipping away from
individual growers, and becoming increasingly consolidated
in the hands of a few corporations. Opponents fear the
eventual extinction of small-scale, family-run farms.
Don Rolla, a member of the Quad CountyClean Air and
Water Coalition, says that the organization is currently
exploring two options for having the mega-dairy shut
down or never built. The Coalition is proceeding with
a lawsuit which would have the dairy declared a nuisance.
The dairy could then be shut down. They are also calling
attention to a portion of a contract Mr. Kasbergen's
entered into with Bellflower Township, a provision regulating
Stone Ridge Dairy's use of heavy equipment on county
roads which the Coalition's lawyer has said is illegal.
According to the Coalition's September 5 press release,
the McLean County road commissioner demanded that Kasbergen
improve the nearby road if the mega-dairy intended to
use it. Kasbergen refused to improve the road. Kasbergen
then somehow convinced Bellflower Township's road commissioner
to enter into an agreement which allows Kasbergen to
exceed the township's load limits in exchange for Kasbergen's
willingness to 'consider' making payments to repair
the township road if Kasbergen agrees that such repairs
are necessary. According to the Coalition's attorney,
Illinois law does not grant a road commissioner the
right to arbitrarily enforce road limits. Effectively,
the agreement would allow Kasbergen to habitually violate
load limits while other users of the road must abide
by them. This discriminatory enforcement is illegal,
according to the Coalition's attorney, and thus the
contract is null and void. The Coalition is hoping to
have Mr. Kasbergen's agreement nullified, thereby disrupting
his plans to build Stone Ridge Dairy.
Members of the Quad County Clean Air and Water Coalition
are still hopeful that they will be able to stop the
Stone Ridge Dairy and save central Illinois from a potential
health and environmental hazard.
Resources:
To learn more about factory farming, visit www.factoryfarm.org
and www.farmweb.org
. Both web sites offer extensive information about the
harmful effects of factory farms.
Two articles in the August 16 issue of the Indy, an
independent newspaper from Bloomington-Normal, also
explain the harmful effects of factory farms, and provide
an in-depth explanation of the lagoon disaster at the
Inwood Dairy. That edition of the Indy is available
free of charge at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media
Center.
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