Chapter 6 - Public Writings: Agriculture

What Supervisors could have done. (7-07)

What could the Supervisors have done instead of voting 4 to 0 to approve the Busch request to double the size of their current hog facility; especially when everyone who spoke at the public event was against the expansion?

It is the County Supervisors' right, even when a confinement has enough matrix points and even when the DNR grants a permit, to protest that permit in front of the Environmental Protection Commission. They simply tell the Commission the reasons they feel a particular confinement, which may pass all the present legal requirements, isn't a good idea and ask the Commission to deny the permit using the Commissions' power under the Agency Discretionary Rules. Much of the Agency Discretionary Rules were written with karst in mind.

So, the Supervisors could have listened to the farmers who lived south of the existing, and new expansion site, who spoke of the stench of poison gasses from these confinements and how it has robbed them of their ability to live normally on their own property and voted no. If the Supervisors had questioned the audience more closely, they would have found that one of the objecting farmers' children had asthma; which is consistent with the medical studies which have been done on those who live in proximity to confinements.

Also, over the last two years the Supervisor's have been presented laws that already exist and have been asked to have the County adopt those laws. It was suggested that even though the Legislature and the DNR have not been inclined to regulate industrial agriculture, the County could by adopting already existing Federal laws. Those laws are:

1. CERCLA provision of Superfund: Community Right to Know. Under this law monitoring equipment, per EPA regulations, would need to be installed at each confinement site and the EPA would need to be contacted each day that the facility discharges more than 100 lbs of ammonia into the atmosphere. The Oklahoma Attorney General is already using this law in an action against Tyson.

2. The federal "Confined Spaces Regulations" can be enforced by OSHA through their "General Duty Clause". This clause comes into effect if a serious hazard is identified. Since we know that over 20 Iowans have been killed from poison gasses in confinements, and that many studies show serious health effects to people from the emission of those poison gasses, the latest of which is the U. of Iowa study showing 55.8% of children on farms with confinements have asthma, these "recognized hazards" trigger OSHA's "general duty clause" and allow OSHA to regulated these confinements. We asked the County to adopt OSHA's Confined Spaces Regulations and General Duty Clause. It seems reasonable when all of the wastewater facilities and sewer systems in Winneshiek County are already regulated under these laws.

Further, knowing that there is a cumulative negative effect on the air in NE Iowa because of all the new confinements, the expansion of existing confinements, and new ethanol plants (another ethanol plant, sited between Postville and Monona, has recently applied for a permit), the Supervisors and the County Board of Health could join with their counterparts in Allamakee, Clayton and Fayette County's and ask for a moratorium on any further confinement or ethanol plant building or expansion until an Environmental Impact Statement Study was completed.

I have been going to Supervisor's meetings concerning hog confinements since 1995. In that time, I have never heard a neighbor say they wanted a confinement sited next to them. And, the stories from those who were already living next to confinements literally made people cry. There have been calls since that time till now for our Supervisors to do something to protect those who have the least ability to protect themselves. And yet in all that time, whoever the Supervisor's have been, there has been nothing done to protect the people of Winneshiek County from poison gasses emanating from confinements. To me, that shows a lack of compassion, courage and statesmanship. And, I can only wonder what the Supervisors actually hear when they listen to those who are, and will be, most affected by confinements. It is simply a shame.

Bob Watson
Rural Decorah

Iowa's farming model is poisonous (DSM Register 4-07)

Dear Editor,

A couple of months ago it was reported in the Register that the $800,000.00 fine imposed against Insituform as a result of the deaths of two of their employees from hydrogen-sulfide poisoning while working in the Des Moines sewer system was upheld. It is curious that for the 25 plus people killed from hydrogen-sulfide poisoning in hog confinements in Iowa, no company has ever been fined. Fecal waste in a closed structure always creates the poison gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia, no matter if it is in sewers or in agricultural confinements.

Contrary to the confinement deaths and 40 years of scientific studies showing the adverse affects on human health from these poison gasses, it now seems that what is left of the EPA under the Bush Administration wants us to believe that these gasses aren't really poisonous when they come from agriculture. ("EPA wants exemption for livestock farms", Des Moines Register)

Rural Iowans are being sacrificed because corporate America has chosen a petro-chemical/industrial model of agriculture which favors inputs and structures, over the environmentally and human health benign biological model which favors farmers' labor and management. And now we are to grant a free pass for all the pollution, death and disease that comes with this industrial model. Where is the moral outrage at this state of affairs?

Rural Schools, Confinements and Poison Gasses. (March 2007)

This talk will explore the relationship between rural schools, confinements (with their constantly exhausting poison gasses), and the incidence of airborne diseases in children due to their proximity to these confinements. It will give you an understanding of the technology which creates ammonia and hydrogen-sulfide, and how you can at least protect children when they are inside your school buildings.

What follows is an important argument in that it gives a structure to understand generally all the particular community problems when a confinement moves into the neighborhood. It becomes not an argument about farming, but about industrial processes and their resultant poisons and how the community is affected by them.

Recognizing the larger ecological problem being that we have adopted industrial technologies for agricultural use, it is a shame that petro-chemical/industrial agriculture is portrayed by corporate agricultural entities and some politicians as nothing more than what farming has always been. Any defense of industrial agriculture, based on the notion that this is how agriculture has always operated in the past, is rendered moot because industrial processes, new to agriculture and never intended for use outside of strict regulation, have only recently been adopted for use in the unregulated area of agriculture. In today's confinements, versus farms of 50 years ago, we see diseases and deaths to both animals and humans because we are no longer dealing with composted manure spread to fertilize the soil, but are instead dealing with a poison liquid which has been made toxic through cooking for months in a septic tank, lagoon or pit. The poison gases hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia are constantly generated from this untreated fecal waste and are continuously blown into the air of the neighborhood from the inside of the confinement building. We have people working in a hazardous workplace ignorant of the dangers because agriculture has been, by law, exempted from the regulations which would educate and protect them. People in the neighborhoods of confinements are in a similar situation as they are repeatedly told this is only a nuisance and they do not have the protections from these poisons afforded all other citizens where similar circumstances exist.

Confinements and city sewers have the same poison gasses and are the same technology. Confinements and sewers both are closed structures. They both have untreated fecal waste in them. That waste constantly generates the poison gases hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia in both confinements and sewers. People and animals need constant ventilation to survive in either a confinement or a sewer. The diseases and causes of deaths from those gasses are the same in sewers and confinements. Confinements and sewers are the same technology.

There are two major management differences. First, city sewers are designed to contain their poison gasses while confinements, having literally turned sewers on their head, are designed to constantly blow those poison gasses out into the surrounding neighborhood. Think of confinements as upside down sewers that exhaust their poisons so that the pigs or chickens inside can stay alive, which people in the neighborhood then have to breathe.

The second major difference is that city sewers are regulated by law, the federal "Confined Spaces Regulations". By not regulating these gasses in agriculture there is no education and training about, and protection from, a hazardous work place; and there are no regulations protecting the public from these poisons from confinements as there are everywhere else in America where fecal waste producing hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia gases exist in a closed structure.

All international, national and state health regulatory agencies - World Health Organization, Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Health and Safety Administration to name some - know that hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia are dangerous to people. The science is settled on this issue, and we have understood the toxicology of those gasses since the 1950's. In fact, it is an irony that one of the first studies to set an 8 hour limit for human exposure to ammonia was a 1960 OSHA study done on pigs.

Among many confinement studies over the last 30 years, a study in Utah simply looked at hospital records pre- and post-confinement introduction into a community. Those records show clearly a tripling of illnesses generally associated with exposure to hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia. These illnesses are a direct result of the constant venting by those confinements of the poison gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia into the neighborhoods around those confinements, and the contamination of the neighborhoods' sources of drinking water by those confinements.

"Proximity of children to confinements" studies (University of Iowa's Dr. Joel Kline http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/full/129/6/1486 proximity to rural schools, James Merchant of the University of Iowa on asthma in children who live on a farm with a confinement http://www.ehponline.org/members/2004/7240/7240.pdf ) done since 2004 show even more alarming results. Iowa's overall rate of asthma is about 6.7%. To generalize, it has been found that if a rural school has a confinement within 10 miles, 11.7% of the children have asthma - nearly twice the state rate. If a confinement is ½ mile away from a school, 24.6% of children have asthma - four times the state rate. And if you are a kid unlucky enough to live on a farm with a confinement, there is a 55.8% chance you will have asthma - nine times the state rate.

We have been raising pigs for between 7000 and 9000 years. We know how to raise animals in a manner benign to human health and the environment. It is unconscionable to do it otherwise. But, we seem to live in a state where even though we know it is immoral to poison our children, it is not illegal.

So what can be done to at least protect rural school children while they are in school buildings? In speaking with a civil engineer about this problem he pointed me to Koch Filter information. Page 2 talks about "Specialized Carbon Media" for ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, http://www.kochfilter.com/pdf/detailed/d_prod_12.pdf . I have included the link so that you can give this information to a local HVAC business so that they can adapt your schools ventilation system to accept this carbon filter. In that way you will at least protect the children from poison gasses while they are inside your buildings.

Bob Watson

Risks of animal confinements are known. (Des Moines Register 12-7-06.)

Dear Editor,

Pork industry representatives seem to have a reality disconnect. All international, national and state health regulatory agencies - World Health Organization, Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Health and Safety Administration to name some - know that hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia are dangerous to people. The science is settled on this issue, and we have understood the toxicology of those gasses since the 1950's. In fact, it is an irony that one of the first studies to set an 8 hour limit for human exposure to ammonia was a 1960 OSHA study done on pigs.

"Proximity of children to confinements" studies done since 2004 show even more alarming results. Iowa's overall rate of asthma is about 6.7%. To generalize, it has been found that if a rural school has a confinement within 10 miles, 11.7% of the children have asthma - twice the state rate. If a confinement is ½ mile away from a school, 24.6% of children have asthma - four times the state rate. And if you are a kid unlucky enough to live on a farm with a confinement, there is a 55.8% chance you will have asthma - nine times the state rate.

We have been raising pigs for between 7000 and 9000 years. We know how to raise animals in a manner benign to human health and the environment. It is unconscionable to do it otherwise. But, we seem to live in a state where even though we know it is immoral to poison our children, it is not illegal.

Bob Watson
Decorah

To: City Council.
Re: Request for Rural/Urban Cooperation.

Dear Council,

My name is Bob Watson. Because I would like a written response from the Council to the request I am making today, this request will be in written form. After reading it to you, I will give it to you.

We hear much about rural and urban Iowans working together to solve problems that we have in Iowa. It is in that spirit of cooperation that I am here today. Many times it is necessary to experience something to actually understand it. I am going to ask that you and your children share with rural Iowan's and their children an ongoing rural experience. Hopefully, once you share that experience, we can work together in resolving this issue.

I will briefly describe the experience and its' effects on rural people and their children. I will then talk about what technology is in operation in your city which would allow you to share this experience. I will mention how you can easily modify that technology so that you can share the experience. And, finally, I will formally ask you to share in that experience.

Among many confinement studies over the last 30 years, a study in Utah simply looked at hospital records pre- and post-confinement introduction into a community. Those records show clearly a tripling of illnesses generally associated with exposure to hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia. These illnesses are a direct result of the constant venting by those confinements of the poison gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia into the neighborhoods around those confinements, and the contamination of the neighborhoods' sources of drinking water by those confinements.

A study concerning proximity of confinements to rural schools in Iowa and the incidence of asthma among those schools students was conducted by the University of Iowa's Dr. Joel Kline http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/full/129/6/1486 . The overall rate of physician-diagnosed asthma in Iowa is about 6.7%. Two rural schools were in the study. One school had no confinement closer than 10 miles, and the other, a NE Iowa school, was ½ mile from a confinement. In the school which was 10 miles away from a confinement, 11.7% of the students were found to have asthma, double the Iowa rate. In the school which was only a ½ mile from a confinement, 24.6% of the students were found to have asthma, four times the Iowa rate.

In a recent study by James Merchant of the University of Iowa on asthma in children who live on a farm with a confinement http://www.ehponline.org/members/2004/7240/7240.pdf , it was found that after all other factors were accounted for, a shocking 55.8% of those children had asthma as a direct result of living on that farm with that confinement, nine times the Iowa rate for asthma. This study also found that antibiotics from the confinements are particularized and blown into the air along with the poison gases. We are constantly breathing not only poison gases from confinements but also antibiotics.

These are astounding rates of asthma, 11.7%-24.6%-55.8%, and increases of other illnesses for people, especially children, in rural Iowa who are in proximity to confinements.

All international, national and state health regulatory agencies, World Health Organization - Environmental Protection Agency - Occupational Health and Safety Agency to name some, know that hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia are dangerous to people. There is no argument about that danger; the science is settled on this issue. We see the dangerous results of exposure to those gasses in the rates of asthma and other illnesses in people in the rural areas of Iowa.

Now, how is it that you and your children have the capability to share in this experience? What technology exists in a city which constantly creates the poison gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia? The answer is - your sewers.

How do we know confinements and sewers are the same technology? Confinements and sewers both are closed structures. They both have untreated fecal waste in them. That waste constantly generates the poison gases hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia in both confinements and sewers. People and animals need constant ventilation to survive in either a confinement or a sewer. The diseases and causes of deaths from those gasses are the same in sewers and confinements. That is how we know confinements and sewers are the same technology.

There are two major management differences. City sewers are designed to contain their poison gasses while confinements, having literally turned sewers on their head, are designed to constantly blow those poison gasses out into the surrounding neighborhood. Think of confinements as upside down sewers that exhaust their poisons, which people in the neighborhood then have to breathe, so that the pigs or chickens inside can stay alive. The second major difference is that your sewers are regulated by law.

So, how can you modify your sewers so that you and your children can share in the experience of having poison sewer gasses in your neighborhoods? And, this is my formal request of you today: Take the manhole covers off your sewers, put blowers down in those sewers and blow the poison sewer gasses out into your neighborhoods. After experiencing those poison sewer gasses and their health effects, hopefully, in the spirit of rural/urban cooperation, you will then want to work with your rural neighbors to resolve this issue.

Because part of what I am doing is documenting who can and cannot have these gasses in their neighborhoods, if you think sewer gasses in your neighborhoods might not be a good idea, or, if you think there might be some law, or other reasons, prohibiting you from blowing poison gasses into your neighborhoods, I would ask that you include what those reasons might be in your written response to my request. There are professionals employed by this city who work with these poisons on a daily basis. Your Wastewater Superintendent, Collection System Supervisor, or whoever keeps you in OSHA compliance, could tell you why my request should or shouldn't be granted.

Thank you very much for your time and for considering my request that you and your children share in the continuing rural experience of breathing poison sewer gasses. (I will answer any questions you may have.)

Bob Watson

2736 Lannon Hill Rd
Decorah, IA 52101
563-382-5848

Confinement strategy using the "Council Request"

The following will help explain the history and perspective which allows the "Council Request" to be seen as a "peace and justice" issue. This perspective also negates the need to argue about agriculture, farmers, animals, etc. when talking about confinements. You won't have to fight with anyone and will simply be talking about poison gasses and what those gasses are doing to people in proximity to confinements, especially to children. This issue has always been a "peace and justice" issue, it just has taken awhile to sort through the spin to become clear about the actual problems.

If you are in Iowa, please take the "Council Request" to your City Council, read it for me, and have the Council send the written response to me. I will try to get to most of the larger cities in Iowa myself. If you are in a larger city and know someone on your Council who could make this process easier for me, please contact me. If you are in a smaller community and would like me to come to your council anyway, please let me know.

The "Council Request" is fairly generic. This is not intended just for Iowa. If you are in another state, you can change who the "Request" should be sent to, change the "state" in the text, and use it in your state as a way to fight confinements.

There are two levels at work in the "Council Request". On one level, I am actually looking for partners in this issue. Hence the request to have the entire population share in this experience. On another level, I am trying to document who is protected by law from these gasses and who is not; which is why the request is formal and asks for a written response.

I do not expect to have any town or city actually take up the request. What I plan on doing with the written "we decline" responses is to take them to the Legislature, point out that it is illegal for half the population to have these poison gasses in their neighborhoods (urban), and illegal for the other half (rural) "not" to have them in their neighborhoods. The Legislature will then need to deal with that conundrum.

For a more complete history of what is actually going on with confinements as industrial technology, you can go to www.oneota.net/~watsoncampaign or google "Civilized and Inclusive", and click on chapter 6. A short version of chapter 6 and the history leading up to the "Request" perspective includes the following information:

What follows is an important argument in that it gives a structure to understand generally all the particular community problems when a confinement moves into the neighborhood. It becomes not an argument about farming, but about industrial processes and their resultant poisons and how the community is affected by them.

Recognizing the larger ecological problem being that we have adopted industrial technologies for agricultural use, it is a shame that petro-chemical/industrial agriculture is portrayed by corporate agricultural entities and some politicians as nothing more than what farming has always been. Any defense of industrial agriculture, based on the notion that this is how agriculture has always operated in the past, is rendered moot because industrial processes, new to agriculture and never intended for use outside of strict regulation, have only recently been adopted for use in the unregulated area of agriculture. In today's confinements, versus farms of 50 years ago, we see diseases and deaths to both animals and humans because we are no longer dealing with composted manure spread to fertilize the soil, but are instead dealing with a poison liquid which has been made toxic through cooking for months in a septic tank, lagoon or pit. The poison gases hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia are constantly generated from this untreated fecal waste and are continuously blown into the air of the neighborhood from the inside of the confinement building. We have people working in a hazardous workplace ignorant of the dangers because agriculture has been, by law, exempted from the regulations which would educate and protect them. People in the neighborhoods of confinements are in a similar situation as they are repeatedly told this is only a nuisance and they do not have the protections from these poisons afforded all other citizens where similar circumstances exist.

In every sector of America where fecal waste, constantly generating the poison gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia, exists in a closed structure the federal "Confined Spaces Regulations" are the controlling laws, except in agriculture. How do we know they should be applied here too? In logic, there is an argument: if a=b and b=c, then a=c. If hog confinements and sewer pipes both are closed structures, if they both have untreated fecal waste in them, if that waste constantly generates the poison gases hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia, if the causes of diseases and deaths from those gasses are the same, if you need constant ventilation to survive in either a confinement or a sewer pipe, then confinements and sewer pipes are the same. The differences are sewers contain the poison gasses while confinements blow them into the surrounding neighborhood; the waste in sewers is ultimately treated while the confinements don't get their waste treated (for those who tout that some sort of treatment would solve the problems with confinements let me point out that that would make no difference to air pollution because the venting of poison gases to the atmosphere is an issue separate from and prior to any treatment); there is no federal 'Confined Spaces Regulation' providing for education and training about, and protections from, a hazardous work place; and there are no regulations protecting the public from these poisons from confinements as there is in sewers and as there is everywhere else in America where fecal waste producing hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia gases exist in a closed structure.

With this information we begin to understand the confinement issue as a "peace and justice" issue. Normally "peace and justice" work has to do with defending those who have no power, sophistication, ability, understanding or resources to defend themselves. The lack of laws, the bombardment of spin, both on those directly affected and those who would otherwise know better saying this is just agriculture, and the resultant life threatening consequences makes this a most pressing "peace and justice" issue in Iowa.

Because laws are being ignored and because agriculture has been exempted from most regulatory laws which would normally control actions and protect people, we are left with appealing to morals and ethics to affect what is happening to our environment and to our people.

For the purpose of discussion I will mean "moral" to be about life, health and mortality, and "ethics" in this context will be about interactions between beings. The specific moral and ethical dimensions I would like you to keep in mind as you think about this issue are:

Moral implications of using an inherently poisonous (petro-chemical/industrial) model of agriculture;

Ethical implications of using an inherently poisonous model of agriculture when benign models exist;

Ethical implications of transferring highly regulated industrial technologies into the unregulated (by law) area of agriculture;

Ethical implications of having no conversation on the use of these models in the national political arena where we make these choices;

Moral implications of having laws which lead directly to the poisoning of people resulting in disease and death;

Ethical implications of using laws to take away protection of people in the case of petro-chemical/industrial agriculture, when in every other sector of America where these conditions exist, laws protect people;

Ethical implications of laws which are internally absurd being used to deny protections both to people and the environment;

Moral implications of one sector of society taking away clean air and water for all other sectors (read people) through daily operation and pollution events.

Please print the attached "Council Request", read it to and give it to your City Council, and ask them to send their written response to me. For those of you who do not open attachments, the "Council Request" text follows below this email.

Thank you for helping in bringing this "peace and justice" issue closer to a resolution. Please forward this email or post it to your website.

Stressing Iowa's Environment: An Argument, A Snapshot, An Overview
Sinkholes and Confinements in Karst Topography

We live in a state where even though we know it is immoral to poison your neighbor, it is not illegal.

Because we have adopted petro-chemical (row crop)/ industrial (confinement) agriculture as our dominant model of agriculture over the last 50 years, rural America has become a sacrifice area.

There are no cities or towns in Iowa that I am aware of that take their manhole covers off of their sewers, put blowers down in the sewers, and blow those poison sewer gasses up into the air over those cities. There are obvious health reasons why this is not allowed. Knowing that these same poison sewer gasses are being produced by confinements, why do we allow these poison gasses to be blown into our rural neighborhoods?

By using two particular examples of confinements in karst, the larger general context of petro-chemical/industrial agriculture's detrimental environmental and ecological effects will come into focus. One of the confinements discussed is a chicken confinement which, because of multiple buildings on each site measuring 60 feet by 620 feet each and each building containing 49,999 birds, raises the issues of scale, "human induced sinkholes", antibiotic resistance through integrons in the beds, and bird flu risk among others. These chicken confinements belong to Cottonballs whose owners also own Agriprosessors in Postville. The hog confinement example is referred to locally as the St. Bridget's Catholic Church confinement and this confinement highlights the loss of the legal requirement of having a 1000 foot separation distance between a confinement and a sinkhole in karst.

Sinkholes, a major feature of karst topography, besides appearing out of the blue, are a direct conduit to underground streams, rivers, springs and aquifers (which are one of our public sources of clean drinking water). Think of sinkholes as enablers of environmental disaster if there were a confinement pollution event close by.

The karst topography in much of the Upper Iowa River Watershed and the rest of Northeast Iowa consists of fractured bedrock overlain by a thin layer of soil. In karst areas, surface water travels rapidly and unfiltered through fractures in the bedrock, through sinkholes, and through stream sinks and can quickly mix with groundwater.

The dynamic mixing of surface and groundwater makes karst areas particularly susceptible to groundwater contamination. In addition, surface water that enters the ground through a sinkhole can re-emerge through springs and seeps many miles away from where it originally went under ground, making it difficult to identify the original source of impairment or pollution.

Here are two slides which will give a little context. (Show slide #1 and #2). Slide #1 shows the tilt of the aquifers under Iowa. Slide #2 shows the areas of fractured bedrock and sinkholes. This gives you a good idea of the intersection of the aquifers and sinkhole in karst. And, illustrates fairly clearly that what we flush in Northeast Iowa you ultimately drink.

Recognizing the larger ecological problem being that we have adopted industrial technologies for agricultural use, it is a shame that petro-chemical/industrial agriculture is portrayed by corporate agricultural entities and some politicians as nothing more than what farming has always been. Any defense of industrial agriculture, based on the notion that this is how agriculture has always operated in the past, is rendered moot because industrial processes, new to agriculture and never intended for use outside of strict regulation, have only recently been adopted for use in the unregulated area of agriculture. In today's confinements, versus farms of 50 years ago, we see diseases and deaths to both animals and humans because we are no longer dealing with composted manure spread to fertilize the soil, but are instead dealing with a poison liquid which has been made toxic through cooking for months in a septic tank, lagoon or pit. The poison gases hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia are constantly generated from this untreated fecal waste and are continuously blown into the air of the neighborhood from the inside of the confinement building. We have people working in a hazardous workplace ignorant of the dangers because agriculture has been, by law, exempted from the regulations which would educate and protect them. People in the neighborhoods of confinements are in a similar situation as they are repeatedly told this is only a nuisance and they do not have the protections from these poisons afforded all other citizens where similar circumstances exist.

This is an important argument in that it gives a structure to understand generally all the particular community problems when a confinement moves into the neighborhood. It becomes not an argument about farming, but about industrial processes and their resultant poisons and how the community is affected by them.

In every sector of America where fecal waste, constantly generating the poison gasses hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia, exists in a closed structure the federal "Confined Spaces Regulations" are the controlling laws, except in agriculture. How do we know they should be applied here too? In logic, there is an argument: if a=b and b=c, then a=c. If hog confinements and sewer pipes both are closed structures, if they both have untreated fecal waste in them, if that waste constantly generates the poison gases hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia, if the causes of diseases and deaths from those gasses are the same, if you need constant ventilation to survive in either a confinement or a sewer pipe, then confinements and sewer pipes are the same. The differences are sewers contain the poison gasses while confinements blow them into the surrounding neighborhood; the waste in sewers is ultimately treated while the confinements don't get their waste treated (for those who tout that some sort of treatment would solve the problems with confinements let me point out that that would make no difference to air pollution because the venting of poison gases to the atmosphere is an issue separate from and prior to any treatment); there is no federal 'Confined Spaces Regulation' providing for education and training about, and protections from, a hazardous work place; and there are no regulations protecting the public from these poisons from confinements as there is in sewers and as there is everywhere else in America where fecal waste producing hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia gases exist in a closed structure.

In Iowa law there is supposed to be a 1000 foot separation distance between sinkholes and confinements in NE Iowa's karst topography. That separation distance gives the public some assurance that their public water supply, aquifers, will not be subject to a pollution event from an industrial agricultural confinement. Not so anymore. Because there are so many places a proposed new confinement would be within 1000 feet of a sinkhole, and therefore not allowed, some pork producers asked our local legislators, Chuck Gipp and Mark Zieman, to change the law. In 2002 they did. SF 2293 repealed the section in 455B which had, in part, to do with separation distance from sinkholes. A new provision for "secondary containment structures" allowed building confinements within the 1000 foot minimum.

When confinements started being put in next to sinkholes (the St Bridget's confinement), we asked the DNR how that could be when there was supposed to be a 1000 foot separation. The DNR held an upper level management meeting where this was discussed. At that meeting the DNR lawyers said that because of the way the new law was written, a variance granted for the 1000 foot minimum if a "secondary containment structure" was put in place, there was "effectively no longer any separation distance between sinkholes and confinements". A confinement could now be built right next to a sinkhole. Oddly, no one at that DNR meeting seemed to think they might want to look into how or why this change to the safety of the public's water supply happened.

It happened because some producers in Allamakee County, which is extremely hilly, were looking for a way to expand their herds. They asked their legislators to grant a variance to the minimum separation distance law if a sinkhole within the separation distance was actually on the other side of a ridge in another mini-watershed.

There are two problems with this change in the law. One problem is thinking just because a sinkhole is over a hill it isn't going to be impacted by any pollution events within 1000 ft. And the second problem is that the language of the changed law left out the words "in another watershed", which was the only variance the producers were actually asking for; and by being left out of the new language allowed confinements to be sited uphill from and right next to existing sinkholes.

The concept of "secondary containment" comes from the EPA's regulation of the petroleum industry. It originally meant an earthen berm 360 degrees around a set of above ground tanks capable of holding 150% of the largest tank. The rules that were put in place to carry out the Iowa law say the berm must contain 120% capacity of an above grade (above ground) storage structure. In karst, because of sinkholes, confinements are required to have underground tanks and earthen lagoons for manure storage are not allowed. But, "secondary containment" in karst now means a pit dug on one side of the building big enough to hold 50% of the manure. How this ground level pit is supposed to contain a leak from an underground tank is unknown. How any spill is supposed to happen on only that one side of the building is unknown. And, how something illegal in karst for manure storage because of sinkholes, namely an earthen structure (the pit), allows you to build right next to a sinkhole in karst is also unknown.

Somehow in karst we have not only lost minimum separation distance to sinkholes, but also the 120% capacity has become 50%, and the berm calculation is based on above ground storage, which is not allowed in karst. If you carry out the berm calculation, because there is no above grade storage to multiply out, the answer always turns out to be zero. This is clearly an absurd situation and when I pointed this out to Jeff Vonk he said he wasn't concerned that the calculation was absurd because the tanks were concrete. This is a naïve perspective in light of what hydrogen-sulfide does to any concrete tank and what Mother Nature has shown us she thinks of our technology lately.

We are in real danger when our legislators are unable to understand the effects of laws they pass. And when they, and our regulatory officials, are apprised of those effects and are unwilling to reinsert the provisions which protect the public, we are courting disaster.

Am I being Chicken Little crying that the sky is going to fall? If we know what has happened when we build waste storage in karst topography when no sinkholes are apparent (show pictures 1 and 2 of lagoon sinkhole events), then why would we be so stupid as to risk ruining our public water by sighting waste storage right next to a known sinkhole?

We are having a running argument with the State Geologist, Bob Libra, about the nature of karst, Iowa's karst, and what are referred to as "human induced sinkholes". Bob said he doesn't attend the annual "Sinkhole Conferences" (where last year half the papers presented were about "human induced sinkholes") because Iowa's karst is not the same as other karst. (show Garnavillo) Well, here is Garnavillo's lagoon. I guess our karst is not so different from other karst areas after all.

This is probably a good time to bring in the chicken confinement example since what we are dealing with there is a "human induced sinkhole" and the pollution events which that sinkhole has caused.

During site preparation for a Cottonballs LLC industrial broiler confinement site (#1) in Winneshiek County, the contractor doing the work breached a shallow level aquifer. This was done either when leveling off the tops of two hills to create room for two 60' by 620' buildings and the road around them, or when they were scraping away bedrock in the area in between where the buildings would be (down to rock that their equipment could no longer scrape through) for surface drainage.

The contractor admitted to Mike Meyer that the pollution in Mike's never-before-polluted-spring was caused by his site work and that they attempted to repair the breached aquifer by putting dirt on it. Mike had tested his spring the week before and did so after it turned milky yellow and also took numerous pictures. Incidentally, the test results from the Iowa Hygienic Lab comments stated the water was no longer safe for drinking and the springs' aquifer must have been disturbed somehow and that disturbance should be discovered and corrected.

There have now been seven pollution events in the Meyer spring following directly on the heels of four construction events at Cottonballs' sites 1 and 2. And, an eighth event of a new natural sinkhole opening up down the drainage of site #2.

First event: Meyer spring inundated with limestone residue following initial scraping of bedrock at site 1 down to rock that no longer could be dug out.

Second event: black dirt put over area at site 1 to try to cover up the "human induced" sinkhole washed through to the Meyer spring.

Third event: well drilling foam from well being drilled on site 2 washed through to Meyer spring.

Fourth event: more foam coming through to the spring.

Fifth event: the DNR said that a certain type of soil needed to be put on the area of the breach and that would stop the flow of the sediment to the spring. That soil washed through into the spring with the first 1" plus rain of the season.

Sixth event: more of that new soil washed through to the spring with this last weekend's rain.

Seventh event: on Wednesday, June 21st, after a 1.7" rain event, sediment pollution of the soil which was supposed to close everything back up came through to the spring. This is the third time the special soil has washed through to the spring.

Eighth event: a new natural sinkhole has opened up down the drainage slope from site 2.

Ninth event: the floor of one of the buildings has remained wet. The fans have been on for over a month (this is July 28th) trying to dry the floor out. Remember that broilers must have a dirt floor. We believe this drying problem is from creating a seep/spring along with the "human induced sinkhole" when the aquifer was originally breached. They have effectively built on a spring and the floor will probably always have water creeping through it.

There were two more pollution events to the spring in August of '06. August 6th sediment pollution to the spring from a 1.1" rain'; and August 14th a very cloudy lime sediment event to the spring from a 1.7" rain. There have now been nine direct pollution events to the spring from site 1 and site 2.

Our meetings with the DNR about this site have been less than satisfying for a number of reasons.

The Legislature has never given the DNR any authority to stop a pollution event from happening. The DNR must wait for pollution to happen before doing anything.

Even though grading at site 1 has created "sinkhole like pollution events" in the Meyer spring, we can't get the State Geologist to agree that a "human induced sinkhole" was created at site 1. If the DNR did agree that this was a sinkhole, site 1 could not be used for any confinement. Half the papers presented at last years 10th Annual Sinkhole Conference held in San Antonio Texas were about "human induced sinkholes"

The DNR will not stop construction at site 1 until conclusive evidence is found one way or the other whether a sinkhole now exists there.

The DNR will not accept responsibility for monitoring site 1, and will not continue to test water at the Meyer spring. They say those responsibilities are Mike Meyer's even though Iowa law has been changed and no sample collected by a private citizen, Iowater trained or not, even tested at an accredited lab, is allowed in court proceedings.

The State says the DNR has authority in cases like this. Even though the DNR can't, or won't, do anything, the State will not allow the County protect the neighbor's water.

There are many laws which exist to control situations like this and other confinement type structures. They are just not allowed to be used to protect people when agriculture is involved.

Even though no laws exist for CAFO's to control their poison gas discharges, laws exist which make CAFO's responsible for monitoring and reporting to the EPA those discharges. These planned chicken confinement facilities in Winneshiek County will be above the threshold which requires EPA notification of ammonia discharges (CERCLA provision of Superfund: Community Right to Know).

The threshold for EPA notification of ammonia discharge of 100 lbs/day is reached by a facility when there are approximately 35,000 broilers in a building. This proposal will have 49,999 broilers in each building. Thus, monitoring equipment per EPA regulations should be installed in each building and the EPA should be contacted each day that the facility discharges more than 100 lbs of ammonia into the atmosphere. No such provisions have been required by the State. We have requested that our County adopt the Superfund's CERCLA provisions.

We are still trying to get people to understand that, because of scale, these chicken confinements will always cause problems in karst topography.

Scientists have long known that waste beds of commercial chicken houses abound with potentially dangerous bacteria. In April '05 a team led by microbiologist Anne Summers of the University of Georgia reported that the beds are also littered with integrons, genes that can render those bacteria impervious to several antibiotics at once, making them nearly impossible to kill.

For 13 weeks, Summers and her colleagues sampled feces, skin, feathers, and other organic material from two major commercial chicken houses in Georgia. The scientists discovered high numbers of integrons not only in bacteria such as E coli and salmonella but also in germs that were previously assumed to be free of the resistance-forming genes, such as staphylococci. The result suggests that integrons are much more common, both in animals and the humans who handle them, than previously thought.

Microbiologists believe that integrons have existed for eons but took on their current role only after the development of the first antibiotics, which gave an advantage to microbes that could collect the resistance genes. These gene snippets spread when their bacterial hosts reproduce or acquire them from nearby dead cells. Moreover, integrons travel easily between humans, pets, livestock, and their wastes via bacteria that are inhaled or eaten. I Quote: "We continually ingest bacteria from uncooked food, from our pets, from intimate behavior with other humans, and from putting our unwashed hands into our noses or mouths," Summers says. "This is a warning bell." It explains why antibiotic resistance spreads so quickly and extensively after drugs are introduced." End Quote. It takes six weeks for these bugs to make their way into the bodies of the workers and neighbors in and around these confinements, possibly leaving them with no way to fight diseases normally treatable with antibiotics.

There are literally hundreds of studies that have been done on the effects of hog confinements on people and animals over the last 45 years. Ironically, because some studies to set human limits for these gases were done on pigs, we know that animals are susceptible to the same diseases from confinements as people. There may be an argument by some about the "good science" of all those studies, but there can be no argument about the government's own studies (Utah) culling hospital records, pre- and post-confinement introduction into a community, which show clearly a tripling of those illnesses generally associated with exposure to hydrogen-sulfide and ammonia. These are a direct result of the constant venting of those poison gasses into the neighborhood and the contamination of the sources of water. Add to that, records which show human mortality from hydrogen-sulfide poisoning four times higher in Iowa in agriculture than in the regulated wastewater industry, and a need for public health protection from confinements becomes more than obvious.

A proximity study of confinements to rural schools in Iowa and the incidence of asthma among those students was conducted by the University of Iowa's Dr. Joel Kline. The overall rate of physician-diagnosed asthma in Iowa is about 6.7%. Two rural schools were in the study. One had no confinement closer than 10 miles, and the other was ½ mile from a confinement. The students in the school which was 10 miles away from a confinement were found to have 11.7%, or double the Iowa rate for asthma. 24.6% of the students in the school which was only a ½ mile from a confinement were found to have asthma, four times the Iowa rate.

In a recent study by James Merchant of the University of Iowa on asthma in children who live on a farm with a CAFO http://www.ehponline.org/members/2004/7240/7240.pdf , it was found that after all other factors were accounted for, a shocking 55.8% of those children had asthma as a direct result of living on that farm with that CAFO. This study also found that antibiotics from the confinements are aerosol-ized and blown into the air along with the poison gases. We are breathing not only poison gases from these confinements but also antibiotics.

These are astounding rates of asthma, 11.7%-24.6%-55.8%, for people and children in rural Iowa who are in proximity to confinements.

Explanations of the Midwest wide cloud of ammonia haze, concentrated over Iowa, conveniently leave out as sources of that haze the over 10,000 CAFO's and open feedlots which constantly (24/7) spew ammonia into the atmosphere. (show picture) The authors of this map who use this information in their presentations do attribute the ammonia to animal feeding operations; both CAFO's and open feedlots. The DNR has had conversations about and knows that when it rains and the ammonia precipitates out of the air as ammonium nitrate, that amount of ammonium nitrate is a significant contributor to the EPA imposed limit where ammonia is no longer a nutrient, but becomes a pollutant in our surface waters. In other words, farmers don't need to put down ammonia fertilizer in Iowa, they just need it to rain.

Finally let me address whether or not through conservation methods petro-chemical/industrial agriculture can be saved from itself. I think the answer is no. Because there are no soil building practices inherent in petro-chemical/industrial agriculture, if we don't change the model we will ultimately run out of soil. Because of our hilly topography, this is already happening in Northeast Iowa. Even in areas where we have adopted no-till practices, we are still losing 5.5 tons of soil/acre/year. Because of petro-chemical/industrial agricultures very nature we will always be putting chemicals from fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides into the environment. We will always be putting toxic waste from confinements into the air and water. We will always have the anti-biotic resistance problem. And, because we have tiled most of the land, and because we are technically farming subsoil which is no longer rich in organic life capable of treating and using our waste, we will always have harmful organisms and poisons going through those tiles directly into our surface and groundwater. Because of these reasons, petro-chemical/industrial agriculture is ultimately a dead end. Only through a move to different models of agriculture can we expect to attain a clean and healthy agriculture and environment.

There are benign models of agriculture which exist. By adopting these models we not only build soil and clean up the environment, but because that type of farming uses labor and management rather than structures and inputs, we put more farmers back on the land.

Iowa Code 2003: Section 455E.5 Groundwater protection policies. #3 All persons in the state have the right to have their lawful use of groundwater unimpaired by the activities of any person which render the water unsafe or unpotable. #4 All persons in the state have the duty to conduct their activities so as to prevent the release of contaminants into groundwater. These, and the other sections of 455E.5, seem rather clear.

Because these laws are being ignored and because agriculture has been exempted from most regulatory laws which would normally control actions and protect people, we are left with appealing to morals and ethics to affect what is happening to our environment and to our people.

For the purpose of this discussion I will mean moral to be about life, health and mortality, and ethics in this context will be about interactions between beings. The specific moral and ethical dimensions I would like you to keep in mind as you think about what I have presented here are:

Moral implications of using an inherently poisonous (petro-chemical/industrial) model of agriculture;

Ethical implications of using an inherently poisonous model of agriculture when benign models exist;

Ethical implications of transferring highly regulated industrial technologies into the unregulated (by law) area of agriculture;

Ethical implications of having no conversation on the use of these models in the national political arena where we make these choices;

Moral implications of having laws which lead directly to the poisoning of people resulting in disease and death;

Ethical implications of using laws to take away protection of people in the case of petro-chemical/industrial agriculture, when in every other sector of America where these conditions exist, laws protect people;

Ethical implications of laws which are internally absurd being used to deny protections both to people and the environment;

Moral implications of one sector of society taking away clean air and water for all other sectors (read people) through daily operation and pollution events.

Thank you.

Public Safety (1-1-06)

In Iowa law there is supposed to be a 1000 foot separation distance between sinkholes and confinements in NE Iowa's karst topography. That separation distance gives the public some assurance that their public water supply, aquifers, will not be subject to a pollution event from an industrial agricultural confinement. Not so anymore. Because there are so many places a proposed new confinement would be within 1000 feet of a sinkhole, and therefore not allowed, the pork producers asked our local legislators, Chuck Gipp and Mark Zieman, to change the law. In 2002 they did. SF 2293 repealed the section in 455B which had, in part, to do with separation distance from sinkholes. A new provision for "secondary containment structures" allowed building confinements within the 1000 foot minimum and that new language is, I think, found in 459.

When confinements started being put in next to sinkholes, we asked the DNR how that could be when there was supposed to be a 1000 foot separation. The DNR held an upper level management meeting where this was discussed. At that meeting the DNR lawyers said that because of the way the new law, a variance granted for the 1000 foot minimum if a "secondary containment structure" was put in place, was written, there was "effectively no longer any separation distance between sinkholes and confinements". A confinement could now be built right next to a sinkhole. Oddly, no one at that DNR meeting seemed to think they might want to look into how or why this change to the safety of the public's water supply happened.

The concept of "secondary containment" comes from the EPA's regulation of the petroleum industry. It originally meant an earthen berm 360 degrees around a set of above ground tanks capable of holding 150% of the largest tank. In karst, for confinements with underground tanks, "secondary containment" means a pit dug on one side of the building big enough to hold 50% of the manure. How this ground level pit is supposed to contain a leak from an underground tank is unknown. How any spill is supposed to happen on only that one side of the building is unknown. And, how something illegal in karst for manure storage because of sinkholes, namely an earthen structure (the pit), allows you to build right next to a sinkhole in karst is also unknown.

We are in real danger when our legislators are unable to understand the effects of laws they pass. And when they, and our regulatory officials, are apprised of those effects and are unwilling to reinsert the provisions which protect the public, we are courting disaster.