[Peace-political] A TICKING BIOBOM NEXT DOOR?

[Jerry Landay]

1.  THE PASTED ARTICLE BELOW BY ME APPEARS IN THE CURRENT OCTOPUS.

2.  THE GREIDER ARTICLE IN THE NATION IS NOW UP ON THE WEB AT
www.tompaine.com -- a  must-read.

	Jerry M. Landay

A TICKING BIO-BOMB IN OUR BACKYARD???
OLD CURMDGE FOR THE OCTOPUS OF 10/11/01
by Jerry M. Landay

	We have a new symbol for the gulf between government and people
-- a 100-million-gallon lagoon brimming with cow feces and urine, resistant
bacteria, toxic particulates, and unbelievable stink – under construction in
McLean County.
On September 11, 2001, Illinoisans gazed eastward, slack-jawed, as twin
candles of metal and flesh vaporized before our eyes.  On Black Tuesday, the
Illinois Department of Agriculture and its director Joe Hampton approved a
site for a mega-farm of 4500 cows in our backyard, near Bellflower in
southeastern McLean County – the largest such manure manufactory in the
state.  Construction began next day.  Who noticed?
The Stone Ridge Dairy of Kasbergen Farms isn’t the diabolical creation of Al
Qaeda, but an American Original made in the U.S.A.  It holds the potential
of a slowly ticking bio-bomb.  After Black Tuesday, we’ve obsessed about
Islamist fanatics spreading anthrax and other deadly contaminants in our
drinking water and air.  More menacing is the cabal between private
“enterprise,” the state of Illinois, and the Farm Bureau Federation that
brings us the super-cow factory just 33 miles from where I write.
Major spills from Stone Ridge Dairy’s two planned manure and urine lagoons,
20.6 brimming acres holding 100-million gallons of animal waste and other
toxics è (1 cow = 23 humans),ç would threaten the Sangamon River, the wells
and groundwater of east central Illinois, and massive fish-kills.  And,
there’s the ungodly, paint-melting stench that neighbors nearby will live
with.  Such Stygian leakages, studies show, go with the territory.
Furthermore, Stone Ridge’s cesspool is sited atop the Mahomet Acquifer about
180 feet beneath our feet, ancient source of uncommonly pure drinking water
serving Champaign and nearby counties.  When you phone the local offices of
the Illinois-American Water Company, the taped greeting proclaims:  “We are
proud to announce we are judged to be, by our peers the best tasting water
in the state.”  Environmental toxicologists will tell you that Mahomet
Acquifer waters, accumulated over thousands of years, are also the least
contaminated.  Yet, neither the company nor the Mahomet Acquifer Consortium
to which it belongs was invited to public hearings on the Stone Ridge
project.  Corporate-friendly law says the state is not obliged to do so.
Geologists from the Illinois State Water Survey assure you that nothing from
the mammoth cesspool will leak through clay into the acquifer.  But, when
pressed about seepage through long-abandoned wells and other uncharter
sources, they use modifiers like “unlikely” and “our information is not
perfect” -- and “the acquifer has not been thoroughly studied.”
Those words recalled a pollution disaster I reported two decades ago for
CBS-News SUNDAY MORNING in a small town called Wilsonville in Macoupin
County, Illinois.  A waste management company had planted hundreds of drums
of toxic chemicals underground, after its geologists assured residents that
absolutely nothing would ever migrate beyond an “impermeable” clay liner.
The drums rusted.  The clay was NOT impermeable.
Nineteen Bellflower residents tried suing to block Stone Ridge dairy. A
state judge declared the lawsuit premature and dismissed it.  What is NOT
premature is the track record of CAFOs – Confined Animal Feedlot Operations.
Berm walls leak.  Lagoons overflow and pollute groundwater and wells.
Especially in winter, when lagoon surfaces are frozen, operators have spread
the overflow outside legal limits when no one looks.   Karen Hudson, a
family farm wife in Peoria County and President of FARM, Families Against
Rural Messes, puts it this way: “The only way you can make money with these
mega-farms is to break the law.”
She tells you what it’s like to be a neighbor of the Inwood Dairy near
Elmwood in western Peoria County (NOT a Kasbergen operation).  As reported
in a first-rate account in the Bloomington-Normal INDY, dairy employees
deliberately and illegally pumped waste in excess of two million gallons
into a nearby ravine last March.  It overflowed and migrated into Kickapoo
Creek.  The watershed involves nearby recreational lakes.  When a WMBD-TV
reporter arrived, she was encircled by a ring of tractors and trucks for
more than 30 minutes.  It happened to a colleague, too,  and the sheriff had
to be called.  Last November, Ms. Hudson reports, she learned of another
spill into a creek at the facility.  It was caked with layers of scum and
foam.  The state EPA ignored citizens’ calls to take a water sample.  The
group hired an independent lab.  It found a fecal coliform count 400 times
higher than the safe limit.  In one nearby home, she writes: “Candles burn
frequently to kill stink that permeates the walls.”
State inspectors are unresponsive.  Farm neighbors carry out patrols
regularly.  They take photographs, often from airplanes.  Officials only
arrive when citizens report flagrant emergencies.  Mrs. Hudson says the Farm
Bureau Federation has an army of 56 registered lobbyists to advance CAFOs.
The IEPA has five to six inspectors to police running infractions.
As for Stone Ridge, Kasbergen invited citizens to investigate its model
Spring Grove Dairy operation in Brodhead, Wisconsin.  McLean farmer Dave
Adamson overflew the mega-farm, and found repeated violations.  His group
put pressure on the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which, Ms.
Hudson reports, cited the dairy for ten major violations.  State Ag official
John Harris told me vaguely that his department “took under consideration
anything [in Wisconsin] applicable to the Illinois operation.”  It approved
the McLean County operation anyway.
	The public disconnect is unspeakable.  Fifteen municipalities and governing
bodies, including the Champaign County Board, passed resolutions opposing
the McLean operation.  They have local control over the dumping of garbage
inside their limits.  But rigged law denies them local control over
mega-farms, especially those sited in nearby jurisdictions.  But water and
air recognize no such boundaries.  The McLean County Board voted 11-9 for
the operation. There is what I call the Hydrodynamic Law of Flow
Differential -- the lag between fast-moving rivers of campaign cash, heavy
lobbying and influence, against the measured, intravenous drip-drip-drip of
poisons into our systems.  Ms. Hudson invokes another principle:  in the
presence of scientific uncertainty, it is vital to err on the side of
caution.
	I have yet to see activists make the case.  Those who travel to Seattle,
Quebec, and Washington, D.C. to demonstrate ought to join FARM in their
backyard and make a stand.  If not here and now, where and when?
	© Jerry M. Landay