Do two of the biggest Democratic cheeses in the state think of the Sierra Club’s Ken Midkiff as a cranky old man? Could be.

But Midkiff is just trying to keep our governor and our attorney general honest.

He’s publicly kvetching about Governor Nixon breaking a campaign promise to “protect our state parks and historic sites.” Midkiff contends that “environmental groups supported Nixon, a Democrat, in last year’s election because they believed Nixon would protect state parks and historic sites.”

To understand Midkiff’s rebuke, you have to know the backstory. Nixon spoke last September at the historic village of Arrow Rock, which had been threatened with a 4800-head hog CAFO, and insisted that the role of the DNR was to regulate polluters. That would be a refreshing (excuse the pun) change, because under Matt Blunt, the DNR regularly carried water for Big Ag.

Specifically, the DNR challenged a ruling by Judge Patricia Joyce that could have affected the entire state. She had ruled that no CAFO could be built within fifteen miles of Arrow Rock, then later changed the buffer zone to two miles. The intended hog CAFO was not, in fact, built, but the contentious issue of buffer zones remained.

The DNR, under Blunt, filed suit to appeal Joyce’s decision, not wanting any precedent for buffer zones created. So far, the DNR, under Nixon, has continued the appeal. Nixon’s administration says it is now considering whether to continue its appeal.

What’s to consider? The appeal is nothing but Big Ag being a Big Bully. And Midkiff says:

“Apparently, gubernatorial candidate Nixon’s statements and Gov. Nixon’s actions are two completely different things.”

Midkiff’s other appearance in state news within this last week was his criticism of Attorney General Chris Koster’s ruling that the DNR had not broken the Sunshine Law when it failed to release data showing an E. Coli outbreak last May at the Lake of the Ozarks. Midkiff had filed the complaint that led to Koster’s investigation because Midkiff knew that at least four reporters had requested the information by e-mail and phone calls. The then deputy director Joe Bindbeutel had not released the data to them.

Koster’s rationale for the ruling was that the reporters had not actually used the phrase “Sunshine Law” in making their requests. Although Koster granted that Bindbeutel should have released the data in a timely fashion, Koster didn’t think the DNR had technically broken the law.

What? The reporters forgot to say “Simon says”? This was not a children’s game, and remembering to use the phrase “Sunshine Law” has not been required in the past before someone could get information.

Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, said:

“It raises the question of whether you can violate the Sunshine law at all. … We are getting a little too technical when we are splitting hairs about whether something in a request says ‘Sunshine request.'”

Midkiff went further, allowing as how he was “‘extremely disappointed'” in the conclusions of the AG’s report and adding:

“It now appears that the AG’s Office conducted the investigation in a shabby manner and in a partisan snowjob fashion.”

As a result of the dustup, Bindbeutel was reassigned: he’s now at the Administrative Hearing Commission. Two of the other DNR staff who were involved are still at the same jobs. Koster’s attitude is that Bindbeutel made a mistake but that he has served the state well for fifteen years. Midkiff feels less kindly. His press release says:

Instead of exoneration, we have asked for termination of Earl Pabst, Deputy Director of DNR, and have further asked that letters of reprimand be placed in the personnel files of Joe Bindbeutel and Susanne Medley (There has been no response to these requests, to this date.)

Ken can be such a curmudgeon. Thank goodness.

All over the state, opponents of Missouri CAFOs have been firing between circled Conestogas and waiting for the cavalry to arrive. In historic Arrow Rock Village, for example. Early in 2007, the Department of Natural Resources granted Dennis Gessling a permit to build a 4,800 hog concentrated animal feeding operation two miles from the little town near Columbia–a town that relies on its decades-old summer theater performances and tourism to survive.

Local citizens organized and by October of 2007 had filed suit against the DNR and Doyle Childers, its director, for failing in one of the Department’s mandated duties, the requirement that it protect state historic sites and parks. The pioneers could hear far off bugles, barely audible above the gunfire that fall, when Jay Nixon, the man everyone figured for the next governor, spoke at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Missouri Parks Association:

“I believe that our state is headed in the wrong direction on many fronts, including the protection and preservation of our natural resources, our parks and our historic sites. [emphasis mine]

The settlers held off the assault from Gessling by convincing Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia S. Joyce to rule in their favor. On August 25th of last year, Joyce criticized the DNR for failing to protect the historic site and established a fifteen mile buffer zone, prohibiting CAFOs within that zone.

Although the ruling applied only to Gessling–and despite the fact that his permit expired on August 30th without the proposed facility being built–in September Big Chief Childers of the DNR, in cahoots with the Missouri Farm Bureau and a group of agriculture organizations, filed motions objecting to the ruling. Judge Joyce, still critical of DNR failure to protect historic sites, reduced the buffer zone to two miles.

So not only did the DNR fail in its duty to protect Arrow Rock, it … persisted in pushing for a ruling to benefit a CAFO that wasn’t going to be built? Yes, and in fact, it’s still fighting that battle, even though Dennis Gessling has, months since, walked away from the whole mess.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has confirmed that on Dec. 18, 2008, the agency filed an appeal with a the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District asking it to overturn a ruling by Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce regarding a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) proposed but never built by the Gessling family of Saline County.

Doyle Childers has resigned, effective January 12th, but DNR spokeshole Kara Valentine skates past the notion that a Democratic governor would drop the appeal.

Valentine said that while she doesn’t foresee the new administration changing or dropping the appeal, she said, “they may have thoughts on the direction that they want the appeal to go.”

Valentine “doesn’t foresee” Nixon dropping it? “Doesn’t foresee it?” Well, I foresee it. She’s definitely not in Kansas anymore. She’s surely got to know that Nixon said:

“We must join together to protect our parks as well as our rural farmland from the factory farm and the resulting emissions, runoff and smells. [emphasis mine]

So Miss Kara assumes that Nixon will be eager to ride Doyle’s hobby horse and pursue an appeal to save a CAFO that’s already dead–contrary to Nixon’s stated position opposing CAFOs. Right. Okay, that one ain’t gonna happen. But before you decide that such self-delusion proves the lady is non compos mentis, consider what Farm Bureau President Charles Kruse said after he and his cohorts pressured Judge Joyce to amend her August ruling:

“We are pleased the judge modified her August ruling by clarifying it applies only to the proposed Gessling operation near Arrow Rock, Missouri; however, the fact is there remains no demonstrated need to impose a buffer over and above what is already required by state law and this ruling could set a needless and harmful precedent.

“Harmful precedent.” The situation in a nutshell.

Look. Jay Nixon’s administration may be the cavalry. Think of press conferences as his bugle. For ammunition, he has the power to appoint the Director of the DNR and to use the veto pen if the Republican lege acts up. But Big Ag is better funded than the Injuns were. And it has the sort of legal weapons that could have made Crazy Horse governor of the Dakota territory.

Oh, and don’t forget Big Ag’s willingness to speak with forked tongue:

“Missouri Farm Bureau attempted to intervene in this case as we cannot ignore the fact that production agriculture in the U.S. is under attack. Our nation’s family farmers and ranchers are facing challenges on every front. Regulations whether imposed by administrative rule or court order, must be based on science and fact, not emotion, misinformation and legal technicalities,” Kruse said.

Conflating Big Ag with family farmers is 180 from the truth. And Big Ag is under attack? It’s had the legislature, the boy gov  and the DNR in its hip pocket for the last four years. But the bit that makes me splutter is the insinuation that opposition to CAFOs is not based on science.

Not?

based?

on?

science?

Give me a break.

Those lying, delusional bastards who run rural families out of business and poison the environment want sympathy from their victims?! Breathe, girl, breathe. And remember that the cavalry is coming.

Thank goodness for that, but I don’t look for the Farm Bureau to lay down its weapons just because a Democratic governor has sounded the charge.

Doyle “hitman” Childers will soon, like the governor who ordered the hits, be history. He has resigned his post as head of the Department of Natural Resources and will be gone from the DNR by January 12, if not before.

So long, Mr. Childers, but I’m not wishing you farewell, auf wiedersehen, or good-bye. You deserve none of those. Seeing the backside of you is one of the rewards of getting Nixon elected.

Ken Midkiff of the Sierra Club published an editorial explaining how the DNR has been politicized. Directors usually let the governor know when they plan a controversial action, but for the last four years, the tail has wagged the dog: Blunt has frequently ordered Childers to do his bidding, sometimes using him as a front man even on matters that didn’t pertain to the DNR:

While, no doubt, Director Childers informed Gov. Blunt of proposed controversial actions (such as awarding an operating permit to a 65,500-chicken operation near Roaring River State Park), there is also little doubt that the governor was calling the shots on the Boonville lift bridge controversy, which pitted our attorney general against the DNR director and the governor.

In other situations, Childers challenged Attorney General Jay Nixon on non-environmental matters – such as the amount of money Nixon had “wasted” on unsuccessful lawsuits. There is little doubt that the governor preferred that Childers take the lead on such issues.

The governor even went so far as to call upon DNR’s legal counsel – Kurt Schaefer, now our state senator – to defend the sexist actions of Fred Farrell, the director of the Department of Agriculture, who called his secretary a “show dog” and said she should enter a wet-T-shirt contest. State Treasurer Sarah Steelman refused to cut a check for the negotiated settlement, saying the taxpayers shouldn’t pick up the tab for a “get out of jail” card for Farrell’s actions.

The bottom might have been reached in this politicization when Blunt and Childers had a meeting with the editorial board of the Joplin Globe, a newspaper in southwestern Missouri. It seems the Globe had taken an editorial stance against concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and, in particular, the aforementioned chicken growing operation near Roaring River State Park. Blunt and Childers saw CAFOs as economic development tools, and the meeting with the Globe editor and reporters was held in an attempt to get the Globe folks to change their position.

In the words of one reporter present at the meeting, “We listened politely and then continued doing what we had been doing.” What is remarkable – and probably unprecedented – is that the governor and DNR director traveled more than 180 miles to speak with the editorial board of a second-tier city newspaper to tout their pro-CAFO position.

While there is little doubt that CAFOs pollute, are economically ruinous and are harmful to humans – many credible scientific studies have documented this – the DNR director knew of these studies and chose to ignore them and to advocate for more CAFOs.

Clean air? Clean water? Land stewardship? All of these suffered mightily during Childers’ tenure as DNR director.

The statutory duty of DNR is to protect our state’s natural resources. In his zeal to protect those who would foul the air, water and land to externalize costs, Childers failed in this duty, and he failed mightily. The legacies of the Blunt/Childers years: more impaired water bodies, air in Kansas City and St. Louis is more foul and rural lands across the state are subjected to pesticides, herbicides, over-fertilization and erosion.

It will take many years for our natural resources to recover. Whomever Jay Nixon nominates to be DNR director will spend much of his or her time cleaning up after Childers.

Will there be dancing in the streets of Roaring River and Arrow Rock when Childers has turned in his keys and the door has slammed behind him? Or just an exhausted sigh, buttressed by the hope that the next DNR director will appreciate the scientific arguments against CAFOs. At least, Childers’ successor surely won’t defile our state parks by allowing atrocities close by them that stink so much it’s like having your nasal cavities augured out with a sewage slimed roto rooter.  

An old Peggy Lee hit goes “Manana … manana … manana is good enough for me.” Remember that old song about procrastination? It’s the theme song for the Water Pollution Protection Program administrators at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

For 25 years now, they’ve been stonewalling environmental groups that want the federal Clean Water Act enforced. Supposedly all water bodies in our state were going to be clean by 1983. Count ’em up: that’s t-w-e-n-t-y–f-i-v-e years that we’ve been in noncompliance. Manana.

And it’s almost cute how the DNR gets around the law that says all our streams should be clean: some streams, like the Current River and the Big Piney, are “classified” and others, like the River Des Peres in St. Louis, are “unclassified”. The classified streams have to meet the standards of the Clean Water Act, but an unclassified stream can be toxic enough to dispatch a T Rex with a single sip. What’s in those streams is irrelevant because we choose not to pay attention to them, says the DNR. Nifty solution, huh?

After a mere 25 years, some of the state environmental experts on water quality have exhausted their patience. Three of them (Ken Midkiff of the Sierra Club and Kim Knowles and Dan Sherburne of the Coalition for the Environment) are on the Small Streams Working Group, an MDNR committee that pretends to care about water quality. Those three made some waves last September. At a meeting of the working group, Knowles pointed that all streams are required to support aquatic life and Midkiff took it further by pointing out that all streams are required to be clean enough for in and on the water recreation.

The working group hasn’t met since.

Don’t get the wrong idea, though. Don’t imagine these three are being stonewalled again. No, no. There are “good” reasons why the Small Streams Working Group hasn’t met again, such as …

Nah, on second thought, I’ll spare you all of the DNR’s convoluted, involuted excuses about why the working group can’t meet. Suffice it to say that the environmentalists are going to sue.

Certainly they will give the DNR fair warning  before they file suit. On Monday, Midkiff plans to mail a letter of intent giving the DNR sixty days to take action. And by “action”, he doesn’t mean getting the River Des Peres cleaned up before the end of June–nothing so unreasonable. He’ll merely warn them that they have sixty days to declare that river and all other “unclassified” streams as classified, so that they will have to start working to clean them up.

That sort of action doesn’t require sixty days. Five minutes oughta do it.

Ken Midkiff, of the Sierra Club, has an article at columbiatribune.com titled “DNR proving itself to be worst ever.” The Department of Natural Resources is in the pocket of big business and polluters. It’s a monkey dancing to whatever tune the governor and his campaign contributors call.

Here are four of the eight examples Midkiff cited:

• Construction and/or operating permits were granted to concentrated animal feeding operations adjacent to or near to state parks and historic sites – Roaring River, Arrow Rock and the Battle of Athens – in spite of the many concerns expressed by those who fear that the spring at Roaring River might be subjected to pollution and the very real fear that stink will make Arrow Rock and the Battle of Athens site undesirable places to visit. DNR now finds itself threatening the existence of state parks instead of obeying its mandate to protect them. …
• The Doe Run Resource Co., with lead mining and smelting operations in southeast Missouri, is infamous for being Missouri’s largest polluter and poisoning children in the town of Herculaneum. Last year, the company failed to file required reports. DNR proposes to forgive the entire matter if $5,000 is “donated” to a school district. … Ira Rennert – Doe Run’s multibillionaire owner – probably has $5,000 in pocket change.

• After being ordered by a court to comply with the 1972 Federal Clean Water Act, DNR recommended that all waters of the state be capable of supporting “whole-body contact” or, as the act phrases it, “recreation in and on the water.” After complying with the court order, DNR then immediately proceeded to get as many streams as possible removed from that designation. Fortunately, cooler heads at the Environmental Protection Agency ruled that more than 100 of the streams proposed to be removed should remain there. Undeterred, DNR is now engaged in funding what is called “use-attainability analysis” to remove even more streams from the designation of whole-body contact so that sewage treatment plants may continue discharging without doing anything differently. If DNR prevails, folks will be splashing around in bacteria-laden waters.
• After a working group appointed by DNR voted that DNR should comply with federal law and designate all waters of the state – not just classified ones – as supportive of aquatic life and recreation in and on the water, that working group has never met again.

Every one of Midkiff’s examples illustrates how the DNR bows and scrapes to big business. He concludes by showing the agency’s contempt for ordinary citizens:

From a woman in West Plains whose well was contaminated by a large dairy across the road as reported in the West Plains Daily Quill: “I tried for nearly a month to get the DNR to come to my house, with no response,” she said. She made many phone calls and at one time spoke to DNR Director Doyle Childers personally but felt she was ignored until she got Attorney General Jay Nixon on the line and explained her situation, she said. “Within an hour, DNR called,” and an investigator came the next day, she said.

If Nixon wins next November, Doyle Childers is so out of there. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Those poor folks trying to stop the CAFO being built above the Roaring River springs just a mile from the state park line.  They’re fighting city hall the county board and state government at the same time.

They obtained a stay from the Administrative Hearing Commission to stop construction of the chicken CAFO.  That was at the end of July.  Construction continues, and the Department of Natural Resources does nothing to enforce that stay.  Huh?

Then there’s the Barry County Commissioner, John Starchman, who “neglected” to put the names of Mark Stephenson (pictured), one of those requesting the stay, and twelve other people on the agenda.  They were not allowed to speak at that meeting of the county board.  Another meeting was conveniently canceled without notice. 

No wonder Stephenson says:

It’s “who’s bought and paid for,” Stephenson said after recalling how the health department meeting agenda was tabled last May after the department in response to what they labeled an “outburst from the audience,” had phoned the police.

Stephenson also called attention to Ozbun’s contract with George’s Processing, Inc. And who do you think gives legal advice for George’s? Why none other than Matt Blunt’s brother’s law firm, Stephenson replied.

Another way to say it, Mr. Stephenson, is that the barricades you’re facing are made of money.

Thanks to the Joplin Independent for the photo and for their fine article on the stonewall Stephenson and his friends are running into.

In defiance of the DNR’s constitutional mandate to protect the health and well being of Missourians,  to protect the quality and quantity of water in the state, and to protect our state parks and historic sites, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is determined to license CAFOs. 

As I reported in my last posting, the DNR just last Friday licensed a chicken CAFO on the uplands above Roaring River State Park, less than a mile from the park boundary, and it is set soon to do the same for a hog CAFO less than two miles from Arrow Rock State Park, close to the village of Arrow Rock, a picturesque historic site, known for its historic Lyceum Theater.

Despite noisy and often emotional protests from those who will be living with the stench and who are likely to lose their livelihood from the local tourist industry, the DNR has proceeded.  Doyle Childers, DNR director, insists that he is bound by law to grant licenses to CAFOs that meet the legal standards for preserving local water quality.  But that claim is …please pardon me …hogwash.  Or, if you prefer, chickenshit.

He and his agency are doing far more than acquiescing to the law.  They are bending the law–ignoring it, even–so that they can grant those licenses.

Consider:  The DNR is bound by law to protect water quality.  CAFOs, by their very nature, threaten local water supplies.  As I mentioned before:

McDonald County, in the southwest corner of the state, has plants operated by Tyson, Simmons and MoArk, with CAFOs for all three corporations.  Every water body in that county is on the impaired water bodies list.  Despite the danger of water pollution, the DNR granted the Ozbun family [next to Roaring River State Park] final clearance last Friday to begin operating their chicken CAFO.

Any time a CAFO operator knifes tons of hog or chicken feces into a relatively small area of land, it can seep down into the water table.

Consider also:  The DNR granted the license to the Ozbuns despite a stay (that is, a court injunction) against the continued construction of their CAFO.  Citizens of Roaring River appealed to the Administrative Hearing Board for a stay on construction of the Ozbun chicken CAFO and it was granted.  Nevertheless, the Ozbuns kept building and the DNR let them.

Once construction was finished, the DNR sent an engineer to certify that the CAFO had been constructed as designed.  He refused to put his seal on it because the stay was still in effect.  So the DNR sent another, more compliant engineer, who did affix his seal.  And the license was granted. 

Who cares about some silly old legal stay? 

The arrogance of the DNR and Childers in thumbing their nose at the law fair takes one’s breath away, especially since they insist that (imagine here the sad wag of Childers’ head) they simply had no choice but to grant the license.

Consider, finally:  The DNR is mandated by the state constitution to protect state parks and historic sites.  Yet the feces from the Arrow Rock hog CAFO could be spread within fifty feet of the park boundary if a local landowner gives permission.  Common sense–not to mention a dollop of empathy–would forbid allowing a CAFO in that vicinity.  But if the DNR lacks common sense, it should at least obey the law and protect the parks and historic sites from the stench.  Missouri has one of the best state park systems in the country, being consistently rated in the top five.  No.  Make that “HAD” one of the best state park systems.

Obviously, only legal action by committed citizens will stay Childers and the DNR from their cavalier disregard for our citizens and our natural resources.  More on that topic tomorrow, in the last of this three part series.

photo courtesy of the Village of Arrow Rock