It’s all about the money.

A company is in the process of creating an “up to” 6,999 beef cattle confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) on 400 acres on U.S. 50 in western Johnson County, just west of Powell Gardens. The Missouri Department of Natural Resource held a permit hearing in Warrensburg on Tuesday evening.

Outside the Warrensburg Community, site of the DNR hearing, two and a half hours before the start of the hearing:

“Protect our Water…”

Opponents of the of the confined animal feeding operation (CAFO):

Supporters of the CAFO for “up to” 6,999 cattle on 400 acres:

We’re not absolutely certain that they’re neighbors.

Kansas City media market network affiliates sent crews to cover the hearing:

“Farms not Factories”

Department of Natural Resources staff during the public comment portion of the hearing:

Previously:

Now that’s a CAFO (March 18, 2018)

Now that’s a CAFO – comments addressed to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (March 21, 2018)

Suppose you threw a DNR CAFO hearing in Warrensburg and everyone came? (April 3, 2018)

It’s all about the money.

A company is in the process of creating an “up to” 6,999 beef cattle confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) on 400 acres on U.S. 50 in western Johnson County, just west of Powell Gardens. The Missouri Department of Natural Resource held a permit hearing in Warrensburg this evening.

We arrived at the hearing room in the Warrensburg Community Center around 3:30 p.m., two and a half hours before the schedule start time. About a dozen CAFO opponents in red t-shirts and DNR staff were already in the room. Proponents of the CAFO, under the aegis of the Missouri Cattlemens Association held a press conference in an adjacent meeting room.

By the time of the scheduled 6:00 p.m. start there were over two hundred people in a room with approximately one hundred thirty chairs. It was definitely at capacity. Another two hundred people stood outside in the hallway. DNR staff set up the sound system with a speaker in the hallway so that those outside the room could hear the proceedings. Law enforcement officers were stationed at every door.

The Missouri Cattlemens Association press conference before the meeting:

We didn’t attend the press conference. We figured we’d hear it all at the hearing. We took a few photos from the doorway and didn’t get the name of the speaker. Our mistake.

After approximately a half hour of preliminaries from DNR staff the public comment portion of the hearing started. Each individual called was allotted three minutes to speak. Most of the people in attendance and most of the speakers were opposed to granting the CAFO a permit.

After two hours the moderator announced that it was 8:00 p.m. and time to end the hearing. Then this, the only extended unrecognized outburst from the audience:

…Why don’t you explain why you let all the hired guns speak and none of the Ag guys leaders speak? Why did Woody [Cozad] and all these guys automatically get to get up and speak? And we didn’t randomly pull out everybody else’s names? Voices: That’s right. You guys didn’t explain [inaudible]. We put our faith in DNR. And you came up, you didn’t do that. [crosstalk, inaudible]….I’m not saying, you just explain yourselves. Why did you give preferential treatment to these people? [crosstalk]…

Wait, he looks familiar, but we have no idea who he is:

“…Why don’t you explain why you let all the hired guns speak and none of the Ag guys leaders speak…?”

Uh, maybe because the people who spoke were associated with entities (Powell Gardens) or were individuals who were directly affected by the CAFO? Uh, maybe because there were more of them at the hearing?

By the way, a good portion of the CAFO supporters who spoke at the hearing weren’t particular effective with their communication skills. More than one was incoherent.

Standing up in a room and protesting too much while wearing a suit jacket (No tie? Nice touch!) which looks like it probably costs more than my monthly salary doesn’t wear well on anyone’s irate sense of victimhood.

It’s all about the money.

Previously:

Now that’s a CAFO (March 18, 2018)

Now that’s a CAFO – comments addressed to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (March 21, 2018)

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.