Editors Note: This is the first in a three-part series of how Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) may or may not affect Kosciusko County. The series will focus on a person looking to bring a business into Kosciusko County, an activist looking for more CAFO regulation and a farmer who owns the county’s largest dairy barn.
The Businesswoman
Carol Cohee lives in Miami County.
There, she said, she has seen problems associated with CAFOs.
Now as she prepares to open a business in the northern part of Kosciusko County she has her concerns.
“There’s not accountability or responsibility for a whole series of permitting,” said Cohee.
One of Choee’s biggest concerns is how CAFOs and any runoff they may produce affects lakes and streams around the county.
Cohee also asserts that there is no regulation for the business of hauling manure.
Cohee said her experience with the Miami County Commissioners let her sour on how CAFOs were brought in.
Residents pushed for stricter regulation than those imposed by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the body that actually does the permitting.
“We were lied to for two months,” said Cohee. “The commissioners asked why we didn’t speak up earlier. It’s because so many people never had a chance to unify. A great majoriy of people don’t know about it.”
In terms of water quality, Cohee said she worries that will be comprimised. With her starting a nutritional company near Syracuse, she said she plans to use natural resources like spring water from the region.
“I want to locate (my business) where everyone is working together and not battling,” said Cohee.
Cohee questions whether continual well testing will be done and creeks are tested for runoff.
Runoff is a concern for many groups including the Indiana Environmental Council who had representation at a recent CAFO meeting held by IDEM.
One thing that seems to help that concern is when CAFOs use closed storage facilites for solid manure and tanks for liquid manure.
In a report from The Ohio State University, it states that, for at least solid manure, closed storage facilites address runoff.
The report also states that storage buildings should not be located on floodplans unles “adequately protected from inundation or damage.”
Cohee, like others opposed to CAFOs in their current form, counter that there are instances where even with all the measures in place, things still went wrong. One of Cohee’s concerns is the wear and tear CAFOs take on the road.
Cohee said that trucks collecting manure from CAFOs damage roads which on average coast about $80,000 a mile to fix.
County Highway Superintendent Scott Tilden was asked if that was a problem for Kosciusko County.
He said he’s heard of those problems in other counties but hasn’t encountered that in Kosciusko County.
His crews have spent much of the summer chip sealing around 100 miles of road around the county.
“I’m not fighting CAFO barns, as such,” said Cohee. “But how they’re put int. And that people are being ignored totally. And I mean capital totally.”
Cohee said that there has been resistance to strengthen CAFO regulations because so many people in Indianapolis have a vested interest in them.
“(State Representative) Bill Friend has two CAFOs,” said Cohee. “Whose protecting people there?”
Friend said that he is only one of two CAFO farmers in the statehouse.
“It’s easy for people to criticize,” said Friend. “But then expect meat, pork and eggs on their table.”
Friend said he believes that two representatives is a fair representation of CAFO farmers in the statehouse.
Friend also defended the process through which CAFOs are permitted.
“I tell people that I live in a glass house,” said Friend. “I tell that to people who haul my manure. I tell them I want you to follow every rule exactly. Because if you mess up then I end up on the front page of the newspaper.”
Friend also said that he wants farmers who aren’t following guidelines to be shut down.
“If they are running afoul of the laws then they should be shut down,” said Friend.
Cohee said that many of the ordinances that are on the books date back as far as 1973 and don’t fit today’s standards.
And Cohee maintains that the process doesn’t take into account enough the people that live around CAFOs.
“They do it in a way that tramples on people’s lives," she said.
The next part of the series will focus on activist Barbara Cox while the third part will get perspective from Fred Beer who operates Kosciusko County’s largest dairy CAFO.
