Peggy Vlerebome, Madison Courier Staff Writer
A hog farm is planned on South Rogers Road on the western edge of Kent where 4,000 hogs at a time will be raised from about 60 pounds to about 260 pounds. It will be an indoor operation, with two barns each housing 2,000 hogs.
Wandering Waters Limited Liability Corp., which is Richard J. "Dick" Watkins of 863 Rogers Road and his brother, Shannon Watkins, has applied for the required state permits from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and will apply for a county building permit after receiving state approvals. The state approvals will include a federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.
Jefferson County's only regulations of confined feeding operations, or CFOs, are for a building permit and for setbacks of at least 660 feet from any residence except for the home of the owner or a tenant. The county Health Department is requiring that a septic tank be installed in the barn area for non-animal wastes such as from washing machines for worker clothes.
The county does not otherwise regulate CFOs, but opponents of Wandering Waters' application plan to go to the County Commission meeting at 5:30 p.m. today to protest. Peter Ellis, who lives on South Rogers Road, has distributed a flier opposing Watkins' plans in the western part of the county.
During a year, there will be three groups of hogs at the Watkinses' farm, for an annual total of 12,000. Each barn will be 413 feet 8 inches by 82 feet 6 inches. They will be located nine-tenths of a mile south of State Road 256 on the east side of the road. Dick Watkins will be the operator.
The barn floors will have slats. Urine and feces will go through the slat openings into an eight-foot-deep, concrete tank. Between groups of hogs, the barns will be washed down with about 5,000 gallons of water for each barn, and that water will drain into the tank also.
Periodically the wastes will be removed through ports and will be bladed into farm fields. Tyson Long, who is reviewing the permit application at IDEM, said the Watkinses will need 235.2 acres where the manure can be applied for 4,000 hogs. The application appears to identify more acres than that, Long said, but he has not finished his review and the calculations. One place on the application lists 77.7 acres available for manure disposal on land owned, leased or covered in a land-use agreement.
One land-use agreement is included in the application. David B. Ferguson has agreed to allow Watkins to use his farmland for manure, but the acreage and location in Jefferson County are not listed.
Sharon Watkins, the mother of Dick and Shannon Watkins, said the manure will be bladed into fields in several locations, but none in Hanover because they don't want to cause odors in the town. The first time a field is used, it will have been planted with wheat, which then will grow over where the manure was bladed. The next crop on the land will be corn, she said, and no more manure will be bladed into the soil while it is growing.
Sharon Watkins said her family has always been good neighbors in Kent and intends to continue doing so. The barns' location was sited so that odors don't go toward residences, she said. She said an IDEM official told them that trees around the barn site also will help keep odors from leaving their property. "We'll plant more pine trees if we have to," she said.
The permit was applied for Oct. 2. A public comment period technically ends Nov. 2, but Long said the review probably will take longer than 30 days, and the public can comment at any time about a confined feeding operation. Long said people wanting to comment before he finishes his review should write to him before Nov. 2 if possible and send it to: Tyson Long, Solid Waste Permits Section, Office of Land Quality, 100 N. Senate Ave., MC 65-45 IGCN 1101, Indianapolis, IN 46204-2251. People who want to discuss the contents can call Long at (317) 234-3540 or (800) 451-6027, extension 4-3540.
IDEM announced a new policy last month saying that it will increase inspections of new CAFO operations. Inspectors will visit new facilities within six months of their construction and again during the next six months. The previous policy required an inspection only at the start of construction.
An NPDES permit is required largely because of the efforts of Save the Valley and Jefferson County residents Tom and Jae Breitweiser, who sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 1999, demanding that it require the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to enforce federal pollution-control laws such as the Clean Water Act at confined-animal feeding operations. They won the case.
Their lawsuit stemmed from opposition to plans by Ferguson to have a CFO on his property, which is near their tree farm.
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