CAFO Concerns In St. Joseph County

ST. JOSEPH CO. (Newschannel 3) - Michigan is home to about 220 Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, but trouble over one dairy cattle farm in St. Joseph County's Leonidas Township could mean one less.

That's due in part to a new report put out by Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins University, which basically says the operations - or CAFOs - are a health risk and are destroying rural economies, and many people who are against the Leonidas Twp. CAFO will use it as ammunition at public hearings.

The study shows that a single CAFO can generate as much manure as a city of 100,000 people, and the farms also use more antibiotics on animals than humans consume each year in America.

Eric Verhey lives in Leonidas Twp. and says he's against the CAFO, not because it's a threat to his lifestyle, but because he's afraid the environment is at risk.

"Show me one where the property values went up, where the air quality was improved and where the ground water was at less risk than before," said Verhey.

Verhey says he doesn't believe the environment can stand up to 3,000 cattle producing waste in such a condensed area.

"It would generate over 20 million gallons of sewage that would be stored in open lagoons, in an area with such a high water table," he said.

The man who sold the land to a European farm conglomerate is David Taylor, and he has a different view. While he wouldn't go on camera, he says buildings for the CAFO will have ponds to capture waste runoff. He also says he's visited CAFOs and wouldn't have sold this land if he thought they were dangerous.

However, the Pew study says waste runoff into rivers and streams can be a problem, and has become an issue at a few West Michigan CAFOs.

According to the Department of Environmental Quality, in 2005, Midwest Veal LLC. in Allegan County paid a $25,000 penalty for agricultural waste runoff that caused a fishkill. And in 2006, Swisslane Dairy Farms in Kent County paid fines and cooperated with DEQ to fix discharges into nearby creeks.

While Eric Verhey knows that Right To Farm laws could allow the CAFO to come in, he says he will try to fight.

"The Right To Farm law comes down to an issue of what's legal and what's ethical, and often times those two issues are in conflict," he said.

The public hearing about the Leonidas Twp. CAFO is on May 21, and Verhey says he'd like to see a environmental impact study discussed during the hearing.