December 20, 2007
Amish Country
The Amish have never been 'the source' of air quality or water quality issues, nor the source of poor food quality. Their values and lifestyles for their farming practices have sustained healthy and benevolent outcomes for centuries.
December 20, 2007
Amish Country
Photographer states :: Amish at play
The issue of air quality is being purposely confused with 'nuisance law suits' regarding odors and 'Right to Farm (click here).' While farming has a place, it cannot endanger air quality when it causes damage to the very biotic nature of farming enterprises and therefore damage to the biotic and benevolent nature of our National Parks.
There is no reason for any of these cases to be 'different' if they are approached from the 'correct' perspective of Air Quality in the contribution to acid rain and unrelenting damage to valueable biotic areas including flourishing farmland and National Parks. Ammonia from farms is only one source, but, one that needs to be addressed. The other sources including transporation and energy sources are equally as quilty and require state legislatures to take up the part of the biotic nature of our states.
The case of the Peters vs. Premium Standard/Smithfield Foods suit needs to be appealed to include new information regarding the source of ammonia as a contribution to severe air quality standard violations as well as the right of people to be free of the burden of malodorous, unregulated and out of control farming practices that even disregard other farming operations engaged in field crops.
LEGAL AFFAIRS
Premium Standard Farms wins hog stench lawsuit
By DAN MARGOLIES
Similar cases, different results.
Fourteen months ago a Jackson County jury awarded $4.5 million to three families who contended that the stench from a northwestern Missouri hog farm operated by Premium Standard Farms created a legal nuisance.
Last week a Jackson County awarded another family living near the hog farm nothing.
Why the difference?
One explanation may be that this time the plaintiffs were less convincing.
Take this, for example: Under questioning by defense attorneys during a videotaped deposition, the daughter of the plaintiffs, Everett and Cindy Peters, was seen smiling and winking while stating that she was seeking $20 million in damages. During cross-examination and closing arguments, the defense lawyers froze that picture of her facial expression on a large screen.
Or this: The daughter testified that she vomited 300 to 500 times over a three-year period in high school and suffered from intense headaches that left her incapacitated for hours. She attributed her ailments to the odors. But the defense elicited testimony that she never mentioned those ailments to her parents or school nurse.
The Peters’ home sits on two acres just south of Albany, Mo., in Gentry County. Premium Standard Farms’ 80,000-hog Homan Farms is less than a mile away. Everett Peters, who worked in campus security at the University of Missouri-Kansas City before retiring, and his wife moved to the area from Kansas City less than a year before the facility was built.
The couple alleged that Homan Farms’ waste-holding reservoirs were insufficient to handle the waste generated by the hogs, causing sewage to spill into the groundwater and the emission of foul odors. They claimed to have suffered from a variety of ailments as a result.
Premium Standard Farms countered that its use of the land was consistent with the agricultural nature of the area. It pointed to Missouri’s “Right to Farm” law, which states that pre-existing agricultural operations can’t be considered legal nuisances when the surrounding neighborhood changes.
“You’ve got to raise hogs someplace, and we tried to present this as a case of raising hogs in an agricultural area,” said Jean Paul Bradshaw of Lathrop & Gage, which along with McGuireWoods of Richmond, Va., represented Premium Standard Farms.
That defense availed the company little in September 2006, when a Jackson County jury awarded $750,000 each to five individuals and the estate of another. Premium Standard Farms, which was acquired earlier this year by Smithfield Foods, was represented in that case by Shook Hardy & Bacon.
Despite its recent victory, the company won’t be able to rest on its laurels. Still in the pipeline are hundreds of other nuisance cases against Premium Standard Farms. Some are awaiting trial in Jackson County. Others are expected to be transferred soon to northern Missouri.
“We see this latest case as an isolated example,” said one of the Peters’ attorneys, Charles Speer of the Speer Law Firm.
Whether or not that is so, Premium Standard Farms has made it clear that it intends to fight every case one by one.
“Premium Standard believes that what they’re doing is as good as anybody’s doing it in terms of environmental and odor compliance,” Bradshaw said. “As a result, we continue to plan to try the other cases."
Glacier Bay National Park is in Alaska, Glacier National Park is in Montana. It used to be one could tell the difference. Now? Makes no difference, neither have glaicers significant contributing to the benevolent nature of Earth or the USA.
...Ammonia is made of nitrogen and hydrogen. When it mixes with water, it becomes ammonium. It's often associated with large animal feeding operations and fertilizers. It also occurs naturally.
Ammonia is part of a mix of elements that's swept up from vehicle exhaust, factory emissions and agricultural operations and travels in clouds before it's deposited with rain and snow.
Park Service officials say they've seen increasing amounts in national parks in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, South Dakota, Utah and Arizona.
A Colorado State University study of Rocky Mountain park pollution indicated that it was originating from east of the park and being deposited during rain- and snowstorms.
It's still unclear where increasing levels at other national parks are coming from, Vimont said. The effects, if any, will probably be slightly different at every park. In some cases, more ammonium could reduce visibility or have ecological effects on sensitive environments.
"I think we should be watching it from the standpoint that we don't really know what's going on," he said.
Mark Wenzler, clean-air program director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said it's been troubling to see increasing levels of ozone and other pollutants over national parks in the West, especially as so much of the focus has been improving air quality at eastern national parks such as at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
"We can see these threats coming but it's not too late to stop them," Wenzler said.
NH3: A pungent colorless gaseous compound of nitrogen and hydrogen that is very soluble in water and can easily be condensed into a liquid by cold and pressure. Ammonia reacts with NOx to form ammonium nitrate -- a major PM2.5 component in the Western United States.
Glacier Bay National Park (click here). The Shifting Baseline of the American reality. There is absolutely NOTHING geologically significant about Glacier Bay National Park, yet, consumers will attempt to sell pictures they consider to be beautiful when this is the greatest tragedy to any environmental directive Americans mandated of their government. It is a completely failed policy to insure the beauty of the national parks to generations of Americans.
It is a failed policy to insure the sustained survival of Americans on a benevolent Earth. There is nothing significant Glacier Bay National Park contributes to the benevolence of Earth's Climate.
8:57 AM EST
Elevation :: 33 ft / 10 m
Temperature :: 41 °F / 5 °C
Conditions :: Overcast
Humidity :: 61%
Dew Point :: 28 °F / -2 °C
Wind :: 13 mph / 20 km/h / 5.7 m/s from the SSE
Wind Gust :: 20 mph / 32 km/h / 8.7 m/s
Pressure :: 29.47 in / 998 hPa (Falling)
Windchill :: 34 °F / 1 °C
Visibility :: 10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers
UV :: 0 out of 16
Clouds:
Mostly Cloudy 3300 ft / 1005 m
Overcast 4100 ft / 1249 m
(Above Ground Level)
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