More Elon Musk havoc in rural (well, exurban) Texas

I earlier blogged about the disruption caused by Elon Musk's SpaceX activities in Boca Chica, Texas, on the coast.  Now, the Washington Post is reporting on how residents of exurban Austin--Bastrop County, population 97,216 (so barely nonmetro)--are tiring of the consequences of Musk's undertakings there.  Jeanne Whalen writes under the headline, "Texas welcomed Elon Musk. Now his rural neighbors aren’t so sure":  

Chap Ambrose has always been a fan of Elon Musk. He spent $100 to join the waiting list for Tesla’s first pickup in 2019 and bought internet service from Musk’s satellite provider.

But then the billionaire’s companies moved in next door to the computer programmer, who works from his rural, hilltop home.

Two years later, massive construction sites and large white warehouses have taken over the green pastures where cattle used to graze. Semis barrel up and down the narrow country roads. And the companies — rocket manufacturer SpaceX and tunneling company Boring — are seeking state permission to dump treated wastewater into the nearby Colorado River.

“I just have no faith that the leadership there values the environment and these shared resources,” said Ambrose, who leads a group of local residents pushing Musk’s companies to slow down and address concerns about the environmental risks of the development. “I would say, I’m still a fan [of Elon], but I want him to do better here and be a good neighbor.”

The backlash in Bastrop, a largely rural county 30 minutes east of Austin, shows the dust Musk is kicking up as he builds a new empire in Texas. His companies are spending billions of dollars on campuses across the state, from SpaceX’s rocket launchpad on the Gulf of Mexico to a giant Tesla factory in Austin producing 5,000 Model Ys a week.

* * *

Signs of Musk’s move-fast ethos have mounted in Bastrop County. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has hit the Musk building sites with several violations over poor erosion controls and other matters. Texas’s transportation department reprimanded Boring for building an unpermitted driveway that it said posed traffic-safety concerns, and Bastrop County issued a violation over unauthorized wastewater holding tanks.

How factory hog farms hollow out rural communities

This The Guardian report by Charlie Hope-D'Anieri, features Lew Carter and his wife, Kathy, who settled down in Carter's home town, Williams, Iowa, population 307.  Before long, they were effectively exiled by industrial hog production in the area:  

Unwittingly, Carter had settled down in the epicenter of Iowa’s explosive growth of hog farms, known as confinements. These facilities, which house thousands of animals in sheds, have allowed the state’s hog population to more than double since 1982 – it now raises nearly a third of US hogs. Hamilton county is home to fewer than 15,000 people and more than 1 million hogs.

Over the decades, as hog farms surrounded their home, the Carters say the odor of manure became an eye-stinging, nose-burning nuisance. The smell disrupted everyday life, Kathy says. Most oppressive were days when neighboring farms emptied the manure pits under the confinements and spread the waste as fertilizer on fields across the road. “It would take a full week before we could even stand to be outside,” Lew says. “We didn’t dare open our windows.”

Last year they finally gave up the country dream and moved to a ranch house in Rockford, an hour north-east of Williams. The hog industry says “it’s great for our Iowa communities. It’s great for our little towns,” says Kathy. “But we’ve seen so many towns just turn to dust.”

The state’s pork industry promotes itself as an engine of economic growth and benefit for people in Iowa but a new report published on Thursday from Food and Water Watch, a non-governmental organization, casts doubts on these claims.

Read more about industrial hog farms here.  

"Ornery Artist's Hand-Written Screeds" in rural Missouri now subject of major art exhibition

Greenville, California, March 2013

NPR ran this story last month about Jesse Howard's 20-acre compound of hand-painted signs, which he called Sorehead Hill, in Fulton, Missouri, population 12,790.  Here is the lede of C.J. Janovy's story:

By all accounts, self-taught artist Jesse Howard was cantankerous. In middle of the last century, it wasn't unusual to see hand-painted signs on country roads advertising a traveling fair or a farm sale. But Howard's signs offered Bible verses. They proclaimed his anger at his neighbors and the government, and his disappointments with the world around him. "Every word I'm saying's the truth," the artist said of his work. "Every word." 

Seen in Madison County, AR, May, 2010

Howard's work hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Folk Art Museum in New York and the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore. Now, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis has opened the first comprehensive survey of his work.

Court Street, Jasper, Arkansas 2011

Leslie Umberger, the Smithsonian folk art curator, explains the significance of Howard's work—and the work of others who built such environments in the 1940s and 1950s, including Sam Rodia in California and Fred Smith in Wisconsin.  Umberger says Sorehead hill was an

"art environment," or a personal space that's "built or constructed by an individual who, for whatever reason, decides to kind of reshape his or her corner of the world."  

According to Umberger, well-known artists like Roger Brown and Jasper Johns ultimately took note of what Howard, Rodia and Smith were doing.  Umberger continues:

And it makes a big difference because people start to really equate this radicalism with having a strong voice, a strong opinion, being truly original, for standing up for what you believe in and fighting for it.

Janovy reports, too, that Howard had to fight neighbors who "tore down his signs and vandalized his property," even seeking in 1952 "to have committed to an asylum," a fate he was able to avoid.

Hwy. 7 South, Jasper, Arkansas, November, 2011

All of this reminded me of some of the hand-painted screeds I have seen in rural places in recent years.  One is from Greenville, California, population, 1,129 (top), and the other near the community of Marble in Madison County, Arkansas, population 15,701.  These are similar to Howard in the sense of protesting against the government—or in the case of the Madison County sign, another individual--in one way or another.   

Hwy. 7 South, Jasper, Arkansas 2011; sign reads "Not Responsible for Accidents

The bottom photos are from Jasper, Arkansas, population 466, county seat of Newton County, Arkansas, population 8,330.  The first of these photos is of old fashioned junk shop and the last two, photographs of a ????? (outdoor junk shop?) taken two years apart.

Whatever it is, the owner is concerned about fending off liability because the latter version, two years after the first, features  sign that says "NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS." (Very interesting for the torts professor in me).  While perhaps not political, all seem fairly artistic to me.  In particular, the last two photos of the same place two years apart show the proprietor becoming more artistic (and perhaps less entrepreneurial—less interesting in selling stuff than in displaying cultural artifacts in an interesting, even pleasing way) over time … 

Barn weddings pit neighbor against neighbor as new types of rural nuisance

The New York Times ran a front-page story today titled,  "Neighbors Say Barn Wedding Raise a Rumpus."  The dateline is Grant, Minnesota, population 4,096, and here's the lede for Julie Bosman's story:

For legions of young couples, there is no wedding venue more desirable than a barn in the country, with its unfussy vibe, picturesque setting and rural authenticity. 

For neighbors of the wedding barns, it is a summer-long agony.

Interesting in spite of that characterization--focus on "rural authenticity"--wikipedia labels Grant a "suburb of St. Paul."  It is in Washington County, population 246,603, part of the Minneapolis-St.Paul-Bloomington MN-WI metropolitan area.  One of the neighbors protesting the the wedding barn in Grant is quoted:

We moved out here for the rural nature, the quiet aspects of it, the open space.

In a similar vein, Bosman quotes Laurie Tulchin, "who lives in a rural part of Iowa City," population 70,000 and the fifth largest city in the state, " next door to a wedding barn."  

They blare music all night long, they have college students out there screaming, and everyone’s drinking.  Rural residents have quiet lifestyles. Sometimes I just think, ‘What the heck happened out here?’ 

Bosman's story continues:

In rural areas across the country, residents have protested that some barn owners flout zoning rules requiring that they operate only as agricultural enterprises. Unlike other businesses, the barns are often not inspected to ensure that they are up to code, and many lack proper sanitation, fire doors and sprinklers, accommodations for people with disabilities and licenses to serve liquor.

Barn owners often argue that these are agricultural enterprises in an era when family farms are rarely economically viable if they don't engage in some agritourism.    They say barn weddings are just a form of that tourism.

Both local government bodies and judges have gotten involved in different places, Bosman explains:

[C]ity council meetings have become stages for disputes in areas where friendly relations are the norm. Some small townships with ambiguous zoning laws have been forced to examine their regulations to figure out whether the wedding barns are legal.

* * * 

In some towns, judges have intervened, leaving trails of anguished soon-to-be-married couples. Last summer, a judge in St. Louis County, Mo., ruled that a historic barn on a property with a view of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers was a potential fire hazard, leaving a bride and groom who had scheduled a wedding reception there only days to make other plans.

Opposition to modification of hog farm permit voiced

The latest chapter in the dustup over an industrial hog farm in Newton County, Arkansas (covered in prior posts here, here and here) is an application the farm has filed seeking modification of the permit the state granted for it to begin operation in 2013.  Specifically, C & H Hog Farm now seeks to use a truck rather than the previously approved sprinkler system to spread manure on three fields.

On March 24, the Arkansas Dept. of Environmental Quality held a public meeting to consider the application for permit modification.  Sixty-five people attended the meeting at the Jasper School, and most, it seems, advocated re-opening the entire permitting process for the farm.  Sixteen attendees took the five minutes allocated to each to make statements.  The Newton County Times reported that "[f]ewer than half of those who made comments said they reside in Newton County." (That seems to be a nod to the issue documented here.) Among those speaking were Jerry Masters, executive vice president of the Arkansas Pork Producers Association and John Bailey, Permits Branch Manger, Water Division, who explained that the farm was eligible for financial and technical assistance to install the spraying system through the Natural Resources Conservation Service's Environmental Program.  Gordon Watkins, a Newton County organic farmer associated with the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance advocated that the three fields at issue should be included in a University of Arkansas monitoring study, asserting that if the fields' owners are unwilling to participate in the study, their fields should "not be part of the permit's nutrient management plan."

The Newton County Times summarizes the concerns voiced, none of which appears new:

the absence of monitoring noxious air quality needed to protect area residents and students attending Mt. Judea School; that phosphorous Index numbers for the fields' soils are not public reported for analysis; manure runoff will pollute Big Creek a tributary to the Buffalo National River; spread of disease from pig manure and impact on local health; need for closer monitoring of area ground water; use of a truck on the fields would compact their soil creating greater amounts and higher concentration of runoff; polluted water will travel quickly and spread through the karst geological formation of the area contaminating other water sources; detrimental impact on tourism and other businesses in the Buffalo River region.  

Two speakers articulated support for the hog farm, noting that they believed the farm was already exceeding permit requirements "to ensure that the farm would not jeopardize Big Creek or the Buffalo River."

ADEQ Director Teresa Marks facilitated the hearing, which lasted only one hour and ten minutes.

C & H is the only facilitate in Arkansas to operate under the CAFO general permit.  It's waste treatment system consists of in-house shallow pits with a 760,000 gallon capacity; a settling basin with a capacity of 831,000 gallons; and a holding pond with a 1.9 million gallon capacity.

Both sides of hog farm dispute vie for public and legislative support

I have been writing for several months about the controversy surrounding an industrial hog farm that just began operation in Mt. Judea, Arkansas, in the Buffalo National River watershed.  (Read my most recent installment here).  That locale, along with the shoddy notice process followed by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, is what created the controversy.  Now, both sides--agribusiness (e.g., Cargill and the Farm Bureau) on the one hand and environmentalists and activists (growing up in Newton County, we called them hippies, but now they are joined by liberal elites)--are trying to sway public opinion, along with the thinking and actions of lawmakers.  

The May 29, 2013 issue of the Newton County Times reports under the headlines, "Lawmakers learn about Buffalo" and "Demonstrators show for law makers' visit." A third front-page headline is "Law makers get facts on hog farm."  Coverage of the same events by the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance is somewhat more detailed and, shall we say, differently illuminating.  One headline, picked up from a column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is "Grassy Greeting at Jasper Protest."  Here's the gist of the news that both papers cover:

The Arkansas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Economic Development convened in the Marshall High School Gymnasium on May 21 for "two-day hearing on the controversial C & H Hog Farm."  State Representatives David Branscum (R-Marshall) and Kelley Linck (R-Yellville) hosted the event.  About 100 attended the hearings, including members of groups opposed to hog farm because they believe it will have an adverse impact on the Buffalo River watershed.  Among those who spoke at the hearing were Kevin Cheri, Buffalo National River Superintendent, and Richard Davies, director of Arkansas Parks and Tourism.  The lawmakers even took a short float trip on the Buffalo, from the U.S. 65 Bridge to Gilbert.  The Newton County Times writes: "The evening meal was provided by Cargill, the company the hog farm is contracted to produce pigs, Branscum reported."  The Times also states that, for the lawmakers, "The main attraction was to float the river as many had never been to this area of the state."

The lawmakers also visited C & H Farm, where protocol required all to "take a shower upon entering and exiting the barns to prevent exposing the pigs inside from contamination or disease." That must have been interesting.

After the tour of the farm, the "law makers were invited to drive to the Ozark Cafe in Jasper for lunch courtesy of Arkansas Farm Bureau."  The paper further reports:

The law makers who accepted the offer were greeted by a throng of demonstrators lined up on the courthouse lawn along state Highway 7 many waving placards and chanting, "Save Our River," and "Hogwash!"  Law enforcement officers stood on guard on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

Deborah Ferguson, a Democrat who is state representative from the other side of the state, West Memphis, is quoted:

It is important that tourism and agriculture find ways to co-exist and she believes that can happen here. She said she was impressed with the technology being employed at the hog farm that is designed to protect the environment.

Another representative, Dr. Steven Magie, Democrat of Conway, noted that "some inter-studies" should be made of the farm before the next legislative session.

One remedy that needs to be made is the public notification process so that local public input can be made before permits are issued.

Interestingly, Magie is both a physician and a hog farmer.  Specifically, he is a supplier of gilts (young female domestic pigs that are used on gestation and farrowing farms to replace non-productive sows), including some to C & H Farm.

Coverage of the protest by the Newton County Times, a secondary story on the front page, indicates that the protesters came at the invitation of Don Nelms, an artist whose frequent subject is the Buffalo. Nelms apparently entered the Ozark Cafe while lawmakers dined there, but uniformed sheriff's deputies and Jasper Police officers (what, are there two of them?) prevented the protestors from entering, "at the request of the proprietor."  Nelms's wife estimated that about 50 people came to protest the hog farm.  Some protestors were locals, but others came from Fayetteville and elsewhere in the state.  "This is a concern all over the state," she said.

Mike Masterson wrote of the event for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette under the headline, "Grassy Greeting:  Weeding out dissent."  His quote from a female protestor, described as a member of a "prominent Newton County family," helps explain that headline:

“I was part of the protest in Jasper in front of the Ozark Cafe while Cargill fed the state’s House and Senate Agriculture Committee members. We surely needed to let Cargill and others see some of the concern for the Buffalo National River. Many came early … and held very creative signs,” she said.  

“At one point I believe there were over 70. It felt good to get to be among others and chant … as [Cargill’s] guests filed into the cafe. We stood directly across the street in front of the Newton County Courthouse. 

“At 12 o’clock sharp, mowing and weed-eating was going on all around us. [My husband] went inside the courthouse to speak to the County Judge [Warren Campbell] about postponing yard work until later and expected to get to do so by phone, but the woman he talked with seemed to just disappear. The yard workers insisted their mowing needed to be done at this time! 

“One informed us he was a county employee and we could be guilty of obstructing their work,” she continued. “There was some risk for the bystanders who cooperated by moving. The mowers were old and didn’t have protective shrouds. No one was injured, though my son did feel something hit the side of his face from the weed-eater. 

“The worker who was weed-eating explained how they had to mow at that time because it was for the holiday [six days later] for the veterans and the flag and also it was shady on that side of the courthouse. Then he wanted to explain how safe CAFOs are and how Mount Judea is fine. He explained how he prefers to eat a CAFO pig instead of an outside pig who wallers about in everything. Those swine are just not clean in his opinion. He thinks the real problem is that some bathrooms are closed at the national park.”

Here is a video of the protestors on YouTube.  Here is the Democrat-Gazette news coverage of the law makers' visit and the protest in response.  All of this reminds me that I could file this post under my "Small-town Government Run Amok" series .... 

Undomesticated animals in exurban Long Island

According to the 2000 census, Southold, NY, on Long Island has a population of 5,465. This town is now facing that classic issue of what to do with farm animals as more suburbanites (exurbanites) move to the area. In 1985, the locals got together to defeat a measure that would have set requirements for the amount of land needed for horses. This month, the town once again rallied to defeat an animal ordinance, this time focused on complaints about peacocks and other animals. The locals see regulation of these animals as a threat to their way of life.  Read this story about it in the New York Times.

I have to wonder if this is just a winning battle in a losing war. House prices in that area more than doubled between 2000 and 2005, while median income rose by only 18%. The NY Times article makes it sound like there will be additional attempts in the future to handle the nuisance issue. I suspect it is only a matter of time before the newcomers have enough clout to cast this as a "quality of life" issue.