Sheriff's deputies in this rural county on the Oklahoma border didn't have to look far to find a suspect when they discovered a spill of blood and dead animal parts on a county highway four years ago. Stevens County is Seaboard Farms country.
The largest pork producer in the nation, Seaboard moved into Stevens and three other southwestern Kansas counties in the late 1990s. At the time, county residents largely welcomed the company's arrival. Seaboard was a source of needed jobs and a boost for the county tax base. In just a few years, that mood has changed.
Seaboard moved into Stevens County under a 1994 state law allowing county commissioners to independently bypass the state's anti-corporate farming laws. Commissioners in Stevens, Stanton, Morton, and Grant Counties did so, and state officials were so eager to attract the industry that hey expedited the permitting for Seaboard. The state also gave the company the right to issue $9.4 million in tax-exempt bonds to fund the construction of manure lagoons at its facilities.
"Hog farms were originally seen as economic saviors in Kansas," says Jay Barnes of the Kansas Natural Resource Council. "They brought jobs to rural towns desperately trying to hold onto their population and tax base." Once the companies set up shop, however, residents begin to see the dark side of factory farming. Seaboard has been cited numerous times for pollution violations at its farms in Kansas and Oklahoma. In 2000, the Sierra club sued Seaboard over water pollution caused by repeated spills at its Beaver County, Oklahoma factory. Under a partial settlement reached early this year, Seaboard agreed to set up an elaborate water monitoring system contribute $100,000 to wetlands conservation.
Back in Kansas, a coalition of environmentalists and family farmers has grown to oppose the expansion of factory farming in the state. So far, 19 counties have passed referenda effectively barring commissioners from allowing factory farms from setting up shop. The Environmental Protection Agency even joined the fight in 2001, ordering emissions testing at Seaboard plants.
"The air stunk, the water was dirty and going fast, and inspections were showing the promised controls weren't being used," Barnes says.
But any expectation that the EPA might crack down on factory farms evaporated in May of this year, when agency officials held private meetings with representatives from Seaboard and other large-scale pork and chicken farmers. At the meetings, industry officials questioned whether the environmental laws which apply to other industries should apply to them. According to published reports, administration officials thought the question had merit. The Environmental Protection Agency circulated a plan to provide the factory farms with amnesty from the Clean Air Act and the Superfund. In exchange for the 'safe harbor' exemptions, the EPA proposed to monitor pollution at 30 large hog and chicken feedlots
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