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Bob and Sandy Young are happy as pigs in . . . muck.
The Buckhart couple this week learned that the
Appellate Court of Illinois had ruled in favor of their plan to expand
their family dairy farm into factory-scale hog-fattening facility despite
strenuous objections from their neighbors. The Youngs were in the early phase of construction
(digging a 224,000-cubic-foot pit to hold pig poop) when a lawsuit filed by
area residents calling themselves the Rochester Buckhart Action Group won a
preliminary injunction halting progress on the concentrated animal feeding
operation, or CAFO, [see Dusty Rhodes, “Raising a stink,” May
17]. The Youngs appealed and persuaded two of the three justices on the
higher court panel to allow their pork-chop project to proceed. Writing for himself and Justice Thomas R. Appleton,
Justice John W. Turner explained that the conflict turned on whether their
proposed 3,750-hog confinement barn constituted an expansion or a new
facility, because new operations face more hurdles for approval. Turner
noted that the Youngs had raised pigs previously and demolished a 2,300-hog
facility in 2004.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Robert W. Cook cited
the fine differences between “new” and “expansion,”
noted that the decision came down to the opinion of one state employee, and
suggested the more relevant question was whether the legislature intended
large-scale facilities such as the Youngs’ to be subjected to
stricter requirements: “The fact that property was used many years
ago to house large numbers of animals does not mean the owner gets a
‘free pass,’ that every future project will now be labeled just
an ‘expansion.’ ”
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2008.
