Lake Erie activists to speak at VW hearing

VW independent/submitted information

TOLEDO — A dozen environmentalists from a Lake Erie group based in Toledo will attend a hearing this evening in Van Wert on a proposal to add 2.2 million chickens to the 11.2 million chickens, 292,000 hogs, and 97,000 cows already in CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) in the western Lake Erie watershed.

Members of Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie plan to attend today’s hearing, held by the Ohio Department of Agriculture, to state their concern that the manure will add to the nutrient pollution already causing massive summer algal blooms, which breed microcystis, a poisonous bacteria.

In a statement released Tuesday, the group called the proposed “Pine Valley Ranch” CAFO “The latest example of something gone metastatic in our environment and our body politic.”

According to OSU Extension figures, the facility will annually add 2,187,810 pounds of phosphorus and 2.5 million gallons of manure to the 690 million gallons now produced by the registered CAFOs in the western Lake Erie basin (figures are not tracked for an unknown number of non-registered CAFOs).

The hearing starts at 7 p.m., preceded by an open house at 6:30 in the Van Wert County Extension meeting room, 1055 S. Washington St. in Van Wert.

Mike Ferner, an ACLE coordinator, tied the fate of Toledo area residents to the people who will be directly affected by the operation.

“The term ‘outsider’ has no meaning at this hearing,” Ferner noted. “The imaginary political lines that separate Van Wert County from Toledo mean nothing because we now think in terms of a watershed. We are no more ‘outsiders’ than the people whose air, water, health and property values have already been ruined by these animal factories.

“Those of us living near the lake have seen our property values reduced and our area’s economy harmed because people think twice about investing in a place with the same reputation as the flaming Cuyahoga River and now Flint, Michigan,” Ferner added. “What happens to the people near this chicken factory affects us in a very real way.

“There is a new reality for CAFOs in northwest Ohio,” Ferner went on to say. “CAFO construction and regulation will no longer take place inside an irrational, irresponsible system designed to protect the industry from environmental realities, the public interest and even common sense.”

Ferner said Americans finally learned that safe levels of lead in paint and gasoline do not exist so they banned them altogether; the same with DDT and with phosphates in detergents — each time over the howls of those who profited.

“We will do the same with any commercial practice that threatens our life support systems,” he said.

In August 2014, the City of Toledo shut off water for 400,000 people for nearly three days due to high levels of the toxin, microcystin, produced by the microcystis bacteria. Toledo water customers now pay $6 million more every year to treat water, plus an additional $80 million in construction costs at the water treatment plant to deal with the problem.

Written public comments on the proposed chicken factory will be accepted until 5 p.m. Wednesday, June 22, if delivered or mailed to: ODA Division of Livestock Environmental Permitting (DLEP), 8995 E. Main St., Reynoldsburg, OH 43068