The Noem regime is preparing to lean even harder on counties to let CAFOs take over the prairie. According to Bob Mercer, Noem’s economic development chief, Steve Westra, told the Economic Development Finance Authority that they’ll start pouring more grants into pro-CAFO counties and possibly running counties that oppose big ag-industrial projects through the wringer:
…Westra said Monday, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development plans to directly reward counties that approve state-backed projects.
He said business projects would need to agree to assign some types of state grants to counties. “They’ll have full flexibility on use of those funds,” Westra said.
County commissioners would have to explain why they voted against a project when approval would mean a financial gain for the county, he said [Bob Mercer, “New Commissioner Lays out Changes in S.D. Economic Plan,” KELO-TV, 2019.05.06].
Wait a minute: since when do county commissioners have to answer to the state for their zoning and economic development decisions? Are Westra, Noem, and their fellow crony-socialists really going to say to counties, “Pick the winners we want in the marketplace, or no more grants for you?” Such extortion will be wildly effective, given that the state is starving the counties by shifting law enforcement costs onto them (see also here) and denying them any new independent sources of revenue.
It seems rather hypocritical that Commissioner Westra and Governor Noem should be able to roast counties for voting against projects that Westra and Noem claim would bring a financial gain when the Noem Administration vetoed hemp production, which would have brought a financial gain to farmers and enterprising manufacturers around the state, and then sends out their boy-Attorney-Corporal Jason Ravnsborg to tell people not to bother the Governor about that decision. Governor Noem vetoed hemp because it might smell funny to drug dogs, but she’ll put counties through the Spanish Inquisition for saying they don’t want CAFOs making whole townships smell like hog manure.
Yup, that’s life in Noemistan.
Thanks for the wonderful news for my wake up call this morning! Bribery, plain and simple. News articles discussing Thune’s visit to cheese factories this past week showed the ultimate degradation of small farms. A certain cheese factory bragged that they pick milk up from 44 dairies–that number used to be well over 200. Most of the CAFO’s are owned by out of state, or a least out of area, investors. I’ll quit at that. Going to go plant some trees.
These are dumb people running the state these days. Dumb and ignorant when mixed with the kind of arrogance Westra shows is dangerous, as we see in the White House.
Let me educate Westra and the dumb crowd in Pierre. Counties have power over many of these CAFO projects because that’s the way the state decided it wanted to regulate them. They didn’t grab power from the state. The state handed them that power because the state didn’t have the intelligence and foresight or money to accomplish state-wide regulation. Environmental and farm groups had advised DENR back when the state was promulgating the regulations and general permits on CAFOs that state standards for siting were needed. The state enacted some regulations, but decided against state siting standards, saying conditions in, say, Harding County weren’t the same as in Union County. The Mickelson Administration didn’t want to actually create siting standards that varied from county to county so they decided instead to rely on county processes to make decisions on whether or not a CAFO could be sited and under what conditions.
If the state wants to change the way these CAFO regulations work, they need to do the work of promulgating new regulations. State siting standards would need to be approved. Offering what amount to bribes to county commissions to overlook their own processes is bad governance, not to mention criminal. Westra may not know it, because he appears to be pretty effing dumb, but he’s endangering DENR’s oversight of CAFOs. DENR’s authority for regulating CAFOs comes under their authority from EPA, and you can’t be offering bribes to overlook a part of that regulatory responsibility, especially if DENR is handing out any of that grant money.
What is wrong with these people?
When it comes to offloading pollution onto rural communities, GOP is really good about forgetting their local control mantra.
Same thing happening in Missouri with CAFOs, but they just changed the law.
http://www.dailystarjournal.com/agriculture/bill-to-restrict-ag-regulations-passes-senate/article_dfc27ab7-a6ba-514f-9f1d-7b361e49cda9.html
iowa took away local control because Farm Burro wanted moar large polluters and counties wanted far fewer. Guess which large National Crime Synd……er organiztion with lobbyists galore won?
i traveled to the soviet union with the ranchers for peace in 1980 & we talked to several state controlled farm managers.it seems to me that there is a lot of similarities between the communistic concept of farming & what the state of sd. is pushing for. the only difference is that these CAFO’s are owned by corporate people, who are trying to sidetrack local control (county government) with the total backing by the state!smells a lot like fascism to me.local governments must have a say in this if we can still call our system a republic!
Marvin mentions the USSR and gets me thinking that Westra’s threat here is almost like nationalizing the land for the state’s favored industry. Surrender your zoning authority, says Westra, ignore your neighbors’ concerns about quality of life, and give up your land for the use of our state-subsidized factory farms. Try using the land the way you and your citizens want, and Big Government will penalize you.
Westra and Noem are the Politburo.
There are ways, of course, to fight what they are doing. It’s not legal to bribe county commissioners, and decisions made that way are not legal either. A smart CAFO operator would want to distance themselves from that sort of illegality, because they could be subject to citizen suits under various federal environmental statutes. Doesn’t anyone else see how the corruption in South Dakota is now so bad they are making their bribes in public.
Blatant bullying, no regard for the Republican Plank of a strong local government.
No kidding. This is Soviet-style farming with a few “leaders” telling farmers what they will produce. They’ve already created a very tiny puddle, not pool, of only 2-3 buyers. Jefferson’s independent yeoman farmers are long gone, replaced by GOP peasants.
If we, here in Pennington County, can convict Roger Freebee …………
What happens when the only people in your county asking for money are CAFO owners and economic development groups? Do they get cut off if a new CAFO is denied? If that’s the case, that could be another weapon to use against unwanted CAFOs. Doubled-down denial.
Cathy, I can’t imagine the state would shut down corporate welfare payments to good CAFO cronies already established in the county.