Governor Kristi Noem’s burial of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the Department of Agriculture means fewer environmental inspectors available to check our factory feedlots for compliance with the conditions of their environmental permits. No problem, says the South Dakota Legislature: let’s just pay less attention to CAFO pollution!
The Senate yesterday passed Senate Bill 52, which would give concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) special treatment in wastewater discharge law. Currently, permits for any discharge of waste and pollution into South Dakota’s surface waters is good for no more than five years. Thus, at least every five years, every permitted water polluter in the state has to face some public accountability in the form of a hearing and likely some concomitant inspections. SB 52 gives CAFOs an exception, doubling their permit terms to ten years.
I’m puzzled here: CAFOs generate the greatest volume of noxious waste of any polluter in the state, yet we’re going to hold them to less public accountability than other polluters?
But who cares about clean water and clean air? All our Republican Legislature thinks rural South Dakota is good for is hogs and cattle and their great piles of poo.
Republicans need to go back to their pro-environmental roots in history. Nixon establishing the EPA and signing the 1970 Clean Air Act is astounding. I was too young to remember the early 1970s but it is important to point out to Republicans that they had an environmental heart at one time. WTH happened?
About trump’s ag policy (gotta love how these red-staters vote against their interests) . . . Shipping carriers rejected tons of U.S. agricultural exports, opting to send empty containers to China
“Three out of four containers from the U.S. to Asia are “going back empty,” according to Redwood Logistics CEO Mark Yeager, who supported the findings of CNBC’s analysis. “The reason for this is the Chinese are being so aggressive about trying to get empty containers back … that it’s hard to get a container for U.S. exporters.””
““Just when you think America’s ag industry can start running full throttle, this export transportation discrimination starts,” said Friedmann.”
“American farmers say they are now tangled in a new battle – having to contend with the the growing web of export rejection or delays eating into their profits.
Bob Sinner, president of SB& B Foods, a prominent American soybean exporter, provided CNBC with some of the details carriers told him regarding rejection or delay of his exports.
As of early January, Sinner, who is also chairman of the Specialty Soya and Grains Alliance, told CNBC that between 30% to 40% of his company’s total exports have either been delayed or cancelled.”
It’s great being a world pariah: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/26/shipping-carriers-rejected-us-agricultural-exports-sent-empty-containers-to-china.html
As for empty containers going to China, used to be and might still be, Walmart’s own container ships had to sail to China empty. Couldn’t haul any US products over there.
Infrastructure needs to look to Europe pronto. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edj6OOn6NL8&feature=emb_title
As mfi notes, we’re not manufacturing anything but Q merchandise…from China. Why don’t we get on the renewable bandwagon here in South Dakota and stop smelling the poop or rolling in it.
I ate a South Dakota diet my entire life, as advertised on my grade school wall. A month after retirement I had six bypasses. Haven’t eaten any meat since, the cheese had to go too. I’m healthier than I’ve been in 25 years. I. Know my diet will probably be made illegal in So Dak but it works folks. Bacon I’ll always miss but as they say about Paris, I’ll always have it. Good luck with the poop, its no longer my fault.
I’m glad you are healthier now, Mark. Lifestyle changes are hard, but once you make them, you feel a lot better.
One thing to clarify — President Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act in 1972, and his veto was overcome by Congress. The proposed merger of DOA and DENR is often defended as a logical consolidation that offers farmers and ag producers a “one stop shop” for regulations and monitoring activities. Can anyone explain to me why this merger is only about farming and ag producers? The mission of DENR is far broader than serving agriculture. No doubt agriculture is an important activity in our state, but DENR exists to protect the general public from pollution and to manage and oversee resources for the public good. Farmers already get a huge regulatory break because the Clean Water Act does not regulate non-point pollution. This is a massive issue in our state and throughout the nation. This consolidation is less about streamlining government and more about reducing resource protections that might inconvenience ag producers. Our DENR needs to be strengthened and empowered to do its job for all South Dakotans, not shunted away into a new agency that has an entirely different perspective.