A non-profit incorporated just last month appears ready to spend some money to fight the 600-million dollar (the price tag was $500M last summer) pig slaughterhouse that Wholestone Farms, a project of CAFO-conglomerate Pipestone Systems, wants to build in northeast Sioux Falls.
Citizens for Sustainable Sioux Falls commissioned Republican Beltway pollster Public Opinion Strategies, which touts its work for Mike Rounds and Kristi Noem, to call 300 registered voters in Sioux Falls from February 21 through February 24. POS Glen Bolger asked those lucky Sioux Fallsians whether they think the new hog processing plant will have positive or negative impacts on seven factors. The only positive majorities came on the economic factors of jobs and availability of skilled labor. Everything else—property values, water quality, traffic and congestion, housing availability, and odors—came up big negatives:
Wholestone/Pipestone honcho Luke Minion insists that the “perception” that pork factories smell is outdated. Minion told Ag United in December that smells will only happen at the plant if something isn’t working, but he won’t promise there will never be a smell—”I can’t even promise that about my own house,” Minion said, likening the odor of 10,000 hogs a day to the emissions of his bathroom vent.
Bolger says 75% of those polled want the city to stop the project until those negative impacts are studied more, 74% are concerned about potential groundwater contamination, and 78% support requiring any new industrial meat processing facility be located outside of city limits.
Canterbury Heights neighbors Neil Anderson, Craig DeWit (both Republicans), and Aaron T. Slattery (a Democrat), who live about a mile and a half southeast of the proposed Wholestone slaughterhouse site, registered Citizens for a Sustainable Sioux Falls with the Secretary of State on February 7. They get their corporate papering done by Justin DiBona of Gunderson Palmer Registered Agents, a service of Marty Jackley’s Rapid City law firm.
So is this proposed slaughterhouse going to be next door to Smithfield, so it can add to the general stink (especially in summer, high tourist season) in the same area Sioux Falls is desperately trying to turn into high-end condos and shopping? No, no, no, and again, no.
Eve, the site is about 2 to 2.5 miles downriver from Smithfield, east of the Benson Road exit from I-229, near Gage Brothers Concrete.
Little stink impact on the shopping then. It is nearly in Iowa and shouldn’t change the level of stink to any noticeable extent.
grudz—you’re welcome to move to soo foo and test your theory.
Come on Sioux Falls, you have to stink as well as Sioux City. It’s done wonders for them.