Illinois Senator Dave Koehler is introducing legislation to address the state’s growing number of industrial livestock facilities.
Ten years ago, Cindy Bonnet found out she was getting new neighbors in Nora, Illinois: 10,000 cows. It’s what’s known in the industry as a “concentrated animal feeding operation,” or CAFO: basically a big cow warehouse, with a giant trough under it to catch their waste.
Bonnet says a California businessman was behind the venture.
“You know that’s what bothered us, that he wasn’t even going to be farming there and actually going out milking the cows himself. He was gonna hire someone else to do it," she said.
The farm was built despite the neighbors’ objections. Then, Bonnet says, came a purple runoff EPA officials traced back to the CAFO.
“It produces like juices, and they have a storage pond for it. It’s worse than sewage,” she said.
Senator Koehler says his legislation would make sure CAFO’s are following rules about pollution. He says there are many CAFO’s across the state that are not even registered.
“Rural Illinois deserves to know what’s really going on in their community. They deserve to know if their health is at risk," he says. "They deserve to know what these facilities are or are not doing to protect their health and their environment."
CAFO’s pen thousands of hogs or cows in one confined area. Nearby residents complain of noxious odors, contaminated drinking water, and sinking property values.
Koehler says current law gives residents little power to challenge the construction or expansion of CAFO’s.