by Wayne Cummins

In the late 1990s, poultry producer Gold Kist Corporation of Atlanta, Georgia, made the decision to expand operations to include hog production. Gold Kist targeted Sand Mountain, Alabama, a poor region of the Lower Appalachians for their production. Sand Mountain is a plateau approximately 20 miles wide and 60 miles long and is one of the most densely populated rural areas of America. With their extensive poultry operation in the region, Gold Kist never anticipated the social backlash created by the introduction of thousands of hogs.

Gold Kist quickly built three Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) on Sand Mountain. Those families unfortunate enough to be bordered by a hog CAFO soon lived in the misery caused by the incredible stench of football field-sized raw manure ponds. The raw manure is in liquid form as it is flushed from the confinement buildings that house the animals into the holding ponds. Hogs produce four times more waste than humans-a relatively small hog CAFO of 4,000 head produces the same volume of manure as a town of 16,000 people.
Most state regulations prohibit siting confinement buildings within 440 yards of homes, schools, or churches. The manure holding ponds are not held to the same limitations and can be built near property lines, literally up to the edge of a neighbor's front yard.

Nearby residents must bare the stench in addition to being inundated by vectors of flies and other pests. Some families that have been placed in this predicament have boarded up their homes and just walked away as their property values fell to little or nothing because no one else wants to live there either. Families with fewer resources must stay and live in vile conditions.

By the summer of 1999, the fourth hog CAFO was under construction on Sand Mountain. The first three CAFOs triggered complaints from the community to their state representative, the County Commissioner, newspapers and anyone else who would listen. Citizens living near the fourth CAFO under construction were told Gold Kist had recruited seven more local farmers to join the corporate agricultural expansion. If the hog CAFO expansion followed the model of a poultry industry regional expansion, the people of Sand Mountain could expect more than 100 hog CAFOs in just a few years.

The fourth CAFO under construction on Sand Mountain was in the community of Pleasant View, near the bluffs overlooking the Tennessee Valley. Runoff from the CAFO would drain into the Pisgah Gorge, where for years kayakers on the Jones Creek spring runoff enjoy a 1,000 foot elevation change in two miles of stream bed.

As someone who lived across the road from the construction site, I began to organize my neighbors into an opposition group. It was not an easy task to organize people to oppose corporate agriculture; many of the farmers who were offended by the opposition were also friends, neighbors, and family in a region that has always been agriculturally based.
Within two months newspapers from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Mobile, Alabama, discussed the conflict and feud that now resembled that of the Hatfields and McCoys of years gone by. The Alabama Farmers Federation, backed by the might of the ALFA Insurance Company, began a campaign intended to silence the local uprising. The Federation used mass mailing across Northeast Alabama declaring radical out-of-state environmental extremists had targeted Alabama agriculture. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

The Federation gathered over 600 local farmers to a college auditorium near the small town of Rainsville, Alabama, on the same day and four miles away from where the newly formed Sand Mountain Concerned Citizens (SMCC) hosted an event. SMCC asked speakers from across the south to address the local folks whose lives had now become a living hell because of the actions of corporate agriculture and a few local farmers who now put profits above the value of friends and neighbors.

State Troopers and Alabama Bureau of Investigation personnel lined the streets near each facility in the event violence broke out. Actions of the Federation only drove the conflict more public, increasing the press coverage that mostly favored the rural citizens. In four months SMCC quadrupled its numbers by organizing and assisting different communities, all of which experienced the same problems.

Now that the situation was exposed to the public it was time to find solutions. SMCC looked to the state government for protection of our homes and families only to learn the political might of agriculture within our state government.
Government is often part of the problem, not the solution. The Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) was writing state CAFO regulation, enacted on April 1999, at the same time that Gold Kist began implementing hog production. It was not a surprise to find the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Gold Kist Corporation was also an officer of ALFA and on the committee that advised ADEM in establishing guidelines governing CAFO requirements and regulations. The fox was not only in the hen house, he built it! It was now obvious that ADEM's purpose was to protect business, not the average citizens of Alabama nor the environment. SMCC's challenge was to force changes to the CAFO regulations. This has been a slow process with minor success.

The issue of hog CAFOs triggered lawsuits across Alabama literally from state line to state line. Local residents lost case after case. Some cases tried in small out-of-the-way towns had problems with what appeared to be jury-influencing but none was officially investigated by the state.

The state's most high profile case involved two hog CAFOs that had been built near more than 300 rural residents. The residents won the case only to see the victory overturned in the Alabama Supreme Court. One case, won by local citizens, involved a very foolish Georgia banker who chose to build a hog CAFO in the middle of a beautiful rural community near Rainsville, Alabama, in sight of some very expensive homes-one of which was the home of a judge.

The Farmers Federation, in an attempt to curb legal actions against hog CAFOs, decided the best solution was to pass a law to protect the CAFOs: The Family Farm Preservation Act! Now what politician could dare vote against this bill with such a cleverly misleading name? As soon as the Sand Mountain Concerned Citizens were told what the Federation was up to, the little grassroots effort went into full swing. When the first public hearing on the Bill came before the House Agriculture subcommittee SMCC loaded up all the country folk it could find and made the 200-mile road trip to Montgomery. The leaders of agriculture, as well as the press and House members, were shocked to find the hearing room filled to capacity with simple down home folks who wanted to be heard.
The press had a field day. The Federation's Bill was now exposed for what it was, an attempt to protect hog CAFOs from legal actions. It soon became know as the “Hog Bill.” Six times it has been pushed by the Federation and six times SMCC-with the assistance of many other concerned organizations and individuals–has been able to stop it from becoming law.

Odors from millions of gallons of raw manure are difficult to quantify. While children living near hog CAFOs may refuse to go outdoors to play, due to the stench of raw manure, officials representing agriculture interest may testify they find no unusual odor problems. Pollution of streams, however, can be documented. Legal actions against CAFOs for violation of the Federal Clean Water Act serve as the most successful offensive strategy. SMCC members began training to become certified water samplers. Our test data is used by larger environmental organizations to bring legal actions against CAFO polluters. This tactic has resulted in neighbors winning court cases against CAFO violations of the Federal Clean Water Act.

In one such case, polluters were ordered to stop dumping hog waste into local waterways; replace the existing fecal “lagoon” with an above-ground tank system; plant barriers of fast-growing trees; conduct regular soil and water testing; and pay the plaintiffs $100,000 in damages.

Your average citizens living in rural areas far from the power centers of state and federal governments have little knowledge of how their government works or how to access the powers of the government that keeps telling them at election time, “I'm here working for you–the little guy.” In the countryside there may be few people with the education and skills needed to organize a political force capable of challenging powers like the Farmers Federation or hostile departments of state government. It takes determination by many, it takes the ability to adapt new methods if first and second attempts fail. It takes a constant effort to raise the funding needed to build a foundation of resistance.

Small grassroots efforts must find alliances in larger, well-established organizations both to learn methods to approach their challenges and to build legal structure to sustain the effort. Environmental justice is not just a catch phrase; it demands environmental justice for all.

To date, there have been no new hog CAFOs built in the state of Alabama since SMCC formed seven years ago and began the battle to save our homes and the health of our families from the many problems caused by hog CAFOs. It is organizations like RESIST that make it possible for battles like ours to be successful. Only time will tell if rural citizens will be able to fend off the constant effort of agribusiness to saturate North Alabama with the polluters of pork production. Small all-volunteer effort that will always be the first line of defense.

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Wayne Cummins is the director of Sand Mountain Concerned Citizens. SMCC received a grant from Resist this year. For more information, contact SMCC, PO Box 428, Ider, Alabama 35981.