JEFFERSON CITY — A Cole County judge has temporarily paused enforcement of a new rule opponents say is advantageous to a company looking to build a massive hog operation in rural Livingston County.
Circuit Judge Daniel Green on Tuesday ordered the Department of Natural Resources to refrain from acting on the rule, which defines groundwater in state regulations.
Chesterfield environmental attorney Stephen Jeffrey filed the lawsuit on behalf of Livingston County residents on Tuesday. Green gave the state until Jan. 11 to file a response.
Working in the farm’s favor is a law signed by Gov. Mike Parson in 2019 that restricts local control over massive farming operations.
The lawsuit challenges the state’s ability to issue new emergency regulations defining groundwater; that process bypassed a public comment period.
Under state rules, manure pits for large operations, known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, must be at least 2 feet above a site’s groundwater table.
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But the state’s new rule excludes perched groundwater from that calculation, which can occur just feet from the ground surface.
This year, opponents of the hog farm drilled borings on the site of the proposed hog farm and found water just feet from the surface.
The lawsuit, citing comments from DNR officials during a recent stakeholder meeting, says the rule change would only affect one CAFO application: the project in Livingston County.
That project, by Marshall-based United Hog Systems, proposes a 12-foot-deep pit that would collect an estimated 8.3 million gallons of manure per year.
The lawsuit accuses the DNR of acting outside its regulatory authority to issue the emergency rule this month.
“(T)here is no evidence in the record that any ‘emergency’ exists to obviate the need for ‘notice-and-comment’ rulemaking,†the lawsuit says.
Brian Quinn, spokesman for the Department of Environmental Quality, said in a statement that “the department believes this emergency amendment is fair to all interested persons and parties under the circumstances.â€
“Currently, all ‘perched groundwater’ in the State is protected, and the emergency rule removes those protections across the entire State,†the lawsuit says.
The Post-Dispatch last month reported from Livingston County, about 230 miles northwest of St. Louis, where many residents have organized against the proposed hog farm.
The planned operation is about three miles from the Poosey Conservation Area — 5,800 acres of protected land they worry would be damaged by the project.
Counties had been able to impose strict environmental rules on intensive farming operations, but a law Gov. Mike Parson signed last year forbids counties from enacting rules more stringent than the state’s.
