 document.
But, first, I'd like you to recognize and encourage states to do a cost benefit analysis in their permitting process. The State of South Dakota did not conduct a cost benefit analysis up front, and it's worthwhile to do that.
Recognize and review existing documents. In South Dakota there's a thick document for livestock waste management manuals. There's also county guidelines for zoning for CAFOs. Recognize and use the pork producers training program.
And the fourth is recognize and encourage use of data quality objectives. The data quality objective process is a very successful program in EPA, and I'd like to see it used here. That's a process where only useful data is collected to answer pertinent questions, and it's saved producers and industry people lots of money when you only collect data that's needed.
Recognize different waters at facilities. Not all waters at facilities are waste water. To recognize and define what the waters are and the uses and the discharge permits and the requirements. Some waters do not need to be immediately incorporated and should be handled differently.
And then the final point is, with so many agencies involved I've seen producers inspected by states plus, then, county agencies. So it would be nice to recognize the regulatory authority and then inspections are done consistently for producers. Thanks.
MR. REWERTS: Thank you. Our next speaker is John Flank. John will be followed by Richard Ford. Mr. Flank.
MR. FLANK: I am John Flank from Hugoton, Stevens County, Kansas. I'm a farmer and country commissioner.
Three years ago our county and the area around us down at the edge of Oklahoma took on corporate hogs. Our problems around there, using cattle feed yards, our confined cattle feed yards, is a real asset to the community. The corporate hog deal hasn't turned out that way. The most common complaint is smell. Everybody can detect that.
The problems I'm most concerned about is the environment, the grounds, the water. Starting 60 years ago, we became the natural gas capital of the world, and we've got natural gas wells all over everywhere, and in the process they have literally perforated our country with test holes.
60 years ago they didn't take care of these unsuccessful holes very well. About 40 years ago they started poking the ground full of holes hunting for irrigation water. We have got numerous holes over the country that have not been taken care of right, like they do nowdays.
And when the hogs come to town, they went out and dug these lagoons. KDHE, Kansas Department of Health and Environment, requires they line these lagoons with a minimum of 12 inches of clay or cleachy (phonetic) type soil. To start with, this didn't happen. They dug the holes. At the best, they may have used a little topsoil, which is sandy, and packed it in the bottom, but there's no clay and cleachy in the first, probably, four or five lagoons that were built.
If they build one of these lagoons on top of one of these old test holes that wasn't taken care of, we've got an immediate problem because it goes straight to the water. To get rid of this affluent, beings it's all in a slurry form rather than dry like from a cattle feed yard, they run it through an irrigation sprinkler with about 60 percent water. If the irrigation pump was to quit and the check valve would fail on that, the pump pumping the affluent to the sprinkler would continue to pump it right down the well. It's not a matter of if this happens, it's just a matter of when it will, because this is mechanical stuff and mechanical things do go bad.
Our landfill has monitoring wells and money laid back to take care of when we're done with the landfill, to put it back in good order. We've got these lagoons 14 and 16 acres big all over the country. No plan whatsoever to take care of them when they get done with them. No monitoring well, which basically is just a signal that it's too late. If the well went within 20, 25 feet of the bottom of the lagoon, then you could pick up a problem immediately. Otherwise, you're already in trouble before you know it. Thank you for listening.
MR. REWERTS: Thank you. Next speaker is Richard Ford. Richard will be followed by Jim Kienholv. Richard.
MR. FORD: I'm Richard Ford from Hodgeman County, Kansas.
The No. 1 concern that we have in my area is the surface and ground water pollution that could occur in Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado due to the hog sewage pits. I refuse to call them lagoons because they are nothing more than sewage pits.
The pits can contain 160 to 320 acre feet of material and they can be from 8 to 16 acres in surface area. Some are not lined, as John said, just dug. Some are given a plastic liner, which one has floated to the surface in Western Kansas already and it took Kansas Department of Health and Environment several weeks before they could figure out what to do about it.
The oil industry in Kansas, and I'm sure throughout the United States, has found that salt water pits would leak and contaminate ground water with salt water and petroleum products. The problems with the percolation of the sewage pit water in our area is we have a limestone and/or hard sandstone layer area 20 to 30 feet below the surface. This sandstone and limestone layer has been broken by hundreds of old farmstead wells that the casing has rotted away by thousands of oil and gas wells that in the early days were not properly plugged and by tens of thousands of seismograph holes which lead through the rock layers and then when the seismograph explosives go off, that shatters the rock layer even worse and allows the lateral movement of the water to pass right down into the groundwater.
The Kansas Department of Health and Energy in Kansas, in 93 cases studied by the Kansas Legislative Audit Report, found that KDHE did not follow their own procedures or requirements and, as I understand it, EPA has allowed KDHE to set their own standards and EPA sort of takes a back seat to it. I don't think that ought to happen.
Hog factories should be regulated the same as industry standards, and the bigger hog farms are factories in the agricultural field and they are not farms. And that's all I have to say. Thank you very much.
MR. REWERTS: Thank you. Our next speaker is Jim Kienholv. He'll be followed by Dave Luers. Jim.
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Jim's not here. Neither is Dave.
MR. REWERTS: Jim's not here? Is Dave Luers here?
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: No.
MR. REWERTS: You said he's not? Okay. The next speaker then would be Dan Ortner.
MR. ORTNER: I'll send mine in the mail.
MR. REWERTS: Are you Dan?
MR. ORTNER: Yes.
MR. REWERTS: Okay. Then we'll move right on to Kent Bamford. Is Kent here?
MR. REWERTS: We're making progress, aren't we? How about Paul Pierson? Paul?
MR. PIERSON: Do I get their time?
MR. REWERTS: Maybe we better vote on that. He'll be followed by Brent Auvermann. And then after Brent finishes, we'll take a five-minute stand-up break and let our panelists rest their pencils and get a drink.
So, Paul, do you want to go ahead, and then you'll be followed by -- Brent will be up.
MR. PIERSON: My name is Paul Pierson. I'm from Lamar, Colorado. I'm the president of soil conservation district there and also a member of the Colorado Soil Conservation District board.
I'm having a little trouble here. I can pronounce CAFO and AFO but I can't pronounce these other ones, NPDS and CNMP. I think you ought hire Elvis Grbek to straighten this out. He knows how to pronounce words without any vowels in them.
Anyway, my main in purpose in coming up here was to find out, perhaps, what our local conservation district, what our role would be in this, and also as a farmer and I have a small feedlot that I use mainly in the wintertime when I bring cattle off of grass.
Another concern I have is that if the cost of this becomes too oppressive, the small operators are going to be forced out of business and the bigger just gets bigger. And the costs that they incur are going to be passed back, not passed to the consumer, they're going to be passed back to the producer, which is the way it's always been in agriculture. And we're having a little bit of trouble now in agriculture trying to make things work.
I stayed all night here in Denver last night, and I was supposed to get a free breakfast. You know, there's not any free meals but, anyway, I think I paid for it when I paid for the room. But anyway, I went down there, and I get two eggs, hashbrowns but nothing else with it, so I wanted some bacon. They were glad to bring it to me but when I paid for it, it was $2.16 for three slices of bacon. So, apparently, this low hog price hasn't made its way to the market yet.
Anyway, we have several big feedlots in our area, and I think cattle feedlots. We're also getting