The Concerned Citizens of Buffalo have filed an appeal of approval by the North Dakota Department of Health to begin constructing a hog farm about a mile away from the city.
The Health Department approved the hog farm, which would contain 9-thousand pigs, earlier this year. Leanne Stout is a resident of Buffalo. She says the farm was approved after the disregard of hundreds of public comments, many from the less than 200 residents of Buffalo. Stout says the set-back of the farm from the city is one mile, when 3-5 miles is federally recommended. She says millions of gallons of manure will be generated by the pigs and be transported out on the same roads their local school buses take.
"How did this happen? How did profits, productivity, and pigs become more important than the people?"
Derek Braaten is the attorney representing the Concerned Citizens of Buffalo. He says the group is filing an appeal and specification of error. He says the Health Department violated the Constitutions of North Dakota and the United States by denying the public due process and transparency in the approval of the hog farm.
"Following the issuance of the approval from the Department of Health, we followed up with an additional request for documents under the open records laws. We received over a thousand pages of documents that were correspondence between the applicant and the Health Department that were never seen by the public. And what that means is that there's a process by which the public has a right to comment, and have a public hearing. And it makes a mockery of that process to allow an applicant to change its application, and for the department to work with that applicant and exchange over a thousand pages of documents after that application was made final."
The filing will request that the approval of the hog farm be overturned. The appeal is being filed in Cass County.