"Let's Talk Poop!!!!!!!!!!!!"
2006 Census Population Estimate Industrial Scale Hog Production
Permits Issued and Pending
Ballard Co. 8,245 unknown
Calloway Co. 35,421 2,500
Carlisle Co. 5,317 50,000
Fulton Co. 6,949 60,000
Graves Co. 37,872 35,000
Hickman Co. 4,974 50,000
McCracken Co. 64,950 unknown
Marshall Co. 31,278 30,000
Almost a quarter million hogs per year on top of hundreds of chicken barns already in the Jackson Purchase Area of Western Kentucky is a whole lot of animal poop. By conservative estimates the pig poop alone is equal to fecal waste of all the people in the Jackson Purchase plus Louisville and Lexington-Fayette Co. according to the 2003 Census Bureau population update.
The hog barns emit a stench so powerful as to make huge swaths of the Purchase uninhabitable. All that poop runoff and leaching from soils will aggravate our poor water quality. The Kentucky Waterways Alliance reports: "According to the 2008 Integrated Report to Congress on water quality in Kentucky, 70% of assessed stream miles do not support primary contact recreation such as swimming, rising nearly 47% from the last report two years ago." This suggests that the Division of Water, Environmental Protection Cabinet who issued permits for these industrial scale animal barns is and has been asleep at the wheel or is incapable of protecting our waters because of weak environmental laws.
We are rapidly approaching the animal poop saturation point in the Jackson Purchase. This is a tipping point similar to that forcast for climatic change, a tipping point in which raw animal wastes totally contaminate our streams on its way to our drinking water supply and our kitchen faucet.