County Authority in Iowa with Regard to
Livestock Confinement Facilities:
Home Rule and Public Health

Robert E. Mulqueen
Iowa State Association of Counties

There's an old saying that every time that you think that everything has been said about a topic, someone has to say it all over again ... in a different way. That certainly seems to apply to the topic of livestock confinement facilities and the passions wrought by the issue in the past several years. Some have said that the Iowa legislature does not need to re-visit this issue after the hours of public debate spent in the 1995 session on House File 519. There are times when an issue should be left alone—but this is not one of them. At this time the worst thing that the legislature should do is to do nothing.

Until the spring of 1993, one might have not supposed that the otherwise dry idea of county zoning ordinances would generate so much passion, such anger. Though the issue at hand was a legislative proposal amending existing state law providing for "agricultural enterprise zones", the heart of the matter was large hog confinement facilities. However, passion became the order of the day over the issue.

Passion came to the Iowa legislature then, as now, in the form of letters, postcards, and telephone calls. It came to the Iowa legislature in the form of suggestions of concern from county supervisors and city council members, people who often fought in the same partisan trenches with their state representatives and senators. The word was that their constituents were also concerned about the spread of new hog confinement facilities of increasing size. Their constituents had come to realize that neither their county supervisors nor their city councils had any power over such facilities' siting or operations. Just as worried were those who saw regulatory authority or local control to be a threat to such livestock operations. The passion has been manifested then, in 1993, and now not only in letters written and telephone calls made, but in angry personal confrontations in the rotunda of the Iowa state house between legislators and between lobbyists.

After one such brief shouting match, which left me very angry, I walked away, cooled off and began to laugh to myself. All I could see, in my mind's eye (with apologies to the film "Treasure of the Sierra Madre") was my adversary spouting "Zoning? We don't want no stinking zoning!"

There are those who say that the association of counties does not speak with one voice. Well, I dare say that there is the rarest of moments when any diverse organization speaks with one voice. There have been differing points of view on this issue among county officials. However, increasing numbers of these men and women have become vocal about their desire for county home rule powers. For four years in a row, through our policy process, the Iowa State Association of Counties has adopted language, which advocates a role for county government in decision-making concerning large animal confinement operations.

Some have said that county authority, be it shared with state agencies or through zoning powers, will result in the decline in Iowa's pre-eminent hog raising capability. This is not a question of whether Iowa will continue to be a pork producing state. It is a question of whether Iowa is the best pork producing state. After all, in counties such as Cedar, Washington and Plymouth, hog production numbers are very high…among the highest in the nation…even though they do not contain huge hog confinement facilities. We are proud of our agricultural heritage and our hog production numbers. Quality standards have always been high. But as these standards have been high, so our environmental quality standards must be high. And such standards...for water quality and for local input about where such facilities locate should be high.

There is, I believe, a wide misunderstanding about the role of county government and zoning. If local input is to include zoning authority, such authority is not sought to interfere with the operations of small or medium sized farm operations. If you read various county-zoning ordinances, they state, specifically, that one of their purposes is to protect agricultural land as a natural resource. One of the options, after all, in zoning is to suggest that one location is better than another location for a commercial or industrial activity. Should it be known, for example, that the Chicago Widget Company is interested in moving into your county, the planning and zoning ordinance might well suggest that an industrial concern locates away from fragile land or a stream, but close to roads and supply sources. Local officials together with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources might better be able to suggest that a large confinement facility be advised not to locate in an area of permeable soils or agricultural drainage wells.

But this is not an issue of local control for home rule's sake nor only of environmental quality for the sake of a pristine view of the prairie. Counties, after all, are charged in the Iowa Code with certain responsibilities regarding public health. The very concentration of livestock and their excrement, which appears to be a part of very large hog confinement facilities, is a public health issue. This can be a serious problem when large numbers of large facilities are located in the most vulnerable areas…places in the prairie pothole region containing numerous sinkholes and drainage wells.

Historians and sociologists have written about the agricultural revolutions which we have undergone in North America: the mechanical revolution of the nineteenth century ushered in with the development of the steel moldboard plow, the second mechanical revolution of the early twentieth century made possible by the internal combustion engine, and the genetic and chemical revolutions of mid-century epitomized by hybrid corn and by herbicides and pesticides. Some discussions about livestock confinement operations and a demand for uniform size and weight demanded by packing plants have included the argument that such facilities are simply the next technological step in raising livestock.

Iowa is one of the states which have chosen to give considerable autonomy to counties and cities through home rule amendments to the state constitution. Although many local government officials may take issue with how much local control is actually allowed by the state, their freedom to act exceeds their counterparts in those states which have maintained the Dillon Rule and where political subdivisions must come hat in hand to the state for most authority.

The notion that local action is the logical option for a workable solution was the reason for the careful writing and the unanimous adoption in 1996 of the controversial hog confinement facilities ordinances by the Humboldt County board of supervisors.

The progression of the agricultural revolution's latest manifestation meets local government home rule authority in Iowa in the livestock confinement issue. The Iowa State Association of Counties professes that home rule authority together with state baseline standards is desirable and workable.

Sometimes people who were not crazy about zoning ordinances found that these powers , which they had assumed to be a threat, could also be their protection. There's a scene in the play A Man for All Seasons, in which a man tells his father-in-law, the 14th century British chancellor, Thomas More, that he should have someone he sees as a threat arrested. When More objects that the person in question has broken no law, the son-in-law objects that he would cut down every law of the land to get the spy arrested. The father-in-law's response should be framed and on everyone's wall : " And when the last law was down, and the devil turned around on you -- where would you hide, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast...and if you cut them down...do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?" Well, some have discovered that laws, which they had thought were a threat, were of protection after all.

I do not deny that this subject is a complex one. What the counties seek is a positive role with the state in seeing to it that the difficult decisions about industrial strength livestock facilities are made with the long term good in mind. County officials and livestock producers are not enemies. They should seek common ground under which will still run clean water.

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