Judge C. J. Williams filed a judgement dismissing a case brought against New Fashion Pork in the Northern District of Iowa. Gordon Garrison filed the complaint against the company in December 2018 alleging they negligently allowed manure to run into his property in Emmet County, Iowa from their adjacent animal feeding operation. Garrison claims in the complaint that they dispose of and transport waste “in such a manner that may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to health and the environment.”
New Fashion Pork is a leading pork producer based in Jackson, Minnesota. They and their subsidiary BWT Holdings LLLC are represented by Brown Winick Graves Gross Baskerville & Schoenebaum. Gordon Garrison is represented by Dave O’Brien Law.
Garrison complained that New Fashion Pork violated Iowa laws by allowing manure to run off into his property from their Sanderson property and having feeding operations on “highly erodible land” and violating drainage law and clean water legislation. “The operation of Defendants’ confinement feeding operation has been, and is, a trespass on Plaintiff’s property,” the complaint states.
The order filed in March said the defendants operate a “vast agricultural network” of which the hog operations are only a small part. The manure produced by the hogs is used to fertilize their own plant crops and sold for revenue. They empty the manure pit yearly after the fall harvest. The plaintiff had claimed the manure was emptied when the soil was saturated with water from rain in 2016 and when the ground was frozen and covered with snow in 2018 causing worse manure.
The order says in 2018 the ground was too frozen to inject the manure and New Fashion Pork received permission from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to spray the manure onto the ground instead of injecting. When the weather “became unseasonably warm” in December 2018 it did cause run off to other properties and New Fashion Pork received a penalty from the Department of Natural Resources and an Order to develop a standard procedure. The defendants argued in the case that Garrison did not provide the required notice of violation nor could he prove any future harm.
Garrison alleged that future harm was likely because the manure distribution happens annually, however, the defendants did not spread the manure on the Sanderson property in 2019. The court said in the order they would not consider this enough evidence if the case were to go to trial. “Although the Court does not find that defendants’ change in spreading practices showed there was an imminent and ongoing threat, if defendants resumed spreading on the Sanderson property and additional specific instances of discharge onto plaintiff’s property occurred, it could create an imminent and ongoing threat going forward,” the order states. They said 2016 and 2018 events do not prove ongoing harm, but additional events could.
