Grant County: Watch This Before Voting on Mega-Feedlot

Sometimes Anonymous is a complete meathead... and sometimes Anonymous sends me gems. This morning, a gem: StinkFreeCarrington.com, an activist website created by citizens of Carrington, North Dakota, who are trying to keep Canadians from bringing more pollution in the form of a big concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) to their fair city. (Hey! I've driven through Carrington! It's on the amazing slanty hypotenuse route that shaves 200 miles off the trip from Madison to Edmonton, Alberta!)

StinkFreeCarrington.com represents the best of the Internet's potential as a tool for citizen activism. Video of public testimony and interviews, archived letters to the ND Department of Health, links to relevant news articles... this kind of website is exactly how citizens can help inform each other and take action to protect their communities.

Two highlights: First, this passionate testimony at a public hearing from Carrington's Marlene Boyer, a woman who cares about her neighbors, and who believes there's more to doing right than following the letter of the law:



You'll never get coverage like this in the mainstream media. The local paper, the hourly radio news updates, and the 6 p.m. TV news can't give this sort of complete transcript, straight from the source.

See also this interview, Part 6 of a series of interviews with residents of Thief River Falls, Minnesota, who have had to evacuate their homes due to the stink of an Excel Dairy run by South Dakota's Rick Millner. Paul Kezar talks about the lies his neighbors were fed, lies that Kezar sees as typical of the corporate culture that drove him back out of Minneapolis to come back to his small-town roots:



Listen to that: "These dairy farms are a corporation.... I came from small-town USA, dairy-boy, grew up on a farm, go live in Minneapolis for a while, you understand what corporate USA is all about. I didn't really care for it, because there's dishonesty, and there's things that coming from a small-town you just thought you would never see."

Paul Kezar is just a neighbor, a small-town guy, a dad trying to throw a nice birthday party for his little girl, a decent man who'd prefer that his house not smell like filth.

You can see more videos and other content like this at StinkFreeCarrington.com. Everyone around Grant County, SD, should review this testimony before the public hearings on the proposed Kilborn Township mega-feedlot next month (August 7, 8.a.m.: zoning board on setback requirements; August 13 4:30 p.m.: dairy permit).

And everyone interested in promoting citizen participation in local political affairs should see how folks in Carrington are putting the Web to work to make their case.