Karma Dings The Flesh Peddler
Feedlot owner fined $31,000
Cattleman didn't have proper permits to run business
Mike Beneke knows he was wrong. But knowing that won't make all the dollar signs go away.
Beneke, 47, lives east of Lincolnville in southeast Marion County. He has 500 acres of land and about 5,200 head of cattle.
His company, B&B Cattle Co., has been operating there for about 6 years. The problem: He doesn't have the required state permit, never has, and now he is being fined $31,000.
According to a news release from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Beneke's firm "has been operating a confined animal feeding operation of about 5,200-head of cattle without a permit, operating without water pollution controls and practicing improper collection, handling and disposal of animal and other wastes."
Full Story, The Salina [Kansas] Journal, July 13, 2006
____________________________________
My letter to The Salina Journal:
Dear Editor,
Thou doth protest too much in your editorial masquerading as a “news” story.
Poor farmer Beneke, the mean old government fined him $31,000 for not having “proper permits”—which is all that many of your readers, who just skimmed the headline, would have learned.
But when one digs into the substance of the article, it turns out that Mr. Beneke was saving quite a bundle of money—over a quarter of a million dollars—by not bothering to comply with the laws concerning pollution from farming operations. Laws enacted to protect others from such completely irresponsible conduct. THAT is why he was fined—not for some failure to jump through paperwork hoops.
Since when is it a God-given right to poison other members of society in order to line one’s own pocket? The Natural Resources Defense Council has a good outline of just a few of the problems caused by operations like that of Mr. Beneke, http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/ffarms.asp
So notwithstanding the Journal's misleading headline and not-so-subtle editorial slant, this was not a case of some bureaucracy run amok, but rather one of another rampant polluter getting massaged, not even slapped, on the hand.
A more appropriate sanction would be to make Mr. Beneke to drink untreated farming runoff for the next six years.
Is the Kansas Department of Health and Environment going to force this overgrown brat to clean up all of his mess? Will the government end up bankrolling the cleanup? Or are Mr. Beneke’s neighbors and the rest of society going to continue to pay the price with their impaired health, just as they have for the past six years?
Terry L. Clark
Cattleman didn't have proper permits to run business
Mike Beneke knows he was wrong. But knowing that won't make all the dollar signs go away.
Beneke, 47, lives east of Lincolnville in southeast Marion County. He has 500 acres of land and about 5,200 head of cattle.
His company, B&B Cattle Co., has been operating there for about 6 years. The problem: He doesn't have the required state permit, never has, and now he is being fined $31,000.
According to a news release from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Beneke's firm "has been operating a confined animal feeding operation of about 5,200-head of cattle without a permit, operating without water pollution controls and practicing improper collection, handling and disposal of animal and other wastes."
Full Story, The Salina [Kansas] Journal, July 13, 2006
____________________________________
My letter to The Salina Journal:
Dear Editor,
Thou doth protest too much in your editorial masquerading as a “news” story.
Poor farmer Beneke, the mean old government fined him $31,000 for not having “proper permits”—which is all that many of your readers, who just skimmed the headline, would have learned.
But when one digs into the substance of the article, it turns out that Mr. Beneke was saving quite a bundle of money—over a quarter of a million dollars—by not bothering to comply with the laws concerning pollution from farming operations. Laws enacted to protect others from such completely irresponsible conduct. THAT is why he was fined—not for some failure to jump through paperwork hoops.
Since when is it a God-given right to poison other members of society in order to line one’s own pocket? The Natural Resources Defense Council has a good outline of just a few of the problems caused by operations like that of Mr. Beneke, http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/ffarms.asp
So notwithstanding the Journal's misleading headline and not-so-subtle editorial slant, this was not a case of some bureaucracy run amok, but rather one of another rampant polluter getting massaged, not even slapped, on the hand.
A more appropriate sanction would be to make Mr. Beneke to drink untreated farming runoff for the next six years.
Is the Kansas Department of Health and Environment going to force this overgrown brat to clean up all of his mess? Will the government end up bankrolling the cleanup? Or are Mr. Beneke’s neighbors and the rest of society going to continue to pay the price with their impaired health, just as they have for the past six years?
Terry L. Clark
posted by TLC's Place at 6:22 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home