‘Profit over people’ - Residents raise concerns as hog waste site is being built in Monona County for unidentified company

NEAR CASTANA, Iowa (KTIV) — An unidentified company out of Woodbury County will be using a six-acre industrial waste site approximately three miles northeast of Castana without notifying Monona County leaders, according to county officials.

The site is designed to hold DAFcake, a solid byproduct pressed from hog manure. The new project site is managed by Hawthorne Land Holdings LLC. But it’s been doing all the work on this site without notifying neighbors.

More than 50 people attended the Tuesday, July 14, Monona County Board of Supervisors meeting to hear details about the development, and the crowd was large enough to move the discussion into the courthouse’s larger courtroom.

County says it had no role in approving the project

Board of Supervisors Chairman Bo Fox said he called the meeting to address misinformation and clarify the county’s position.

“We’re trying to figure out from the county perspective on what boundaries we have as a county, if we have any authority or not,” Fox said.

According to Fox, the county was not notified about the project at any point and did not approve anything related to it.

Jay Layman, manager of Hawthorne Land Holdings LLC, said the project team worked with engineers, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and agronomists, and conducted multiple soil tests before proceeding.

“We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time working with the engineers, worked with the DNR, we’ve worked with agronomists, we’ve done soil tests, multiple, to make sure this is something that we would even want to take,” Layman said.

Justin Sprague, an agricultural engineer with ProAg Engineering who assisted with the project, joined Tuesday’s meeting via Zoom. He said Iowa law may not require a permit for the site if it meets specific conditions.

“There is a permit exemption. So if the waste is applied under a two dry ton, per acre per year application rate, then there’s a list of the site requirements and the waste requirements that have to be met. But if you meet all of those requirements, then you can fall under that permit exemption,” Sprague said.

Residents raise concerns about odor, water and transparency

Nearby resident Scott Koepsell said the site appeared quickly and without warning.

“This property was planted with beans in the spring and they ripped those out and came with all this heavy equipment almost in the middle of the night really quickly and put this in the last few weeks,” Koepsell said.

Other residents raised concerns about odor, rainfall runoff and the impact on downstream water quality. The site sits near a local cemetery. Layman acknowledged no archaeological study was conducted before construction began.

When asked about the odor, Layman said, “The odor of this product is not an extreme thing. It’s very similar to … hog manure is what the odor is.”

One attendee raised concerns about the cemetery’s proximity to the site, saying the smell would affect those visiting graves.

Hawthorne Land Holdings representatives declined to identify the source of the waste material, saying they are under contract.

“The contract itself that we’re working with, I’m not at liberty to disclose,” Layman said.

Layman said the company did not intend to create confusion.

“It was never our intention to create miscommunication. Our intention was to design something on the farm for our farm,” he said.

Koepsell said residents feel the burden of the project falls on those who live nearby.

“This corporate farm and this private equity manager of the landowners will make all the profit. And those of us who actually live here will have to deal with all the consequences. And so it’s really the classic profit over people,” Koepsell said.

Layman said, “I just want you to know we’re not here to be bad neighbors; we’re here to be good neighbors.”

Questions remain as county weighs its authority

Tuesday’s meeting left several questions unanswered, including the identity of the company that will be using the project site and what recourse exists if something goes wrong.

Q&A was cut short due to the timing of the meeting. The Monona County Board of Supervisors will hold its next meeting the following Tuesday, July 21, at which residents may continue to make public comments.

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