How the Citizens of Nippenose Valley Fought Off the Factory Farms

an interview with Nippenose Valley activist Betsy Stevens

by David Walker

In early 2002, some residents of Nippenose Valley came across public notices in a the local newspaper announcing permit applications for two different factory farms. They quickly organized a group called the Concerned Citizens of Nippenose Valley. CCNV invoked a local ordinance protecting their water supply to tie up the permit applications, while mounting a comprehensive public relations campaign to build broad-based community opposition to the CAFOs. Their efforts began to pay off last March when one family withdrew its CAFO application. Last month, CCNV declared victory when the second family withdrew its application. CAFO battles are notoriously difficult to win. We asked CCNV member Betsy Stevens how the group did it, so other communities might benefit from CCNV's experience.

PEN: What is your community like?

Betsy Stevens: It’s a semi-rural farming community with some areas more developed then others. There’s a mixture of young and old. Some families have been there for generations. There are a little under 1,000 people in the valley. The proposed CAFO's would have been less then a mile from our elementary school, church, local store, a housing development, and all the rest of us.

PEN: How did CCNV get organized?

Stevens: Dave Hallow and Wayne Welsham, a local historian, happened to see in the newspaper a notice about this nutrient management plan application. Dave Hallow had farmed for about 50 years, and he didn’t know what that was. They looked into it, and they were like, You can’t do this. That’s how it started. They had a big community meeting. I found out from everyone putting signs around.

PEN: What did the signs say?

Stevens: "We support family farmers, not corporate swine factories." We wanted people to know that we 100% support family farmers in this area. We were not against farming. A lot of people think that, but it’s not true at all. It’s just these CAFOs that we don’t support.

PEN: How many people are there in CCNV?

Stevens: There are about 12 of us.

PEN: How did you figure out a strategy?

Stevens: Dave Hallow’s niece, Julie Steinbacher, is a lawyer. She figured out a lot of it. We were very hesitant to ask environmental groups for help at first because we didn’t want to lose the support of the community. We didn’t want them to think that we were a bunch of "tree-huggers". So basically we said, OK, we’re going to follow the law. We have an ordinance. We have a good lawyer. And we are just going to nip this in the bud and we’re not going to let go.

PEN: What does the ordinance say?

Stevens: We have a karst water system. In 1998, our township supervisors amended our zoning ordinances to protect it. The amendment prohibits manure lagoons and holdings tanks in particular areas of the valley due to the danger of collapse from ground subsidence and fear of leakage from underground manure storage. [Editor’s note: A karst water system is a natural but delicate underground reservoir made up of a series of hydrologically connected cavities and caves].

PEN: So basically your weapon was the local ordinance?

Stevens: And educating the community and not letting go. Because that’s what they want: for you to get bored and let go.

PEN: Do you think you would have had the same outcome if the local ordinance had not been in place?

Stevens: No. I believe we might have been able to slow it down, but I feel the CAFO's would have been pushed through anyway.

PEN: How did CCNVeducate the community?

Stevens: The group had a web site, and they sent out flyers to everybody. The flyer was my first inkling. I read it and said, "Oh, my god." I went to a meeting, and they explained what would happen. At each meeting, we would have different speakers. We’ve had two commissioners show up, we’ve had a state representative show up. We had a pathologist in the area show up. Our lawyer always talks.

PEN: How did you structure the meetings?

Stevens: We tried to make them educational, and we tried to keep them short-an hour, hour and a half. We tried to have good speakers. We had Larry Breach, the president of the Farmer’s Union, come down and speak several times. We showed videos. We would update the community and inform them of what would be next. We tried to get people pumped up. We sold t-shirts, and people wore them everywhere. (The shirts said, ‘No hog factories in Nippenose Valley’ and displayed a ‘no pigs’ graphic).

PEN: What videos did you show, and where did you get them?

Stevens: One was really graphic and showed how the animals are kept inside a CAFO. It was shot undercover and showed abuse and animal suffering. I don’t know the name of it. I know we wanted to play the tape "And on this Farm" but haven't yet. I got several tapes from various environmental groups.

PEN: How many people would show up at meetings?

Stevens: Two hundred or 250. We wouldn’t get the whole community. After the first meeting I went to, I went home and started writing everybody that I could. Dr. Nicholas Dillman, a local Pathologist, had originally contacted Farm Aid, and we got a letter from them. Then I started contacting them, and I said, "Look, we need help. Whatever you can do."

PEN: And what did they do?

Stevens: They showed up here with a film crew and did a documentary on us and showed it last year during the Farm Aid concert. It was really cool.

PEN: Why did they show up in your community, of all places?

Stevens: We’re a farming community, and Farm Aid was held last year in Pennsylvania. They were focusing on the reality of what CAFOs are doing to communities in Pennsylvania, and we are a good example-how we’re fighting, what it’s going to do to our community, our concerns, and how it has changed our views, and how we support farmers.

PEN: How do you support farmers, other than in word? How did you show them your support?

Stevens: We invited local farmers to our meetings. You can’t just say, "Don’t buy this meat." You have to give them an outlet. So we gave residents lists of local places to buy meat that’s not CAFO meat. We explained to them that at the supermarket, [CAFO meat is] what you’re getting. We’re lucky because Wegman’s around here has a whole hormone-free section. We tried to emphasize that.

PEN: How often did you hold the community meetings? Once a month?

Stevens: Oh, no. We’ve had four or five of them [in 18 months]. You can’t have them all the time. People get bored. We got the media involved big time.

PEN: How did you do that?

Stevens: I made friends with the reporter. He was sympathetic to us. He had to be unbiased, but he covered us. I’d call him and he’d show up. You have to get in good with [the press]. You have to be heard, and get your message out in the papers as much as you can, because [CAFO applicants] do not like that. They want to sneak the CAFOs in and that’s it. And by the way, they were so ticked off when Farm Aid showed up.

PEN: What tactics were they using against the community, and how did you respond?

Stevens: They were videotaping us during all the meetings.

PEN: What was your reaction to that?

Stevens: I didn’t care.

PEN: Did that intimidate anyone else?

Stevens: No, but I find a lot of people around here think, Well, there’s nothing you can do. [CAFOs] are the wave of the future. You’ve got everyone saying that, including state officials. We’ve got nobody on our side, basically, except environmental groups and ourselves. The state government and the laws pretty much favor [factory farms]. It’s so difficult to fight that, and we told our community, This is going to be a hell of a fight, man. We raised a lot of money.

PEN: How much did you raise, and how did you end up using it?

Stevens: We raised over $10,000 through donations, and fundraisers like selling t-shirts and yard signs, and raffles. We also ran community events like a Spaghetti Dinner and an Auction/Band night out. Some money went for legal fees. We didn't really use much of our money because we were saving for a costly legal battle. Also, we were lucky because our lawyer was related to Dave Hallow and she lives in the Valley so she donated her time. We had a lot of people donate their time to help us out. We are planning on purchasing new professional signs for our local farmer's market. We wanted to give back to our generous community.

PEN: How did you find the experts you needed?

Stevens: I didn’t do that. Some people just came forward and said, ‘I want to help you.’ Dr. Dillman, who is our pathologist, did all the research on the medical stuff. He’s a resident of the Valley. We had Dave Hollick, a cave expert, who verified that we have a karst water supply system. He testified that if these CAFOs went in, we’d have raw sewage in our water supply. We also had a Geology Professor and assistant from Lock haven University donate their time.

PEN: Did you have to hire an expert on nutrient management planning and applications?

Stevens: No, we had another person donate their time for that. He is an Engineer and former Nutrient Management Technician. Our lawyer also handled all that. We just had to do a lot of research. I researched everything I could get my hands on, and I’m sure other people did too. In the beginning, we knew nothing. Then we kept finding more and more and more. There’s so much. We all had our own little area that we concentrated on. It all happened kind of naturally. We're such a diverse group and we all kind of did our own little thing.

PEN: Where did you get your information?

Stevens: On the Internet, and talking to GRACE, and talking to all of the other people who had been through it down south.

PEN: Did you have any local officials at all on your side?

Stevens: One county commissioner showed up at all our meetings, and he called up a local TV news station and asked them to do a story on us. That was helpful.

PEN: You mentioned that part of your strategy was not letting go. How do you keep people interested and involved?

Stevens: It’s hard. It gets boring after a while. Even I got sick of it. You just want it to be done with. We’re the ones doing all the work, all the research, and constantly biting our finger nails. But we were so determined. How can you not be? This is going to affect your life. You’re going to lose value on your home. And this thing was going to be right near my kid’s school. That’s what did it for me. I would do anything I had to to stop it. They could have put their CAFO up there but we wore them down. They knew we were going to show up at every meeting, every step of the way.

For instance, the Soil Conservation people called us up and said, ‘Do we really have to have a public meeting on this? Our hands are tied. There’s nothing we can do. We have to put this through.’ And we were like, ‘Then what good are you if you have to put this through?’ They knew they were going to be in the paper. They knew they were going to be smeared all over the place, because that was my job. I was in tight with the news media, and I would have smeared the Soil Conservation people all over the place. Everything they did would have been in the paper. They would have been called to be quoted. They would have been bugged.

PEN: So they were trying to avoid a public meeting?

Stevens: Oh, yeah. They were stalling. We were waiting and waiting and waiting. They were going to delay the hearing. Then the Lehman’s withdrew their application.

PEN: Is CCNV trying to put up candidates for local offices who are friendly to the concerns of CCNV?

Stevens: Yes. We have one of our members campaigning for Township Supervisor. We have also supported our county commissioners who have supported us. Several County Commissioners have come to our community meetings and spoke on our behalf. The CCNV is well aware of the importance politics plays with this fight.

PEN: Other than that, is CCNV’s work done? Where do you go from here?

Stevens: We’re part of a regional HOG task force that’s new. It’s made up of five or six communities. We’re trying to help each other. When one group is having a hearing, the rest of us will be there. We’ll support them. We can hook them up with people they need because we’ve already been through it. It’s strength in numbers. They can’t ignore all of us.

(CCNV's web site is http://sites.micro-link.net/limestone/index.htm. Betsy Stevens can be reached at ednbets@micro-link.net)