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Unforgiven Drove from Twin Falls, Idaho to Beaver, Utah. The county seat, Beaver has a courthouse, offices for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM), various county offices, and not a whole lot else. I arrived in late afternoon and scoped things out a bit. All the cafes were closed, except for Arschel’s where I enjoyed a truly excellent meal. A full tour of town took about half an hour. The next day, I met up with Bruce Plenk, an attorney representing a group of citizens who have filed a public nuisance lawsuit against Circle 4, and Dave Woodward, who’s associated with the "Kennedy Group" of attorneys who filed the racketeering lawsuit against Smithfield Foods in North Carolina. Smithfield owns Circle 4 Farms and claims to be the largest hog producer and pork processor in the world, raising and slaughtering hogs in 10 states plus Brazil, Mexico and Poland. Bruce is an old Utah hand. We met years ago when I was backpacking out of the Lime/Road Canyon area on Southeast Utah’s Cedar Mesa. Bruce and some friends were headed in. We chatted for a bit about trails, weather, and suchlike, then discovered our mutual interests: He’s an environmental attorney and I an environmental staffer. We met again later when he called me to testify as a witness against Circle 4 in a clean water lawsuit. Dave Woodward is an attorney from Pensacola, Florida who somehow managed to seem right at home in Utah. For some reason, in fact, he reminded me of Tony Hillerman, the crime novelist of the Four Corners region, famous for his heroes, the fictional Navajo cops, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. The three of us talked shop over a meal in a Milford diner –- cheese quesadillas, fish and chips (real potato fries, I’m happy to say, not those freeze-dried simulacra from Simplot). After lunch, Bruce and Dave went back to a deposition session where Circle 4 attorneys were grilling plaintiffs of the nuisance suit. I mounted my trusty steed, a ‘99 Subaru Forester, and headed off to see the Valley of Swine firsthand.
Originally, four of the world’s largest hog companies entered into a joint venture here in this high desert area which sits 5,000 feet above sea level and averages just nine inches of rain per year. The original plans were to raise a staggering 2.5 million hogs per year with a feedmill in Milford and a slaughterhouse and packing plant in the town of Delta.
So far, no slaughterhouse has been constructed to butcher the hogs locally. When they’re fat enough for market, the hogs get a one-way trip to the Los Angeles-area for "disassembly," (as the folks in the business like to call it).
It was initially claimed that all those hogs wouldn’t stink too badly, but anyone with a working nose would beg to differ. Immediately upon bringing in the hogs, in fact, neighbors complained of the stench and eye irritations. But that was only the half of it. In August 1996, (the first year of operation) Circle 4 manure spilled directly into the groundwater. 80,000 gallons of hog waste were accidentally siphoned into one of the farm's water supply wells. Oops. The company neglected to report the incident for almost six weeks. When they did, the Utah Division of Water Quality fined Circle 4 a mere $6,800. Not surprisingly, the spill stoked fears in the community of widespread contamination of the drinking water.
I drove across the Circle 4 site in the afternoon, all the way from the feedmill at Milford to the Blue Mountain site in Iron County -– a distance of about 30 miles. It’s truly huge. Trying to capture the immensity of it, I drove up to an overlook at 6,000 feet. From one side of the valley to the other is about 15 miles and most of what you can see is owned by Circle 4. My digital camera couldn’t adequately document the scene. And it certainly couldn’t capture the aroma. Man, does it stink! The stench assaulted my nostrils even miles from the operations, but up close it was like the flatus of Hades. Having seen and gotten a whiff of the beast for myself, I then went to meet with the locals, stolid rural folk who had assembled to air their grievances. One noteworthy attendee was Byron Muir, who introduced himself as a cousin to John, and swore several times to the truth of the claim. But it was his mother who took the prize for sheer earthiness. A feisty oldster ("I’m a bit over 80 years old," she told me), she seemed about ready to lead a posse to run the strangers out of town on a rail. What had her so upset? "My well water looks like piss and smells like hog shit," the octogenarian said (and I quote). "Try washing your clothes in yellow water." I decided then and there I’d hold off on my laundry till I got to Bakersfield. -- Ken Midkiff Up to Top |
As it happened, 
The Milford area was apparently chosen for its climate (neither too hot nor too cold, with low humidity), access to water (Circle 4 bought up hefty water rights), and general remoteness. It was also lured with sweetheart deals from local politicians who hoped the factory farm would be the answer to their economic woes. Of course, there were already farmers and ranchers in the Milford area, many of whom resented the intrusion, but that didn’t matter much. According to the Deseret News, Utah lost 38 percent of its hog farms between 1994 and 1997, even while total hog production shot up nearly seven-fold. 