Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Climate Change and Environmental Issues Indiana Farmer Plagued by Giant "Poop Bubbles"

This is a case of over regulation gone bad. Here is this poor guy, 1400 cows and all of that cow sh!t to collect and dispose of. He goes to the regulators and they tell him what he has to do to start his business, and lo and behold nobody thought about the ultimate consequence. I really don't have a solution, except to convert this waste into fuel, but imagine whart this guy would have to do to get the permits for that business?

Sometimes a stories like this make the a-hole bone in my body start shaking, and this is one of those times. I have the song "Tiny Bubbles" rolling around in my head right now. The guy never should have been given the permit unless he had a solution to the accumulation problems. The State should have insisted that there be a limit on the amount he could hold at any one time and imagine what the kids son would look like in that paddle boat as he popped those bubbles! Image what his laundry bills would be?

In the end this guy will go under and the state will have to come in and clean the site up, and that is just BULLSH!T!

advocating more government intervention?

shucks ma-rep, where will it end?

OMG Ma, did you even read ANY PART of ANY of the reports I linked to? Several mentions of all the help that's available, rebates, financing, expert assistance, tax credits.
Government AND green biz WANT farmers like this to WIN using green ideas, and energy producers in rural areas are eager to buy the surplus power because it means they don't have to build bigger plants.
So all of the above is just conjecture on your part!


He lobbied for a year to get away with the minimum required.
The state was reluctant to give him the permit most likely because they would have preferred that he do something sensible with the waste. But I won't waste your time with conjecture. I will do more research and ask the Randolph County Agricultural Board what their specific stance is on waste to energy cogeneration.
I promise to revisit within a week with my findings.


I just said above that he's already bankrupt, and that the state is going to burden the taxpayers.
If you lived there, that would be YOU.

I am still trying to figure out WHY you would be against green technology when it clearly would have saved EVERYBODY money, AND addressed the environmental issues at the same time.
Everybody wins, Ma...even YOU, the taxpayer.

Enough of that sh!t....More of this sh!t

Actually MA, they do follow them around with a machine to clean up the waste. Why do you think it's contained in a pool? If you thought about it a little bit harder, it might have occurred to you that there was a reason all that waste was in one spot.

My father was raised on a sheep farm in Colorado, so I'm a good deal more familiar with Farming 101 than you will ever be. Perhaps before you talk about popping bubbles or bird sh*t on a freshly washed auto, you might consider a little research on the topic. Especially when someone is kind enough to give you a link that provides the very information you obviously know so little about.

Ma Republican~I live where there are dairy farms. Most farms are at least 1,000 cows strong. That's a lot of poop on just one farm multiply that by several farms. You can imagine the smell, especially on days after a rain, or when it's hot. The run-off is horrendous, and because there are not a lot of sewer lines, it runs down streets and gullies right into the Santa Ana River. I wouldn't drink or swim i that body of water, because animal waste is only part of it, chemical run-off from the crops and manufacturing happens too.

And yes, there is regulation(this IS California), but a lot of the farmers are scofflaws and don't give a flying cow about it. The county doesn't have enough money to enforce things right now, but the land is becoming more valuable for building homes, so the dairies might be selling out soon and moving to Fresno and Bakersfield.

And if you think things are overly regulated-talk to people that used to live in Love Canal.

You wouldn't want it in the sewer lines either.
Or rather, you WOULD, if we were UTILIZING it properly.

In fact, the best thing we can do, with waste from cows, pigs and yes, perhaps even ourselves, is to start looking at it as a fuel/energy feedstock, because the truth is, our bodies and those of our four legged tasty friends, are really just inefficient anaerobic digesters and if there were enough EFFICIENT anaerobic digesters around, we'd have enough natural gas to seriously offset a LOT of energy needs.
I realize that this is a less than tasteful subject to be studying over morning coffee and Captain Crunch but when you consider that we are 300 million in number, the amount of gas that could be generated is mind boggling.

Instead of sewage treatment plants, we should be building sewage to energy plants!

I always wondered how much energy this country would have if we could harness all that hot air from Congress, Rush, Sean, Glenn and Man Coulter...

That kind of hot air is completely inefficient. It stops all work in it's tracks instead of moving things along. Think if hot air from Rush, Sean, Glenn and Coulter kind of like a big butt plug.

Now that's a poop bubble!