I thought I would post to the list with this follow up to yesterday's
property value story in the DM Register:

(Forwarded from the Iowa CCI list, original article at:
http://www.dmregister.com/news/stories/c5903220/22119060.html)


Begin forwarded message:

> From: iowacci <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri Aug 29, 2003  9:54:33 AM US/Central
> Subject: Follow up Register story about property values
>
> Dear CCI Members,
> Pasted below is a Des Moines Register story following up yesterday's
> front page story about how factory farm impact property values.
> Several
> CCI members are quoted in the story.  Thanks for all your input on how
> factory farms are impacting your property values and other neighbors'
> property values.
> Iowa CCI staff
>
> ISU livestock study draws fire
> By STACI HUPP
> Register Staff Writer
> 08/29/2003
>
> Ames, Ia. - Iowa livestock producers and their neighbors finally found
> some common ground Thursday. Both sides said a new study on how odors
> affect property values is unrealistic.
> Property values dip only when rural homes are downwind from livestock
> confinements, an Iowa State University study shows. An analysis of
> 1,145
> rural homes in five north-central Iowa counties found that property
> values drop by up to 11 percent within a quarter-mile. The impact
> diminishes with distance, researchers said.
> The study perpetuates a belief that livestock operators "are bad
> stewards of the land, and we're actually doing a lot better than we
> ever
> have," said Tim Bierman, a Larrabee hog farmer and past president of
> the
> Iowa Pork Producers Association. Bierman pointed to regulations for
> separation distances and manure management.
> "They're trying to put more of the devaluation on livestock operations
> than what they should be," Bierman said.
> Property owners attacked the report for minimizing the damage to
> property values. The study examined county records for property sales,
> but failed to look at homes that never sold.
> Untold numbers of Iowans who live near livestock confinements want to
> move but can't sell their homes, said Kari Carney, a spokeswoman for
> Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a consumer group.
> Several Iowans have asked county assessors to lower their property
> taxes. In a few cases, they win. Many lose.
> "They were sympathetic for me, they felt sorry for me, but there wasn't
> a darn thing they were going to do for me," said Peggy Birchmeyer, who
> lives near four Heartland Pork facilities in Davis County. Birchmeyer
> said her property assessment went up 50 percent after she complained to
> the county assessor.
> The losers stay put - like Birchmeyer - or abandon their homes, some of
> which fall victim to vandals and methamphetamine labs. Others spend
> months or years waiting for a buyer.
> A Davis County man has tried for three years to sell his late parents'
> home near a hog confinement, Carney said. A former Taylor County man
> moved to Montana months ago but has failed to sell his home in Iowa,
> she
> said.
> James McKnight won a settlement against Iowa Select Farms this year,
> but
> he wants out of the Sac County home his grandfather built almost a
> century ago.
> McKnight and his wife spent their chunk of the settlement - they're not
> allowed to say how much it is - on a new home in Colorado Springs.
> The couple will burn and bulldoze their Iowa home if it doesn't sell by
> October. The two-story house near the Iowa Select facility has been on
> the market for three months for about $40,000. McKnight has had no
> takers.
> "Not very many people want to look at it," McKnight, 69, said of his
> home, which is about a half mile from Iowa Select's 30,000-head hog
> confinement. "I'll probably end up with a backhoe and push the roof in
> and burn the house. It's sad; it really is. But what do you do?"
> Livestock producers and their neighbors have long been at odds.
> Property
> owners say the stench from hog facilities ruins their chances of
> selling
> their homes. Livestock producers say their facilities fuel local
> economies and keep Iowa agriculture competitive.
> The power of local governments to stop hog operations is weak under
> state law, so more communities have used social pressure to chase away
> hog operations. Others, like McKnight, have sued.
> ISU researchers set out to set the record straight on how smell impacts
> property values.
> "I really think that knowledge and objective reasoning can only help
> agriculture," said Bruce Babcock, an economics professor who runs ISU's
> Center for Agricultural and Rural Development and led the study.
> The study also stirred criticism from agricultural experts, who
> dissected the study's suggestion that livestock producers pay off their
> neighbors. In return, neighbors would allow producers to build
> confinements, the report said.
> Neil Hamilton, a Drake University professor who heads the school's
> Agricultural Law Center, said standoffs are best resolved in the
> courts.
> Policymakers could try to enforce laws, but the payoffs probably would
> fail to satisfy both sides, he said.
> "The issue is: Would it be constitutional and could you get it it
> politically passed?" Hamilton said. "I think that the political and
> legal reality of that idea is that it's an interesting academic
> exercise, but it doesn't bear much relation to the way the real world
> works."
>

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