HUDSON, Iowa — Rural residents living near a new 7,200-hog operation being built for Iowa Select Farms, Inc. are raising concerns their quality of life will be affected by odors likely to be emitted from the large confinement.

“One hog house or maybe even two would have been one thing,” Harlan Witry, a retired Hudson farmer, told KGAN News Channel 2 in Cedar Rapids, concerning the three buildings Iowa Select will rent for its new expansion. “But three, that’s ridiculous.”

Constructed by New Modern Concepts of Iowa Falls, each of the three buildings, which Iowa Select will manage after completion in about three months, will house approximately 2,400 hogs in its new Black Hawk County location. Under Iowa law, each hog confinement has to be at least 1,250 feet from residences and spread about 2,500 feet apart.

But Witry said that’s still too many hogs living too closely together, which he and other neighbors added would drop property values in their area because of the close proximity of the buildings – and the likely stench.

“All we are is in circles with a bunch of hog houses that are all going to stink completely out of hand,” he added.

Jen Holtkamp, Iowa Select communication director, however, said the Iowa Falls-based company has worked directly with the local farmers who sold it the three acres each of land for manure, “which is of high value to grain farmers and part of a sustainable food production system.

“As we all know, our industry has made huge improvements in neighbor relations simply by adapting to the style of hog barns we now use,” she said. “The manure is captured underneath the floors in concrete pits, totally contained.

“Gone are the days of broadcasting/ spraying manure. We use tanks and inject the manure into the soil during a short window in the fall. As an industry, we’ve come a long way.”

Holtkamp said the standards the company has set in place involve farm aesthetics. “Keeping our sites mowed and looking nice,” she added, “and cleanliness of the inside and outside of the facility is important.”

Other standards are keeping dust to a minimum, which means ventilation needs to be right; keeping ventilation fans clean; manure housed under the slats in concrete pits – no water quality issues and odor is kept to a minimum this way; and building smaller sites.

She added that the company also meets and exceeds separation distances to neighbors. “We comply with every rule set forth by the Iowa DNR (Department of Natural Resources) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency),” she said. “There are also a few new technologies and we continue to evaluate ones that do come into the marketplace.

“We do research pit additives at different facilities to see what is working. We also cooperate with several research projects with Iowa State University to look at and understand air emissions.”

In addition, Iowa Select tests the value of the manure and the soil so nutrients aren’t over-applied to fields, she said.

“Manure is injected and we have closers so it’s incorporated, and therefore minimizes odor, so the nutrients are fully utilized,” she added.

“Under normal circumstances, we apply in the fall and apply once during the year.

“We also can inform neighbors ahead of time as to when application will happen so they are aware.”

But Dennis Damon, who lives nearby, told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier he and his neighbors are worried about what the facilities will mean for their quality of life.

“We moved back four years ago, spent a ton of money building our dream house. Now this happens,” he said. “We’ll have to wait and see if there are any problems.”

In the end, Holtkamp said Black Hawk County, where the new buildings are now being built, is the ideal place for pork production – especially with the Tyson Fresh Meats pork plant in Waterloo.

“As we all know, Iowa is one of the best places to farm and raise livestock due to its fertile soil, grain source and proximity to packing plants,” she said. “Very few places in the world have what rural Iowa has to offer.”

Founded in 1992 and one of the nation’s largest pork producers, Iowa Select and its 900 employees in 45 of the state’s 99 counties market 3.34 million hogs annually.

Together, those marketed hogs produce 204 million pork chops a year – for example, enough to supply the Pork-Chop-on-a-Stick stand at the Iowa State Fair for 3,733 years, according to the company’s website.