-
Contact Brent
Category Archives: Air Quality
Feedback and Unintended Policy Consequences
Today has been a day to reflect on the way things actually work and the perverse outcomes that sometimes obtain when we do what seems logical…meaning, of course, that unintended consequences are everywhere. —– Over the past 20 years or so, perhaps more, environmental advocacy groups (Environmental Defense, Sierra Club, etc.) have trained their guns on industrial agriculture, especially industrial ANIMAL agriculture, arguing that the larger our “animal factories” (their term, not mine!) become, the greater risk they pose to the environment. The logical conclusion they reach is… Read More →
NCBA Environmental Stewardship Award Program
Do you raise cattle as your life’s vocation? Are you a dedicated steward of your land, cattle, air, water, and community? Are you a dedicated servant-leader of your fellow cattle producers (and agricultural producers generally)? If the answer to all three of those questions is “yes,” then maybe it’s time you thought about applying to the prestigious National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s Environmental Stewardship Award Program! Here is the NCBA-ESAP Application 2016. The 2016 Regional winners have already been selected, but it’s never too early to start thinking about a 2017 application. In… Read More →
Dairies and Air Pollution
Last week, at the invitation of Dr. Ellen Jordan (Extension Dairy Specialist, Dallas), I made a short presentation at the annual Dairy Outreach Program Area (DOPA) workshop in Stephenville. Dairy producers in the Central Texas (Erath, Comanche, Johnson, Bosque, and Hamilton Counties) and East Texas (Hopkins, Rains, and Wood Counties) DOPAs are required under their state water-quality permits to obtain a certain number of continuing-education units each year. Because these CEU programs are a regulatory requirement, they’re usually well attended, and this year’s was no exception: somewhere around 45… Read More →
What is a “Nuisance?”
CAVEAT: This post is intended to be informative, but it in no way represents legal opinions or legal advice. If either of those is what you’re after, seek the counsel of a competent attorney. The term, “nuisance,” has a long and distinguished history in common law. Generally speaking, an activity creates a nuisance when it substantially and unreasonably interferes with the right of another party to enjoy his or her property. Normally, a nuisance activity does not involve physically trespassing on another’s property, but attributes or results of the… Read More →
Windblown Dust and Landowner Liability
As the urban-rural interface expands toward the wide, open spaces that Panhandle livestock producers have occupied since the 1800s, and as urban residents seek out those same wide, open spaces for their retreats from the stresses of city living, conflict between livestock producers and their neighbors occurs more and more frequently. One of the most prominent realms of conflict is nuisance, and we will discuss nuisance claims (odor, dust, noise, etc.) in a future post. Another realm of legal exposure that faces the agricultural landowner has to do… Read More →
Atmospheric Ammonia in the Texas Panhandle
Under a contract with the National Trends Network, a national monitoring network sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture, we operate a monitoring site on the south rim of North Ceta Canyon. At Cañonceta we measure ground-level, atmospheric ammonia concentrations, wet deposition, and dry deposition. Why ammonia? Mainly because in the presence of atmospheric moisture, ammonia can dissolve into that moisture and then react with other airborne species – mainly sulfate and nitrate – to form fine particles. These particles scatter light pretty efficiently, so at high… Read More →
It’s Gonna Be a Rough Summer for Feedyard Dust
As wonderful as 2015 was, 2016 is racing off in the other direction weather-wise here in the southern High Plains: warm, dry, and windy. The first Bradford pear trees blossomed last weekend, almost three full weeks early. And NOAA is forecasting a transition from the current El Niño to a La Niña pattern in the fall. If you are a cattle feeder, it’s time to start getting your feedyard surfaces ready for the “high season.” Here’s a bulletin we wrote in 2011, one of the hottest, driest summers… Read More →