Speak of the Devil...
and please, spare me the phony righteousness
“I had the feeling that I had performed a task, indeed the only task clearly defined for me. I had seen and experienced things that appeared important not only for me, things that imperiously demanded to be told. And I had told them, I had testified. I was a chemist, I had a profession which gave me a living and wholly absorbed me, I did not feel the need to write anything else.”
Primo Levi, 1919-1987
About ten days ago, yet another administrative law hearing was held in Des Moines regarding the Supreme Beef cattle CAFO. The operation is perched atop the watershed of one of our last remaining streams retaining ecological integrity, Bloody Run Creek. Former Des Moines Register columnist and photographer Larry Stone wrote a piece about the hearing which you can read from his own substack, and so I won’t dive too far into the details about the hearing.
I do, however, want to explore a comment made at the hearing by Supreme Beef operator and part-owner, Jared Walz. That comment was that “the devil” had interfered in what he evidently thought should be a fast track of regulatory approval. This wasn’t the first time that Walz characterized his Road to Dameatscus journey in a spiritual way, having asked attendees at a previous hearing for “your thoughts and your prayers for planning for our site.”
Regulatory approval very likely would have been on a fast track were it not for the efforts of Larry, Steve Veysey, Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited and a few others. Six years after construction began, Bloody Run was issued a stay of execution last April when a judge ordered Walz’s permit be sent back to Iowa DNR for reconsideration. But to the surprise of virtually no one in a state ruled by the iron fists of agribusiness, the livestock industry and farmer legislators, Walz has somehow managed to convince Big Ag’s servants at Iowa DNR to grant the necessary permits once again, and 9000 cattle are now crammed into his barns, excreting the waste equivalent of the City of Davenport. Walz has license to squeeze another 2600 into the operation, but believe it or not, a presumed livestock expert (Walz, in fact) says “animals perform better when they’re not as crowded.” Since beef cattle are mainly steers, let’s assume ‘perform better’ means they gain weight faster, and, well, not that other thing. If an animal welfare advocate or ISU researcher says “animals perform better when they’re not as crowded”, they risk getting a visit from their county sheriff (former) or a pink slip (latter). When the owner/operator of a 9000 head cattle CAFO says it, I invite you to go ahead and take it as an indictment of the CAFO model.
Walz’s comment that the devil was getting in the way of his pursuit of mammon made me think a little bit more time spent with the Good Book might be in order for him. I seem to recall some guy named Jesus saying “No one can serve two masters something something something” (Matthew 6:24). I mean, for the love of all that is holy, what genuinely religious person says Satan is getting in the way of me making some righteous dough?
Let’s look at some other stuff about this Bloody Run thing and then ask ourselves who are the righteous and who are the wicked—Iowa Ag, or the people trying to prevent Bloody Run Creek from going the way of so many other wrecked Iowa streams.
2018: Walz twice fined $10,000 for lack of erosion controls allowing soil and toxic ammonia runoff to Bloody Run Creek (1).
2021: After intervening in his son-in-law’s behalf with Iowa DNR (1), Iowa State Senator, Natural Resources and Environment Committee member, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee and former Republican candidate for Secretary of Agriculture Dan Zumbach says “I don’t know the players at all. That’s not part of my concern or my responsibility. I simply asked the director if she could help this constituent get to the right folks (2).” Zumbach, also a farmer, is a member of the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee as well as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. I might also add that Z appears to be unfamiliar with the 9th Commandment.
2023: Zumbach proposes budget that would defund water quality monitoring network, including two stations on Bloody Run Creek and one about ½ mile from Supreme Beef (3).
2024: Following a judge’s intervention preventing removal of manure from the Supreme Beef lagoon (4), Iowa State Representative Mike Sexton proposes a bill that would allow manure application from a livestock facility that has not yet had its Nutrient Management Plan approved by Iowa DNR. Sexton’s wife Becky is a manure consultant that has worked for Supreme Beef. Mike Sexton has served on the Environmental Protection and Agriculture Committees and has been a board member for the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association (1).
Like Jared Walz, I do smell some evil wafting around Supreme Beef. I disagree with Walz, however, on the nature of it.
I can’t write without inspiration and it came to me today (Sunday) after reading Laura Belin’s substack post, "It's embarrassing"—Dems slam do-nothing Iowa House environment panel. In Laura’s column, six Democrats, with Representative Austin Baeth (Polk County) perhaps the most vocal of the group, call out the farce that is the House Environmental Protection Committee, whose primary (and maybe only) objective this legislative session is to fund bounty stations in all 99 counties where hunters and trappers can redeem raccoon tails for cash. (There’s a sentence I never thought I would write). Maybe, just maybe, a few Democrats are finally seeing Iowa’s environmental degradation for what it is—a social justice issue that affects every Iowan.
A person I know who has studied the U.S. civil rights movement told me something recently that I think is germane to our environmental struggles here. He said that the civil rights movement at least in part happened when it did because black GIs, returning to the U.S. after having risked their lives fighting for their country in World War II, decided they’d had enough Jim Crow and weren’t going to take it anymore. While I hesitate to draw an equivalence between racial bigotry and environmental degradation (although they can indeed go hand in hand), this is the attitude Iowans need to have to move Big Ag’s fat ass off the natural resources that belong to us all.
It's very easy to fall into a mindset that tells you this environmental monstrosity created by The Beast of Big Ag is just some sort of minor and unavoidable circumstance and good folks who “all want clean water” will get it figured out in the by and by. Don’t believe it.
From here on out, I’m going to accept Jared Walz’s invitation to treat this as I’ve thought for years it should be treated—as a battle between good and evil. If you can’t get your head in that place, well then, call it a battle between good and greed. Big Ag has cloaked itself with the phony righteousness of Iowa farmers like Jared Walz, an industrial wolf dressing itself up in moth-eaten lamb’s wool, so they can pull the rug over your eyes while befouling our air, water and land. In the meantime, our quality of life gets degraded, our wells get poisoned, our rivers get wrecked, our postage-stamp-sized parks get neglected, our lakes are unusable in summer, manure and chemical vapors waft into the middle of our largest cities, our children move away, our loved ones die of cancer, and smalltown Iowa is hollowed out. All this not so they can prosper, but so they can clutch an extra dime by defiling and desecrating the countryside. I call that evil. And if your reputation, stature, ‘place’ or elected office depends on pacifying the evil doers, well, maybe a little self-reflection might be in order.
Note on Primo Levi:
Primo Levi was an Italian Jew, a trained chemist, Auschwitz survivor, and one of the great writers of the 20th century. His passage at the beginning of this essay was taken from the Preface of Moments of Reprieve, A Memoir of Auschwitz. I’m drawing no equivalence between the Holocaust and Iowa Pollution, nor do I draw any equivalence between my writing and his. But the words in that passage are an inspiration to me.
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Spot on!
Amen, amen.