As suspected, agribusiness is indeed turning cartwheels over the news that Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln is now chairman of the Senate Ag Committee. The public policy director for the retrograde American Farm Bureau told The Hill, "We couldn’t have handpicked a chairman better than this." The giant sucking sound you're hearing is agricultural reform rushing down the drain.

The headline of The Hill's piece tells you all you need to know:  "K Street welcomes Lincoln as the new head of Ag committee" -- K Street being the center of the lobbying biz. If you read on, however, you'll discover all sorts of lovely little Lincolnian tidbits. Did you know that in 2007 Lincoln tried to exempt agribusiness from toxic waste lawsuits? The fact that Tyson Foods, the nation's largest chicken (and chickensh*t) producer, is based in Arkansas and is a major campaign contributor to her is, of course, a total coincidence.

Oh, and all that oil and gas money she gets is entirely unrelated to her strident opposition to climate change legislation -- opposition that is so strong, The Hill speculated she could single-handedly derail it.

Indeed, there is no good news here. Some (including me) have speculated that Lincoln had little hope of reelection come 2010. But now, with money flowing into her coffers and local industry fully aware that, should Lincoln lose, Michigan's Debbie Stabenow would be in charge of ag in the Senate, Lincoln's reelection propsects have suddenly brightened.

Meanwhile, Lincoln submitted her first bill related to the school lunch program reauthorization scheduled for early next year -- a top administration priority and an area which seemed poised for a significant overhaul. This bill, though minor, offers some insight into exactly how much reform we can expect from her. The answer: Very little.

The bill would require the development of "model product specifications and practices for foods offered in school nutrition programs" such that they meet federal dietary guidelines. I don't know what's more depressing. The fact that many school food programs don't already meet federal dietary guidelines or the fact that even meals that met those guidelines are the opposite of healthy. Either way, it doesn't appear that we can expect much reform from Lincoln on that front either.

And while we can continue to work to get money out of politics so that our politicians have one less reason to listen to corporate interests, the Supreme Court is about to ensure such an eventuallity never happens.

The only hope for reform, as I see it, is to take the favored GOP strategy and wait for the agribusiness over-reach -- in other words, wait for a policy endorsed by the House and Senate ag committees that's so extreme other congressional players decide they have no choice but to act. A hint of how this might work came in the House food safety bill, which the congressional leadership declined to submit officially to the House Ag Committe because they knew those committeemembers would tear it to pieces.

Is it possible that Lincoln and Rep. Collin Peterson -- her counterpart in the House -- can misbehave so badly that it finally causes normally lily-livered representatives on other House and Senate committees to take a stand against agribusiness? I have my doubts. But with agribusiness now as well positioned as they've ever been to get their way on the big issues facing food and agriculture, it's pretty much all we've got.

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Mark Pryor

Sen. Mark Pryor is a moderate who has voiced concerns in the past about passing climate policy, but has been relatively quiet this year. He is regularly listed among the Democrats most likely to oppose a climate bill.

Pryor has expressed interest in increasing his state's contribution in the biofuels sector, however, which might help win his vote. He says on his Senate website, "As part of [the effort to move our country toward energy independence], I believe that we must move beyond oil, gas, and coal and focus on cleaner alternatives and new sources of energy, including renewable fuels. Arkansas, in particular, is rich in biodiesel resources, such as soybeans and rice, and also has an abundance of natural gas resources, such as the Fayetteville Shale. As your Senator I will fight to help Arkansas become a leader in the new energy economy."

Pryor recently introduced legislation with noted climate-change denier James Inhofe (R-Okla.) to promote the use of natural gas vehicles.

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Earlier this year, Pryor voted against using the budget reconciliation process to pass climate policy. Last year, he signed the letter from 10 swing-vote Democrats explaining why they would have opposed final passage of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

Do you know more about this senator's stance on climate legislation? Tell us.

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Blanche Lincoln

Sen. Blanche Lincoln recently called the House climate and energy bill "a complete non-starter," and pledged that the Senate would move more slowly in crafting legislation in order to address the concerns of specific legislators and regions.

Lincoln's own concerns include potential rises in energy costs and impacts on agriculture. She has also indicated that she would like to see more drilling in a climate and energy bill. "I am committed to examining all options that will lessen our dependence on foreign oil, including incentives for conservation technologies, as well as offshore drilling," she says on her Senate website.

Lincoln sits on the Agriculture, Finance, and Energy and Natural Resources committees, meaning she will likely play a major role in crafting components of climate policy. On the ENR committee this spring, she was one of several Democrats pushing for a less stringent renewable electricity standard, agreeing to support the RES only after it was lowered from 20 percent to 15 percent by 2020.

Earlier this year, Lincoln voted against using the budget reconciliation process to pass climate policy.

Last summer, she voted to move the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act to a full floor vote, but criticized some of its provisions. She said the bill needed to do a better job of keeping consumer energy costs down and taking advantage of the "strong role" that the agriculture and forestry sectors could play in fighting climate change. She was among the 10 Democrats who signed a letter explaining why they would have opposed final passage of the Lieberman-Warner bill.

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Also last year, Lincoln was part of a bipartisan group of senators calling for an energy plan with increased offshore drilling as well as tax breaks for renewable energy.

"I think people really do believe that there's not a rifle shot that's going to solve all these [energy] problems," she told Grist last year. "It's going to have to be comprehensive."

"[W]e already have tremendous infrastructure and effort in the Gulf region for drilling," she continued. "And to be able to mitigate some of our needs in terms of imported oil immediately, expanding some of that drilling in areas where we already have infrastructure for getting that oil out as well as know what's in those areas, makes sense. ... You're never going to be able to do without oil. What we want to do is displace the amount of imported oil we're using."

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Attention shoppers: we bring you news of the latest sustainability hotspot, none other than Fayetteville, Ark. Green start-ups are flocking to town, the University of Arkansas has established an Applied Sustainability Center, and the mayor rides an electric bike to work. Why? Because of a certain retail giant whose headquarters lies half an hour away. Say it with us now: Wal-Mart. The mega-store's recent efforts to be green are apparently luring like-minded (and hungry) companies to the area, including ventures that are experimenting with non-petroleum plastic and fuel-efficient shipping. As a result, Fayetteville has begun to market itself as an eco-haven, even adopting the hopeful nickname Green Valley. "We are driving a stake in the ground to become the center of the sustainability movement," says Mayor Dan Coody. Adds Jonathan Johnson, head of the university's sustainability center, "The environmental community is really focused on Northwest Arkansas. There's a huge experiment going on here."

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Kathy Webb stands in front of a group of 20 people in the dining room of her Asian restaurant, talking about locally grown food. As she describes how nearly all the ingredients in the five-course dinner she's about to serve -- from the tomatoes and herbs in the salad to the berries in the dessert -- are from Arkansas, she educates her listeners while whetting their appetites.

Webb, a newly elected state legislator and owner of Lilly's Dim Sum, Then Some in Little Rock, says a connection to food is something Americans have lacked over the last several decades. "When you know who has picked your peach, when you know the story about that peach, you will appreciate it and have a connection to that peach," Webb says. "That's important. We don't have that connection to food anymore, but we need to, and we need to know where our food comes from."

So, you from around here?

Photo: iStockphoto

It's people like Webb who have begun to ask whether the produce they buy at the Little Rock farmers' market is serving that purpose. That's because the market, unlike many in the U.S., allows vendors who don't grow their own produce to sell products -- most of which come from outside the state. And that doesn't sit well with local farmers.

This summer, farmers who rent stalls twice a week at the downtown market have questioned why "peddlers" -- as the farmers call them -- are allowed to sell the same produce they do: tomatoes, cantaloupes, watermelons. The peddlers' items are cheaper and come from boxes marked as originating in Georgia, California, Mexico, and points in between, not rural Arkansas. Farmers who spend hours babying their crops believe this is misleading to consumers who think they are supporting local farmers and stimulating the local economy by shopping at the market.

Several farmers -- including Christian Shuffield, who grows organic and biodynamic specialty greens and legumes, and Jody Hardin, a well-known Arkansas farmer and a fixture at the market -- are tired of the unfair playing field. "Is this a farmers' market or a global bazaar?" Hardin asks. "Peddlers are lying, saying they have gardens. That is irritating. They don't put any money into growing their product."

Shuffield agrees. "The commercial vendors don't have overhead like diesel or labor," he says. "It's important to buy locally for the farmers' benefit."

Both say it is hard to educate people to buy locally when consumers see imported produce at a farmers' market, just as they do on the grocery store shelf. So they approached Shannon Light, the market's manager, to discuss changes. Since the 15,000-square-foot pavilion that hosts the market is so vast, Light responded by moving Arkansas farmers to one end, peddlers to the other. Now Arkansas farmers have signs promoting their Arkansas produce.

But the farmers say this isn't enough. And they worry that some peddlers may still be passing themselves off as local farmers because they sell a few items grown in-state, even though many of their wares come from fsrther afield. Light admits she doesn't know how many of the 200 registered vendors are actually Arkansas farmers; she doesn't "exactly divide them that way," she says. And she doesn't seem to care much about the distinction. She says there is room for everyone in what she describes as "the special event I am having ... like a little circus." Indeed, the market under her management is more akin to a yuppie street fair featuring mimes and bongo players than a down-home event.

"Some people don't care about buying local, they just want fresh," Light says. "[The peddlers] wouldn't be bringing watermelons in May if it wasn't selling. It's profitable and something that people want. If you are dipping strawberries and you can get big and beautiful ones from California while buying your winter squash, you should go ahead and get them for your party on Tuesday."

But Arkansas farmers raise strawberries, too, says Hardin, and he has seen his profit cut on seasonal produce because peddlers sell it a week before he does. "As farmers, we need a pent-up demand for a product," he says. "We need people anxious to get it when it comes in season. We can't sell as much because the peddlers are competing. Other farmers will bring in California strawberries, and it kills the demand."

Should a farmers' market offer only locally grown items? Many people who care about good food and a healthy environment say yes, especially as concerns mount about fuel costs and food miles, or the distance food travels before it reaches your mouth.

A farmers' market conjures up images of mom-and-pop operations that load up the pickup truck with homegrown squash, tomatoes, and eggplants and deliver them to the city for urbanites to buy without a middleman. While local doesn't necessarily mean organic, it does mean fresh, not transported thousands of miles before reaching its buyer. According to California-based Local Harvest, a national directory of farms and farmers' markets, most produce in the U.S. is picked four to seven days before it is placed on supermarket shelves, and is shipped an average of 1,500 miles before it is sold. It takes even longer if the produce comes from outside the country.

"What is happening in Arkansas would never happen in California," says Guillermo Payet, president of Local Harvest. California has a certification program for farmers' markets, which allows only in-state growers. The United Kingdom has a similar program. But in Arkansas, as in many other states, each local community polices itself.

Some never strayed from strict rules. The market in Fayetteville, Ark., which began in 1974, allows only farmers who live and grow within a four-county area to sell. Even artisans who sell crafts in the market must follow the same rules. The same type of guidelines apply to the market in Boulder, Colo. The market in Portland, Ore., after which the Little Rock market modeled itself, allows products from throughout the state as well as neighboring Washington, but makes few other exceptions.

The Little Rock market began the same year as its counterpart in Fayetteville, in a downtown parking garage. Then, the farmers governed themselves and "enforced a producer-only rule and allowed only the sale of Arkansas-grown produce," according to a 1999 USDA review of the market.

In 1996, the operation moved to a wood-and-steel pavilion in the heart of the $300 million revitalized and tourist-driven River Market District near the William J. Clinton Presidential Museum and Park. At that point, the rules were relaxed to include out-of-season produce and exotics such as pineapples and avocados that cannot be grown in Arkansas. As the USDA review noted, "consumer favorites such as melons, peaches, greens, and tomatoes from outside the state may be sold at the market when locally unavailable."

Between 1994 and 2004, the number of farmers' markets in the U.S. increased 111 percent, from 1,755 to 3,706, according to the USDA. Arkansas has almost 50 markets. Across the country, those figures are expected to keep rising over the next decade.

James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, says farmers' markets could be the only viable alternative in a world forced to be less dependent on oil. "We are going to have huge problems feeding ourselves as the world slips into a permanent global energy crisis," he says. "Industrial-style agriculture, featuring giant farms and heavy applications of oil-and-gas-based soil 'inputs' and massive use of diesel fuel, is going to fail -- and sooner rather than later. We are going to have to grow much more of our food locally, and on a smaller, finer scale. The people who are doing that now must be supported. Your lives will depend on them a few years from now."

Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, also predicts a throwback to the 1940s, when people tended victory gardens in their backyards. "If we are going to stabilize the climate and have an adequate food supply, we are going to have to go back to the way it was," he says. "That means also eating seasonal."

Arkansas, with its vast farmland and mild seasons, is in a prime spot to make this happen. Agriculture is the state's leading industry, thanks mostly to major crops such as rice, soybeans, and cotton. While it has its share of factory farms and vegetable producers, including the mammoth Riceland Rice, the state is also home to thousands of small farmers who want to make a living -- however modest -- by doing what they love.

According to the USDA, those who benefit from farmers' markets are small farmers with less than $250,000 in annual gross receipts who work and manage their own operations. Local Harvest points out that only 18 cents of every dollar from sales at large supermarkets go to the grower, with the balance going to various unnecessary middlemen.

Hardin would like to see Little Rock's city board of directors bar out-of-state produce from the farmers' market. He says that because of the controversy over who's permitted to sell at the market, more farmers are looking for alternative venues. That leaves only a small core to fight the peddlers.

While the city is likely to leave the resolution of this issue to those who manage the market, farmers might get help from the state. Richard Bell, secretary of the recently created Arkansas Department of Agriculture, says there is a need to closely examine farmers' markets. He suggests that some sort of future legislation could address the issues that worry farmers like Hardin.

"My goal is to increase the amount of produce that is coming from small Arkansas farms," Bell says. "A good part of a farmers' market is a good economic development plan. It is a way of providing an amenity to people in your community, and I do think we need some more formalized guidelines to make that work."

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With feds asleep at the wheel, states sue to protect air and water

Frustrated by federal inaction, states and localities are increasingly suing companies and even each other in attempts to curb air and water pollution. Oklahoma, for instance, has filed suit against eight companies that operate chicken farms in neighboring Arkansas, charging that farm pollution is damaging a tourist-attracting lake. Kentucky is weighing whether or not to sue Virginia over a strip-mining operation that could pollute a fish-filled Kentucky reservoir that lures in tens of thousands of visitors a year. With Congress and the Bushies having dropped the ball on pollution enforcement, state attorneys general are stepping up. "It's more than a trend, it's an ideological decision that's been made by the Bush administration," says New York Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Eliot Spitzer, who's taken the lead in many an environmental lawsuit. "Into that void we have stepped in to enforce the law."

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Judge halts irrigation project that could harm ivory-billed's habitat

A federal judge has temporarily halted a $319 million Army Corps of Engineers irrigation project in Arkansas, pending further study of potential impact to the habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker -- which may or may not be extinct. The last confirmed sighting of the bird in North America was in 1944; reported sightings since 2004 set off a massive scramble to confirm its existence. Some ornithologists are convinced the ivory-billed is still alive; others are skeptical. The Corps had concluded that woodpecker habitat would not be affected by the project, but a federal judge, ruling on a lawsuit brought by the National Wildlife Federation and its Arkansas affiliate, said the Corps "put the cart before the horse," neglecting to study the bird's full range. A more thorough study could take a year. The project, if ever completed, will help to irrigate the land of 1,000 eastern Arkansas farmers.

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Ivory-billed woodpecker, we hardly knew ye. And then ye came back and we acted like we'd known ye all along. But now it turns out there may be no ye to know after all: In today's issue of the journal Science, leading North American birder David Sibley and three ornithologists say that last year's seeming rediscovery of the bird -- last conclusively sighted in Louisiana in 1944 -- is a case of mistaken identity. Sibley et al. believe the now-famous grainy video footage of the elusive bird, more scrutinized than the Zapruder film, in fact captures a relatively common pileated woodpecker. The researchers note such details as "the black trailing edge of the left wing visible in frame 350" (oh, snap!) to cast doubt on the bird's resurrection. Believers counter that other factors, including the bird's launch posture (no you didn't!), prove their case. Both sides, though, agree on the need to conserve the 550,000 acres of woods and wetlands that comprise the Arkansas Big Woods, prime woodpecker habitat.

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A person driving through the South might notice the chicken houses dotting the hills and flatlands. He might marvel at the larger ones, as long as a football field. He might react to their gagging stench for a moment, and then forget as he travels on. But those who live near the structures -- stuffed with as many as 25,000 chickens each -- combat the odor and health hazards daily.

Not yer pappy's chicken coop.

Photo: USDA.

"There's a horrible odor, a stench, and I have flies and rodents digging in, trying to get into my house," says Bernadine Edwards, whose 39-acre farm near Owensboro, Ky., is surrounded by 108 chicken houses within a two-mile radius. "It is unbelievable."

The 65-year-old school bus driver, who recently bought a purifier to help her breathe easier in her home, says the value of her property has plummeted since the chicken houses arrived in the early 1990s. "I'm too old to start over," she says. "I can't afford to. My house is paid for."

Edwards is not alone. Over the last 15 years, the country has seen a boom in chicken farming. Today, the industry is serving a cocktail of injustice and pollution to rural residents, and most of them aren't in a position to fight back.

Since the early 1990s, observers say, thousands of chicken houses have cropped up across the South as consumer demand for poultry has grown. Today, the U.S. is the world's poultry leader, with production of broilers, turkeys, and eggs valued at $29 billion in 2004, according to the National Chicken Council. Broilers -- chickens raised for meat -- generated $22 billion of that. The leading broiler production states in 2004 were Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas, which is home to the world's largest poultry producer, Tyson Foods.

Like chemical companies and industrial hog farmers, poultry producers don't tend to place these concentrated animal-feeding operations, or CAFOs, in ritzy neighborhoods beside multimillion dollar McMansions. Instead, chicken houses commandeer spacious rural areas, where local residents need the income and their neighbors won't speak out against them -- or are unaware of the factories' environmental and health consequences.

"These companies seek rural areas where unemployment, or underemployment, is high and people are desperate for ways to stay on the farm," says Aloma Dew, a Sierra Club organizer in Kentucky. "They assume that poor, country people will not organize or speak up, and that they will be ignorant of the impacts on their health and quality of life."

The companies provide local growers, who work under contract, with chicks, feed, medicine, and transportation. Growers take care of the rest, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction, maintenance, and labor costs. When the company requires upgrades, the costs fall to the growers. The massive amounts of manure, too, are their responsibility. (In Arkansas alone, chicken farms produce an amount of waste each day equal to that produced by 8 million people.) Payment is results-oriented, based on measures like total weight gain of the flock. It's a system, says the United Food and Commercial Workers, that leaves 71 percent of growers earning below poverty-level wages.

A far cry from free range.

Photo: USDA.

If growers protest, companies can cancel their contracts, leaving farmers responsible for incurred debt, says Laura Klauke, director of contract agriculture reform at the North Carolina-based Rural Advancement Foundation International. And that debt can be substantial: since banks in the region will more readily loan money for poultry houses than other types of agriculture, Klauke says, some farmers put everything on the line, mortgaging their property to make a living this way.

"If those contracts are canceled -- and they can be if the farmer doesn't do what the industry wants -- then that farmer could literally be homeless," said Klauke. "I know farmers who have been in that situation." (Industry representatives did not respond to requests for comments on this or any of the concerns expressed in this story.)

More frightening than the economic balancing act may be the health and environmental hazards posed by chicken farms, from the arsenic, ammonia, and other chemicals found in feed and manure to threats from diseased animals. While traditional farming can carry similar risks, CAFOs are especially hazardous because of the tight confinement that defines them. "The fact is, you put hundreds of animals in a very small area, that creates problems that would not exist if these animals were distributed across the countryside," says Barclay Rogers, who successfully litigated a pollution case against Tyson in Kentucky in 2003.

Rogers says the industry grew rapidly with little regulatory constraint, and has been "riding roughshod" over land and people. While CAFOs must follow federal environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, he says, many growers try to "duck and weave" regulations. "The industry may stand up and say we are over-regulating, and that we have all of these permits, but the practical aspect is that they have devised many ways to avert pollution controls," said Rogers. "That's why we are seeing the fouling of water and air. We just now are coming to grips with these consequences, as people are catching up and realizing what has happened to them."

Last year, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson (D) filed suit against Tyson, Cargill, and several other poultry companies, seeking to stop water pollution caused in his state by soiled chicken litter dumped in Arkansas. Polluted runoff, also known as non-point source pollution, is the biggest remaining water pollution problem in the U.S., according to the EPA, which cites agriculture as the largest source of such pollution. Edmondson described the problem as "an economic development issue, an agricultural issue, and a quality-of-life issue." Not to be outdone, Arkansas Attorney General Mike Beebe (D) -- who is running for governor -- countered in November by suing the state of Oklahoma directly, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to prohibit Oklahoma from forcing his state's poultry farmers to adhere to the stricter standards. Both cases are still pending.

This messy interstate situation is just one indication of the many unknowns at stake. "Some of the [environmental] consequences of these CAFOs are just not clear," said Van Brahana, a geologist at the University of Arkansas who studies groundwater. "What we do know is when you have a lot of organisms living in close conditions and you have a buildup of chemicals, you might get a cause-and-effect relationship. The scary thing is we just don't know right now."

The effects on those who work directly with the animals are clearer. "In rural America, the poultry companies can get workers for a song, and the workers are so grateful to get the jobs," says Jackie Nowell of the United Food and Commercial Workers. These workers -- usually poor, and often African American or Hispanic -- "are exposed to feces [and] any disease the chicken has," Nowell says. "There are also horrible levels of dust and dander inside these houses."

Nowell adds that researchers in the region are currently exploring the possible crossover of various viruses from poultry to humans, like avian flu. "That's a real concern. These workers and people who live near these houses will be on ground zero of an outbreak."

Flies cluster around a pile of
carcasses in Missouri.

Photo: USDA.

Workers in poultry processing plants also face serious dangers from machinery, carpal tunnel syndrome, and health hazards such as contaminated microorganisms and dust. "There are huge health and safety violations in every plant," says Jennifer Rosenbaum, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. In 2004, for example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued citations to Tyson for alleged violations after an employee was asphyxiated when he inhaled hydrogen sulfide, a gas created by decaying organic matter. OSHA fined the company $436,000.

Poultry companies "hire relatively low-income people, immigrants who have less of an understanding of rights and health issues," Rosenbaum says. Simply put, she says, the companies are hurting the South's small towns while they fatten their own wallets.

Katie Tillinghast lives in rural northwest Arkansas. In early January, she received a call from a neighbor who told her he planned to put three large turkey houses on his property, 200 yards away. Tillinghast wants to stop the project, but the only plausible choice would be to buy her neighbor out at $3,000 an acre -- and he owns 73 acres. She can't afford that, and knows it's highly unlikely that a rich buyer will step in to help.

You'll never look at chicken nuggets
the same way again.

Photo: USDA.

Like other states, Arkansas does not yet have a law to protect residents from these operations, though several states have considered such legislation. So Tillinghast can't do much but worry -- about her drinking water, about avian flu, about noise and light pollution, about air quality. "I agree someone should be able to do what they want to do on their land," Tillinghast says. "But I don't think you should be able to do something that hurts your neighbors."

Many others agree with her, but local dynamics can make it hard for activists to issue a battle cry. "Often these plants are the only major industry in town," says SPLC's Rosenbaum. "Everyone goes to church together or went to high school together. Everyone knows everyone, and it's hard to fight that."

Groups like the Sierra Club have fought the poultry industry for many years, but only recently have they begun to collaborate with people on the ground. In 2004, a group of growers, workers, and environmental, public-health, religious, and social-justice organizations created the National Poultry Justice Alliance.

Do Good

The idea came from the Glenmary Commission on Justice in Ohio, a group of Catholic brothers and priests who have worked in the South since 1939. Marcus Keyes, the commission's director, says he was inspired by a statement from the Catholic Bishops of the South in 2000 about workers' rights. "These are moral issues -- the rights of workers, conditions of workers, pay and benefits," said Keyes. "These are human rights issues, and environmental [issues, but] in the end they are all moral issues." The group's members are working to strengthen the alliance before launching a major campaign.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit may come to trial in early April that could up the ante. While previous suits have dealt with pollution and workers' rights, this one tackles the issue of health effects on residents. In 2003, a group of citizens from Prairie Grove, Ark., a town of 2,500, filed a lawsuit against several poultry producers. Citing a connection between the community's high cancer rates and arsenic contamination from chicken litter spread as fertilizer, they are seeking damages from the companies that own the birds (not, it should be noted, from the local growers). Their lawyers say cancer rates in the small town are 50 times higher than the national average.

The Prairie Grove effort has grown to include about 100 plaintiffs in multiple suits, each of which will be tried separately. Supporters say that legal action may be the only way to bring these issues to light and hold the industry to higher standards. If the court rules in Prairie Grove's favor, the decision could provide ground for others to stand on. Until then, the only ones winning in this despair-filled industry are the mammoth corporations.

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Activists sue to stop water project near ivory-billed woodpecker habitat

Bird lovers rejoiced when the ivory-billed woodpecker was rediscovered, but now the fun really begins. Eco-advocates are aiming to block two planned federal water projects that threaten the eastern Arkansas bottomland hardwood forest area where the bird resides. Two conservation groups filed suit in federal court yesterday to stop one of them, the Grand Prairie irrigation project, a 250,000-acre undertaking (located about 20 miles from where the woodpecker was sighted) that would divert about 158 billion gallons of water a year to the region's rice farmers. In early May, the Army Corps of Engineers stopped work on the project to assess its potential impact on the woodpecker, then determined that it wasn't likely to cause the bird any harm and resumed work in early June. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed with the Corps' assessment. But environmentalists aren't buying it -- they argue that both projects could drive the ivory-bill really, truly extinct at last.

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Woodpecker thought extinct rediscovered; birders weep like babies

It was spotted several times -- once even filmed -- over the past year and a half. Now, ornithologists writing in the journal Science have officially confirmed the existence of at least one ivory-billed woodpecker, a miraculously tangible token of a species long thought extinct. The discovery -- referred to variously as "a spiritual experience," "thrilling beyond words," and "kind of like finding Elvis" -- was enough to bring at least one grown man to tears. With a wingspan of three feet, the ivory-billed woodpecker is the largest in North America. It was once sought for its feathers, used in women's hats, and for its bill, believed by Native Americans to have magical powers. It became known as the Lord God bird, says ornithologist John Fitzpatrick, because when people saw it, they'd exclaim "Lord God, look at that bird." Conservationists are working in concert with state and federal officials to secure the swampy area of eastern Arkansas where the bird was sighted, and plans to acquire more land in the area are in the works.

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‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Six states whose waters feed the lower Mississippi River agreed this week to work together to reduce the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Fertilizers, sewage, and other nutrient-rich pollution flowing from 42 states into the Mississippi produce the annual dead zone at the mouth of the river -- a stretch of water with oxygen content so low that it drives off or kills most sea life. Last year, the dead zone was bigger than the state of Massachusetts. Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas -- which together contribute about 7 percent of the nutrient pollution -- are planning to pilot a program to teach farmers how to reduce nitrogen runoff from their land. Doug Daigle of the enviro group Mississippi River Basin Alliance said a much larger federal-state plan to stem the nutrient flow into the river is 18 months behind schedule.

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Arkansas is poised to consider an innovative plan to create an "alternative fuels" tax on electricity and gas users in the state. Under the plan, which state Rep. Herschel Cleveland (D) said yesterday that he would introduce to the state assembly early next year, residents would be charged a 25-cent tax on each of their monthly electric and gas bills, while commercial and industrial users would be charged 25 cents for every $1,000 of electric or natural gas use per month. The tax would raise an estimated $2 million annually and would be used to create an alternative-fuels fund. Chris Benson, director of the Arkansas Energy Office, said nearly 80 percent of the state's $4.2 billion energy diet now comes from fuel sources outside Arkansas. The renewable energy options financed by the fund could range from such standards as wind and solar power to fuels produced by recycling Arkansas's untapped biomass resources, including chicken litter, soybean oil, sawdust, and rice hulls.

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