While Louisiana struggles to restore coastal wetlands ravaged in large part by decades of oil and gas drilling, its senior senator is leading the effort to lift the ban on drilling off Florida's Panhandle.

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) is the lone co-sponsor of legislation sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to open up new areas in the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas development. Introduced last month, Senate Bill 1517 would allow drilling in federal waters 45 miles off the Panhandle's coast. Current law bans drilling any closer than 125 miles off Panhandle beaches and 235 miles off Gulf Coast beaches from Tampa south.

Opposing the Murkowski-Landrieu plan is U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a longtime foe of offshore drilling. He joins other Florida leaders worried about drilling's impact on the state's lucrative tourism industry, which in 2008 alone generated more than $65 billion for Florida's economy and $3.9 billion for the state in tax revenue. Nelson has criticized the drilling bill as giveaway to the oil industry, McClatchy reports:

"This isn't even thinly veiled," Nelson said. "It's an oil industry bailout plan. And it's Alaska and Louisiana's senators plan to boost their own revenues in tough economic times. But even in the toughest of times, there are some things states shouldn't sell out, like Florida's economy and environment."

Why is Landrieu pushing the plan? She says it's out of concern for rising oil prices -- though the U.S. Energy Information Administration says drilling in areas that are currently restricted would result in negligible savings to consumers. Meanwhile, Landrieu and and Murkowski are among the top congressional recipients of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org database, the industry is Landrieu's second-biggest contributor besides lawyers, investing more than $711,000 in her campaigns over the past 12 years. In the 2008 election cycle, she ranked first among all congressional recipients of oil and gas PAC contributions, receiving more than $171,600.  The oil and gas industry is Murkowski's third-biggest contributor after leadership PACs and electric utilities, donating more than $286,000 to her campaign over the past seven years; she's also the top recipient of oil and gas PAC contributions in the current election cycle.

Last year the League of Conservation Voters placed Landrieu on their "Dirty Dozen" list of lawmakers, noting that her lifetime score from the environmental advocacy group of 43 percent made her the worst Democratic senator on environmental issues among those running for re-election.

"For a Senator from Louisiana, which faces severe consequences from global warming, to fail to protect Louisiana is disappointing," LCV's Tony Massaro said at the time. "Senator Landrieu joins the [Dirty Dozen] because she acts more to protect Big Oil than the future for the people of Louisiana."

A football field lost every 38 minutes

Sen. Landrieu was among those who suffered personal losses from Hurricane Katrina four years ago, as the storm and the subsequent levee failures and flooding destroyed her lakeside home in New Orleans.

One reason the devastation to inland areas like New Orleans was so severe when the Category 3 storm hit Louisiana is because coastal wetlands that once served as storm breaks have been swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico. Over the past 75 years, Louisiana has lost more than 2,300 square miles of coastal wetlands -- an area equivalent in size to the entire state of Delaware.

Between 1990 and 2000, Louisiana lost about 24 square miles of land each year -- equivalent to about one football field lost to the sea every 38 minutes, according to the state's Department of Natural Resources.

While some of Louisiana's land loss can be blamed on natural processes, coastal experts say most of the destruction is due to human alteration of the landscape. One factor is the extensive levee system constructed along the Lower Mississippi River that prevents sediment from depositing naturally along the coast. Another key factor is the thousands of miles of oil and gas pipelines and canals cut through coastal wetlands, opening them up to saltwater intrusion that kills vegetation and leaves the land vulnerable to erosion.

In fact, between 40 and 60 percent of Louisiana's coastal wetlands loss can be traced to oil and gas activities, according to the Gulf Restoration Network. From 1983 to 2008, for example, Houston-based Shell Oil dredged 8.8 million cubic yards of coastal lands in Louisiana while laying its pipelines -- activity that GRN and other environmental advocates calculated as having caused the loss of 22,624 acres of wetlands.

Land loss is not the only environmental damage from oil and gas drilling. Last month alone, an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico contaminated several beaches along the Texas coast, while a leak from a Shell pipeline 30 miles off the Louisiana coast created a nine-mile-long slick in the Gulf.

Storms increase the risk oil and gas drilling pose to the environment. Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina and Rita together caused 124 offshore spills that dumped more than 743,000 gallons of pollution into the ocean, according to the federal Minerals Management Service [PDF]. Onshore spills from pipelines, tanks and refineries added another 9 million gallons of pollution to the mess.

Pattern of delay

If no decisive action is taken to address coastal erosion, Louisiana is expected lose another 500 square miles of land by 2050 -- and that will have enormous consequences for communities throughout the state's coastal parishes, where almost 2 million people live. And unfortunately, the current processes for addressing the problem are anything but decisive.

This past June, Steven Peyronnin, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, testified at the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works' hearing on Louisiana's coastal restoration. Noting that scientists and engineers have the expertise to restore sustainability to the landscape and protect vulnerable communities, he said what is lacking is a sense of urgency.

Peyronnin pointed out that it's been more than four years now since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers submitted a final report recognizing the severe wetland loss in coastal Louisiana and recommending five critical restoration projects for the near term. While Congress authorized these projects under the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA) section of the Water Resources Development Act of 2007, only one is scheduled to begin construction before 2012. That meant none were eligible for funding under the recent economic stimulus package.

"Not only is the lack of progress a troubling obstacle to restoring a sustainable coast, but it has also negated the ability to leverage federal opportunities that could provide desperately needed funding streams and a strong sense of urgency," Peyronnin told the committee. "Without a single project ready for construction, LCA projects were not considered in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 because they fell far short of the shovel ready requirement intended to urgently move projects forward."

In authorizing the LCA, Congress also directed the Secretary of the Army to come up with a comprehensive long-term restoration plan, but this still has not been done. Instead, the Corps is relying on an older document -- the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Technical Report -- that has shortcomings. For example, it provides no framework for how restoration efforts work with navigation activities, which currently focus on dumping sediment too far offshore to maintain coastal wetlands.

Peyronnin testified that the delay of LCA projects and the Corps' failure to comply with congressional mandates show that the traditional model for carrying out coastal restoration projects is "ill-suited" to respond to the crisis.

"If this pattern of delay continues," he warned, "it will eliminate any chance of success."

Earlier this month, Louisiana officials released recommendations for speeding up Corps projects, which currently take an average of 40 years to complete. But the recommendations remain in the discussion stages.

A starker choice for Florida

Sen. Landrieu has long been an advocate for coastal restoration efforts. For example, the annual energy and water appropriations bill recently passed by the Senate contained hundreds of millions of dollars for Army Corps projects in Louisiana that she championed, including coastal restoration initiatives.

But her push to allow the oil and gas industry to expand its operations in the Gulf of Mexico while federal processes to address land loss remain in disarray would inevitably mean putting other areas of the Gulf Coast at risk of the same drilling-related wetlands destruction experienced by Louisiana.

Unlike Louisiana, Florida has long opposed drilling off its coast, seeing it as a threat to the state's $65 billion annual tourist economy. When Chevron discovered natural gas deposits in Florida waters in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, the state objected to plans to tap them, leading the Bush administration to buy back leases from Chevron, Conoco and Murphy Oil for $115 million.

This past April, amid concern about rising energy prices, the Florida House passed a bill allowing offshore drilling in state waters -- but the measure died in the Senate.

Then along came Murkowski's and Landrieu's bill, which resembles an amendment in a Senate energy bill written by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) that would also permit oil and gas rigs within 45 miles of Florida's Gulf coast, McClatchy reports. But unlike Dorgan's proposal, the Murkowski-Landrieu plan includes a revenue-sharing provision to sweeten the deal.

In 2006, another piece of legislation sponsored by Landrieu gave Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas 37.5 percent of proceeds from fuel production in the Gulf -- returning to the states an estimated total of $6 billion a year that previously went to the federal government. The arrangement aimed to compensate them for the environmental cost of pipelines and other infrastructure.

Florida wanted no part of that earlier deal, but Landrieu hopes the revenue-sharing provision will hold appeal because of the state's fiscal crunch. As she wrote in a June op-ed that ran in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call:

Had revenue sharing been a part of the bargain, Floridians would have faced a choice involving rewards and not just risks. Given Florida’s current $6 billion budget deficit, such a choice would be starker today.

But as Sen. Nelson has pointed out, the proposal is hardly a panacea for Florida's financial woes, since the money states raise from offshore drilling in federal waters can be used only to repair damages caused by drilling, such as coastal restoration and pollution cleanup.

The question facing the Senate is whether that makes drilling worth the environmental damage that Florida will inevitably suffer.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

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Following local protests and international outcry, the city of Oxford, Ala. appears to be backing away from plans to destroy an ancient and archaeologically significant Indian mound in order to use the dirt as fill for a new Sam's Club, a retail warehouse store operated by Wal-Mart.

A local landowner says his property will now serve as the source for construction fill dirt, according to the Anniston Star:

Landowner Charlie Williams confirmed to The Star Wednesday that Oxford-based Taylor Corp. is negotiating with him for dirt for the Sam's site. The company has the contract to do site prep work for Sam's Club. He said the dirt would come from his property on McIntosh Road in Oxford. He said he has not received money for the dirt but expects to eventually.

The paper also reports that a sinkhole has been discovered at the Sam's Club construction site. The city's Commercial Development Authority -- the force behind the controversial construction project -- has authorized setting aside $350,000 to reimburse Sam's Club for the cost of fixing the hole.

As Facing South reported earlier this month, the demolition of the 1,500-year-old structure drew protests from Native Americans and others concerned about the site, which a University of Alabama report found to be historically important as the largest of several ancient stone and earthen mounds throughout the Choccolocco Valley. Preservation advocates have called such structures "prayer in stone."

However, city leaders have disputed the site's archaeological significance, with Mayor Leon Smith insisting it was not man-made and was used only to "send smoke signals." An Anniston Star investigation documented financial ties between the CDA, firms it does business with, and Smith's political campaign.

In the meantime, a protest and reconsecration ceremony are planned for this Sunday, Aug. 30 from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Oxford mound, according to the Alabama-based blog Deep Fried Kudzu.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

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City leaders in Oxford, Ala. have approved the destruction of a 1,500-year-old Native American ceremonial mound and are using the dirt as fill for a new Sam's Club, a retail warehouse store operated by Wal-Mart.

A University of Alabama archaeology report commissioned by the city found that the site was historically significant as the largest of several ancient stone and earthen mounds throughout the Choccolocco Valley. But Oxford Mayor Leon Smith -- whose campaign has financial connections to firms involved in the $2.6 million no-bid project -- insists the mound is not man-made and was used only to "send smoke signals."

"The City of Oxford and its archaeological advisers have completed a review and evaluation of a stone mound that was identified near Boiling Springs, Calhoun County, Alabama, and have concluded that the mound is the result of natural phenomena and does not meet the eligibility criteria for the Natural [sic] Register of Historic Places," according to a news release Smith issued last week.

In fact, the report does not conclude the mound is a result of "natural phenomena" but says very clearly it is of "cultural origin." And while the University's Office of Archaeological Research does not believe the site qualifies for the National Register of Historic Places, the Alabama Historical Commission disagrees, noting that the structure meets at least three criteria for inclusion: its "association with a broad pattern of history," architecture "embodying distinctive characteristics," and for the information it might yield to scholars.

The site is also significant to Native Americans. The Woodland and Mississippian cultures that inhabited the Southeast and Midwest before Europeans arrived constructed and used these mounds for various rituals, which may have included funerals. There are concerns that human remains may be present at the site, though none have been found yet.

United South and Eastern Tribes, a nonprofit coalition of 25 federally recognized tribes from Maine to Texas, passed a resolution in 2007 calling for the preservation of such structures, which it calls "prayer in stone." Native Americans have held protests against the mound's demolition, and last week someone altered a sign for the Leon Smith Parkway that runs past the development to read "Indian Mound Pkwy."

A local resident named Johnny Rollins told the Anniston Star how his Native American grandmother taught him that when she died he could "go to that mountain" to talk to her:

"It seems like it's taking part of you away," he said of the demolition. "I always felt I had ties to that there."

Since the media began reporting on the site's demolition, city officials have revised their story and are now claiming that dirt from the mound is not being used as fill, despite earlier statements to the contrary. But eyewitnesses say they have seen workers hauling dirt from the mound to the Sam's Club development.

"I mean really, I went there, saw the giant trucks deliver the earth straight from the mound to the construction site, and I still can't believe what they are doing," writes the seventh-generation Alabamian behind the blog Deep Fried Kudzu, where she shares photos from her visit to the site.

'More prettier' than an Indian mound

Deepening the development's controversy is how the contracting has been handled. The force behind the project is Oxford's Commercial Development Authority, a public board that uses taxpayer money to lure businesses to the area. The CDA owns the land where the mound is located.

Alabama law exempts CDAs from bid requirements, which means contracts can go to whomever the board chooses. A recent Anniston Star investigative series about the CDA  revealed among other things that the group has awarded nearly $9 million in contracts since 1994 but has taken bids for none of them.

The newspaper also detailed the financial ties between the CDA, firms it does business with, and Mayor Smith's political campaign.

For example, the $2.6 million contract for preparing the Sam's Club site went to Oxford-based Taylor Corp., with the money for that coming in part from the sale of city property to Georgia-based developers Abernathy and Timberlake. Taylor Corp. owner Tommy Taylor, who has received thousands of dollars in city contracts for non-CDA work, donated $1,000 to Smith in 2004 and $1,000 in 2008, while Abernathy and Timberlake donated $1,000 to Smith's re-election campaign in 2004, the paper reports.

The Anniston Star also found that the CDA paid engineering firm Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood of Montgomery, Ala. $45,000 in engineering contracts for the Sam's Club project, with part of that money paying for the archaeological study. The firm contributed $500 to Smith in 2004.

An Alabama Ethics Commission official said the relationships could violate state law "depending on facts," but the mayor said he's done nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, the controversy over the damaged mound's fate rages on. After getting an earful from alarmed preservationists, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R) forwarded their concerns to the state Historical Commission -- but said his office has no intention of getting involved. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Tommy Taylor contributed $1,000 to Riley's 2006 gubernatorial campaign, while Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood contributed $1,500.

For now, it appears Oxford officials are pressing ahead with the project. As Mayor Smith said in its defense, "What it's going to be is more prettier than it is today."

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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For the past two years, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has been crafting new rules to require water monitoring at factory hog farms, a significant source of pollution in the state.

But last week, even with concerns growing over the environmental impacts of hog farms, the North Carolina Senate unanimously passed a bill that puts the rules process on hold until 2011 -- a display of the mighty political power Boss Hog holds in the state.

The measure now moves to the N.C. House, where its fate is unclear.

The bill's sponsor was state Sen. Charlie Albertson, the Democratic Caucus secretary who represents eastern North Carolina's Duplin, Sampson and Lenoir counties, an agricultural center where many of the state's more than 10 million hogs are raised. In a recent interview with WUNC public radio reporter Laura Leslie, Albertson -- a member and former chair of the state Senate Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Committee -- accused the EMC of unfairly picking on hog farmers:

Water quality problems, again, are not caused by swine farmers ... It's just not happening.

Unfortunately, that's not true. Agricultural operations, including confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs, are a source of water pollution nationwide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Hogs produce enormous amounts of fecal waste -- three times as much as humans -- that's stored in giant open-air holding ponds known as "lagoons," which are vulnerable to leaking. The waste is eventually sprayed onto fields, where the nitrogen converts to nitrates, chemicals that move readily into nearby streams and groundwater. Nitrates have been linked to a blood disorder called methemoglobinemia, which is especially harmful to babies.

Animals kept in CAFOs are fed a variety of drugs including antibiotics that also present a threat to the environment. Twenty-two states have reported damage to streams and rivers caused by agriculture, with 20% of that attributed specifically to CAFOs, according to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. Health problems have also been documented among people living near hog farms.

In its report released in April, the Pew Commission noted that "one of the most serious unintended consequences of industrial food animal production is the growing public health threat of these types of facilities." 

Overruling the rulemakers

North Carolina, the nation's second-largest hog producer after Iowa, is among the states that have suffered serious environmental problems from industrial livestock operations, one of several significant sources of nutrient pollution along with municipal wastewater and urban runoff. Contamination from the state's factory farms has been linked to outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida, a microbe believed to be responsible for fish-killing algal blooms as well as skin irritation and cognitive problems in exposed humans.

In 2007, with concerns mounting over animal waste pollution, North Carolina's Riverkeepers filed a petition for rulemaking asking the state to consider whether it needed to impose monitoring rules for industrial livestock farms. Current law requires the facilities to undergo two inspections a year, but these are strictly visual checks that involve no environmental sampling.

In May of this year, following a process in which all stakeholders got a chance to be heard through comments and hearings, the EMC proposed rules requiring animal waste management facilities to sample water quality three times a year at three sampling sites to be determined by the state Division of Water Quality.

But that didn't sit well with Albertson, who sought to kill the rules. He turned to an existing piece of legislation that aimed to nix state regulation of toxic air emissions in certain cases. That bill was changed to prohibit the EMC from adopting any permanent rules at all until 2011 except in a few limited cases, such as an unforeseen public health crisis. There were as many as 10 rules under consideration at the EMC that would have been affected by this version of the bill.

It was that broad rule moratorium that Albertson got approved by the Senate Agriculture and Environment committee -- a body that has a history of being sympathetic to agribusiness interests. The committee was once chaired by Wendell Murphy, a hog farmer whose Murphy Family Farms are now part of Smithfield Foods of Virginia, the world's largest pork producer and processor. During his time in the legislature, Murphy sponsored and helped pass bills that exempted hog farms from local zoning laws and lawsuits and that gave the industry subsidies and tax exemptions. When Murphy retired from the Senate in 1992, he was replaced by Albertson, then a state representative.

When Albertson's bill was taken up on the Senate floor, several lawmakers with a record of advocating for the environment spoke against the measure. They included state Sen. Dan Clodfelter of Charlotte, who expressed concerns about the bill's impact on rules the EMC was creating to help his city deal with a serious air quality problem. Clodfelter asked Albertson for a narrowing amendment, which Albertson agreed to provide.

Senate insiders say it's customary that when a colleague does what you ask as Albertson did, you in turn support his legislation. That's why even those lawmakers with strong environmental records voted yes on the bill -- even though not all of them wanted to kill the hog farm rules.

At Boss Hog's trough

But other North Carolina senators spoke in praise of Albertson's bill, with some even accusing the EMC of harboring a "vendetta" against hog farmers.

That lawmakers are so sympathetic to a polluting industry is not altogether surprising considering the enormous clout the corporate agriculture lobby has in North Carolina -- influence that's apparent in Albertson's record of campaign contributions.

Since 2000 alone, Albertson has received $10,200 from the N.C. Farm Bureau, $8,000 from Smithfield Foods, another $7,250 from the N.C. Pork Council, and $5,000 from the N.C. Poultry Federation, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. He's also received tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from individual hog and poultry farmers, include E. Marvin Johnson, owner of the House of Raeford turkey farms, hog farmer William H. Prestage of Prestage Farms and Murphy, his Senate predecessor.

Albertson's hardly alone among North Carolina lawmakers in benefiting from industrial agriculture's largesse: According to a recent report [pdf] from campaign finance group Democracy North Carolina, the N.C. Farm Bureau contributed a total of $222,150 to state candidates and political parties in the last election alone, and the N.C. Pork Council -- which gets funding for its policy advocacy work from a mandatory fee on pork producers -- chipping in another $187,000.

Legislative insiders say there's now an effort underway to keep Albertson's bill from coming up in the House. However, the industry's considerable influence with lawmakers suggests environmental advocates could face a tough battle ahead.

"Hopefully, Albertson's bill will be seen for what it is when it reaches the House, and the EMC will not be bullied by the swine industry and its surrogates," says Rick Dove of the Waterkeeper Alliance.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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Environmental advocates gathered at the North Carolina legislature yesterday for a press conference and prayer vigil asking the governor to create a task force to study and take action on health problems associated with industrial hog farms.

The action came the same week new findings were published about the critical role hogs played in creating history's deadliest flu, and the day after the Obama administration announced that it wanted to ban the routine use of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of curbing the spread of dangerous bacterial infections that have been linked to hog farms and that kill 18,000 people a year in the U.S. -- more than AIDS.

But North Carolina lawmakers' reaction to the protest suggests it won't be easy to win change in a state where Boss Hog rules.

On July 14, about 30 people gathered outside the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh to announce they had sent a letter to Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) asking her to convene a task force examining the environmental, human health and economic impacts of industrial production of swine and other livestock.

"We're here today to elevate the concerns we have, outside the legislative building where people have the power to change things in our state," said Lower Neuse Riverkeeper Larry Baldwin.

Of particular concern is how the waste from these operations is handled -- by piping it into what are known as "lagoons." These stinking, open-air cesspools hold the animals' feces and are frequently sited within smelling range people's homes, schools and churches. They are concentrated in rural eastern North Carolina, part of the Black Belt region with a high percentage of African-American residents.

"People are eating cheap because North Carolina communities are getting dumped on," the N.C. Environmental Justice Network's Naeema Muhammed said at the press conference. "It's time for North Carolina officials to listen to the people. We must no longer be a sacrifice zone."

Organizers handed out copies of the July 6 letter calling on Perdue to assemble the task force. Advocates see it as a way to bring together experts from different fields -- public health, environment, economy, industry -- to examine adverse health effects from CAFOs and consider replacing open-air lagoons with more advanced waste treatment technology. The letter states:

The issues that need to be addressed by the Task Force include, but should not be limited to, the areas of asthma, chronic respiratory conditions, methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and now the swine flu (H1N1) and other emergent diseases. As a factor in our human health concerns, the Task Force also needs to address the issue of groundwater contamination, as many residents in close proximity to these facilities depend upon well water for their household uses. And finally, the impact that animal waste is having on water quality and fishery habitat will need to be addressed also, as this is both a health and economic concern.

The protest in Raleigh comes amidst growing attention to the link between hog farms and human disease.

This week, for example, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published new findings that hogs played a key role as what the Associated Press called "an influenza mixing bowl" in the pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. Scientists studying the genetic origins of the flu found pieces of the 1918 virus had been circulating in hogs and humans as far as 15 years before the pandemic broke out and was not a more recent bird flu strain as previously thought.

Concerns have arisen during the current H1N1 pandemic over the role CAFOs played in the strain's development. There were reports that the disease first emerged in a Mexican community where a subsidiary of Virginia-based Smithfield Farms operates massive hog farms, and scientists reported tracing the virus's genetic origins to a 1998 outbreak at an industrial hog facility in eastern North Carolina. But as we have reported, more recent research suggests the 1998 virus was not a direct predecessor to the current H1N1, and there is also evidence that the current strain was circulating in Mexico months before it was discovered near Smithfield's operations.

Federal government takes action

In a recent op ed, epidemiologist Dr. Steve Wing with the University of North Carolina acknowledged that the role that industrial hog operations played in the current H1N1 pandemic is still unclear -- but he also pointed out that their damaging impact on human health and the environment are well known and include air and water pollution as well as dangerous microbial contamination that can be spread by workers, birds and insects.

His own research has found the likelihood of in-school exposure to air pollution from swine CAFOs in North Carolina is greater in schools with higher concentrations of low-income and nonwhite students.

At this week's press conference, Wing spoke about how CAFOs contribute to the problem of antibiotic-resistant infections by routinely administering the drugs to animals to promote growth. Meanwhile, recent research has found that hog farms are a source of a potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant staph infection that can be spread by consumers simply handling contaminated meat, with five out of 90 samples of retail pork in Louisiana testing positive for MRSA, according to a recent study.

"In North Carolina, migratory geese land on lagoons and become colonized with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and can carry it great distances," Wing said, adding that researchers in Maryland also discovered bacteria from hog chicken farms in cars following livestock transport trucks on the roads.

The link between CAFOs and dangerous infections has gotten the federal government's attention. On Monday, the U.S. House Rules Committee held a hearing on the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would phase out the non-therapeutic use of certain antibiotics in animal agriculture. In written testimony, the Food and Drug Administration's principal deputy commissioner, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, expressed support for the legislation's aims and also said farmers should not be allowed to use antibiotics in animals without veterinary supervision, the New York Times reports. The bill has the backing of the American Medical Association but is opposed by politically powerful farm organizations including the National Pork Producers Council.

But while the federal government is taking action to better regulate industrial livestock farms, North Carolina's leaders do not appear to be ready yet to confront the health problems associated with the operations.

Following the press conference and a group prayer in which Halifax resident and Concerned Citizens of Tillery member Claude Ford asked that "we might work together to get the job done," the participants headed inside for a meeting of the state House Environment and Natural Resources Committee, where they expected to hear from Dr. Jim Merchant, who had come all the way from Iowa to testify.

A UNC grad who teaches in the University of Iowa's department of occupational and environmental health and is former dean of its College of Public Health, Merchant served on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, a joint project of The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Pew Commission studied CAFOs and recommended solutions to their myriad problems in its landmark report titled "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America."

The protesters sat through an hour-long discussion about an unrelated matter to hear Merchant's testimony -- only to have the committee adjourn the hearing before giving him a chance to speak.

Don Webb of North Carolina's Alliance for a Responsible Swine Industry said he was upset but not surprised.

"I can't believe the rudeness and disrespect afforded a distinguished gentleman like Jim," Webb said as lawmakers gathering up their things and filed out. "But I'm used to things like this happening in the General Assembly because of the power of pork."

Indeed, a recent report from the campaign finance watchdog group Democracy North Carolina detailed that power in numbers, finding that  the N.C. Pork Council PAC contributed a total of $187,000 to state candidates during the last election cycle, while its political allies at the N.C. Farm Bureau PAC contributed another $222,150 -- among the most generous and influential of all the state's PACs.

But advocates are trying to counter pork power with people power: They've launched an online petition encouraging Gov. Perdue to launch the proposed task force on hog farms and are asking supporters to sign it.

"Here in the General Assembly they make laws that control what man can do," Rick Dove of the Waterkeeper Alliance said as the hearing room emptied. "There are other laws that govern what nature does. And when man's laws are in conflict with nature's, we all lose."

(This report originally appeared at Facing South.)

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After the Massey Energy coal mining company lost a $50 million verdict to a competitor, CEO Don Blankenship spent $3 million electing a friendly judge to West Virginia's Supreme Court of Appeals who went on to cast the deciding vote in a case that overturned the verdict.

But yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court handed a setback to Massey, a company notorious for its reliance on destructive mountaintop removal mining throughout Central Appalachia, as well as other companies that use their financial clout to influence the judiciary, with a ruling that elected judges must recuse themselves from cases involving big campaign contributors.

The case goes all the way back to 1998, when Hugh Caperton of West Virginia's Harman Mining Corp. sued a Massey affiliate for fraud. Four years later, a lower court awarded Caperton $50 million in damages.

Massey appealed to West Virginia's high court -- and in an effort to ensure a ruling favorable to the company Blankenship contributed $3 million to the campaign of Brent Benjamin, who successfully challenged incumbent Justice Warren McGraw in 2004.

Caperton's attorneys asked Benjamin -- who is now the court's chief justice -- to recuse himself from the case, but he declined. The court went on to rule in Massey's favor twice by a 3-2 vote, with Benjamin casting the deciding vote both times.

Caperton's legal team appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which yesterday in a 5-4 decision ruled that Benjamin should have stepped aside. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court:

"Just as no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, similar fears of bias can arise when -- without the consent of the other parties -- a man chooses the judge in his own cause."

Joining Kennedy in the ruling were Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens. In dissent signed by fellow conservatives Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the ruling would damage public confidence in the judiciary:

The Court's new "rule" provides no guidance to judges and litigants about when recusal will be constitutionally required. This will inevitably lead to an increase in allegations that judges are biased, however groundless those charges may be. The end result will do far more to erode public confidence in judicial impartiality than an isolated failure to recuse in a particular case.

The case now returns to the West Virginia courts. Adding in the interest, the judgment in the original case has now grown to over $82 million.

"At its core, the Caperton case was about the inherent conflict of interest when our elected officials depend on or are aided by large campaign contributions and excessive spending in the electoral process," said Nick Nyhart, president of Public Campaign, a nonprofit that promotes public financing of elections. "Americans know that campaign contributions from wealthy special interests impact the policy decisions made by Congress on matters that affect the life and well being of all of us."

Massey's stock was down 6% in yesterday afternoon's trading on the New York Stock Exchange, while other coal company stocks were down between 2 and 4%, Reuters reports.

The high court's ruling is the latest in a series of recent setbacks for Richmond, Va.-based Massey. Last month Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee resigned from Massey's board under pressure from activists who argued that his promotion of sustainable energy was incompatible with Massey's reliance on mountaintop removal mining.

And earlier this year, Santa Clara University in California divested its holdings in Massey because of the company's record of environmental destructiveness. The company has also been the target of nonviolent protests over its environmentally destructive business practices.

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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