~by Denise O’Brien Van, special to GreeneCountyNewsOnline
Prior to the agenda items, Greene County board of supervisors chairman John Muir (center) presented county auditor Jane Heun (left) and county attorney Nicola Martino (right) with certificates for serving the county for many years at the March 21 supervisors’ meeting. Heun has been auditor for 15 years, and Martino has been the county’s lawyer for 40 years.
A public hearing on the expansion of a hog operation just west of the intersection of Iowa Highway 4 and 290th Street south of Jefferson will be held Monday, March 28, at 9 am in the board room at the Greene County courthouse.
The supervisors reviewed the Iowa Department of Natural Resources master matrix for the site at their March 21 meeting. The proposed second building on the confinement, which is owned by Eric Chrystal of Greene County Pigs LLC, scored 450 on the matrix, a scoring system used to evaluate siting of confinement feeding operations.
The plan, prepared by Twin Lakes Environmental Services LLC, includes a closure plan, something the supervisors have asked for but not gotten in the last two hog expansions. It does not include plans for landscaping, a second item the supervisors have sought in other plans. According to Twin Lakes, Chrystal is considering installing solar panels on the new building. He will do landscaping if the plan for solar panels does not come to pass.
The new building will house up to 2,000 hogs, doubling the capacity of Greene County Pigs. The first building was constructed last October and did not require the public hearing process because it was under the state threshold.
The distance between the operation and the nearest residence is 2,775 feet, 900 more than the minimum requirement of 1,875 feet. The closest water source is Dead Brier Creek, which is 1,700 feet to the west of the confinement.
The supervisors will review the matrix for another confinement expansion, this one by Wessling Ag of Grand Junction, at their March 28 meeting. The public hearing on that enlargement, which includes a new 20,000-square-foot building located southwest of Grand Junction on 250th St, will take place at the supervisors’ April 4 meeting.
Bruce and Jenny Wessling put up their first building in 2004. The new building will be to the west of the existing building.
In an item not on the agenda, county engineer Wade Weiss told the supervisors he is working with Deal’s Orchard west of Jefferson on their plans to construct a pedestrian walkway under K Ave near the orchard. According to Weiss, the 91-foot-long, 10-foot-in-diameter walkway will be “ADA accessible,” which means it will be constructed to meet requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Weiss said the project is “probably a year out,” which would put the walkway in use by spring 2017.
Weiss also discussed a half-mile-long extension of a road at the airport and the renovation of the stained glass dome over the courthouse rotunda. Weiss explained that the large dome has five times as many pieces – 7,600 pieces – as the stained glass dome over the courtroom. The smaller dome was repaired in 2014. The large dome has been repaired in the past, Weiss said, but after 60 or 80 years, the pure lead becomes “brittle.”
Supervisor Guy Richardson termed the reconstruction of the dome “ongoing maintenance” that “just happens to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the building.” The courthouse centennial will be in October 2017.
~Contributor, Chris Henning
