CHARLES CITY - Floyd County supervisors will contest a decision to allow a hog confinement operation near Colwell.

Board members directed Floyd County Attorney Jesse Marzen to write a letter to the Environmental Protection Commission, which last month voted 6-2 to overrule the supervisors' recommendation to deny a construction permit.

Knapp Finishers would like to build a facility to house 2,400 hogs. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources normally only requires a construction permit for 2,500-head confinements operations. In this case a permit was required, however, because the proposed site is within 1,850 feet of an existing 2,400-head confinement building also owned by Knapp Finishers.

Supervisors rejected the permit June 10 because of complaints from neighbors and the large number of similar buildings already in the area.

The commission already received a letter from James Frisbie, acting president of the Floyd County Farm Bureau board of directors. In it, Frisbie states the number of hogs in Floyd County increased from 127,000 to more than 149,000 between 1976 and 2002.

"It is far from a rapid expansion of the number of hogs in the county," Frisbie stated.

The concentration of hogs in Floyd County is about a half a pig per acre of farmland, which is slightly lower than the statewide average density of 0.56 pigs per acre, according to Frisbie.

Supervisors Chairman Warren Dunkel said those figures don't take into account that many of the large hog operations in Floyd County are concentrated in Cedar Township, which is in the northeast corner of the county, or Riverton Township, which is in the southeast corner.

"It's hugely significant," he said.

Supervisors noted 11 livestock farms are situated close to the proposed site.

Frisbie's letter states "a more factual representation of the situation is that there are three other regulated livestock farms within two miles of the proposed farm."

"None of these other farms are large enough to require a construction permit, but they all have DNR-approved management plans," Frisbie wrote.

Knapp's new confinement facility is already under construction, Dunkel said.

Contact Mary Pieper at

mary.pieper@globegazette.com.