Require hog factories to monitor their environmental performance to ensure that they are in full compliance with all standards and permit conditions. This should include routine groundwater and surface water monitoring. Citizens and local governments should have more say in whether factory hog farms are constructed in their community. Hog factories threaten the environment and human health, and emit odors that often jeopardize neighbors' use and enjoyment of their homes and property. Nonetheless, until recently citizens were not even notified that a new hog factory was being built next to them or in their communities.
Public notice is still limited only to adjacent property owners and to county officials.
Even if notified that a hog factory is being proposed for their neighborhood, there is little that citizens can do. Citizens don't even have the right to submit comments on proposed permits for specific factory farms. Local governments lacked power to zone hog factories until 1997, when most of the state's 2500-plus hog factories were already built. Even now, zoning restrictions only apply to the largest factory farms. Local governments still don't have zoning authority over factory farms with fewer than about 4500 hogs.