Pillen is now a partner in six facilities in six different Nebraska counties, and he's building more. But he says he doesn't want his success to be at the expense of neighbors. If it's going to have a chance of violating any neighbors' quality of life, we won't even consider it. We've turned down great locations to do facilities that would have been really super opportunities because there was somebody that was too close. When you put 5,000 hogs on one site, you produce a lot of pork and a lot of waste.
Opponents say that's the primary problem.
The hogs live on top of open grates. Below them is a pit with 8 to 10 inches of water. Every two to three weeks, the waste is flushed out. This is where it winds up. On the day we visited, there was a faint odor next to the lagoon.