Letter to the Editor: Ozarks water supply is in danger

RELATED

Nearly $1B in development could transform Branson area

Bass Pro Shops acquires Hobie

Dear editor,

The SBJ is reporting on nearly a billion dollars in new developments in the Branson region along with news of Bass Pro’s purchase of Hobie. In both cases, these giant companies assume Table Rock Lake will be clean and safe for their expected visitors and customers.

They are sadly mistaken.

Since 1993, bureaucrats and legislators in Missouri have systematically eliminated every major legal guardrail that protected us against the unlimited dumping of toxic animal waste from outsider-owned animal meat factories.

These are called CAFOs, confined animal feeding operations. These monstrosities have ruined nearly every lake and river in Iowa along with thousands of private wells, ponds, fishing holes and springs. They have ruined water supplies and private property values across the Midwest and now they are moving aggressively into the Ozarks.

These meat factories don’t need sailboats. They don’t need amusement parks. They don’t need hotels or restaurants or golf courses or shopping centers. They need an ocean of fresh water from our aquifers and a place to dump an ocean of toxic waste. 

Bass Pro and Herschend Family Entertainment will soon discover that giant international meat companies have the legal right to poison and ruin the projects they announce. Both firms have ignored 30 years of legal maneuvers that now allow unlimited “land applied” toxins in all 114 Missouri counties including the watersheds of every lake and drinking water supply for the Tri-Lakes region.

Because they refused to sit at the big boys table called the Missouri legislature, they are now on the menu. Both firms are building castles on sewage lagoons. Stay tuned to this newspaper for the tragic stories to follow.

 —Dan Chiles, Missouri Guardrails LLC & Rockspan Farm LLC