An April 20 hearing has been scheduled in Jefferson City for two separate lawsuits over a proposed concentrated animal feeding operation in northern Callaway County.
The Friends of Responsible Agriculture (FORAG) have filed lawsuits against the Department of Natural Resources and the Missouri Clean Water Commission (CWC).
The lawsuit against the DNR, which FORAG filed in February, alleges the state agency violated the Missouri Sunshine Law by failing to include information concerning the tours of several concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in March of last year.
The other lawsuit was filed last June, but Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green, who was assigned to handle both lawsuits, has told attorneys he will address both cases at the April hearing.
According to a copy of the petition for violations that FORAG filed with the Cole County Circuit Court, the notice identified Brinker Farms as a facility that the CWC would tour, but three other facilities not included in the public notice were also toured.
The other facilities were identified as Windemann Farm swine CAFO, a land application facility that dealt with swine CAFO waste and Callaway Farrowing, which is the site of the proposed Kingdom City CAFO, the Fulton Sun previously reported.
In June, members of FORAG submitted a discovery request to obtain copies of notes commissioners took during the tours that FORAG members were not invited to join. But the CWC claimed the individual commissioners' documents were for personal use and were not relevant in Callaway Farrowing's permit appeal hearing.
Depositions from DNR's Greg Caldwell and Kurt Boeckman indicated that CWC Chairman Todd Parnell took notes during the tours and read them to other CWC commissioners. A motion to compel document filed by FORAG indicated that Parnell previously had withheld the notes during the discovery request.
Members of the CWC, who are responsible for making the decision to approve the permit for Callaway Farrowing, attended the tours, as did an attorney general's office lawyer who represented DNR during the permit hearing.
A writ of prohibition previously was issued against the CWC for the information gathered during the tours outside the normal hearing procedures for the permit appeal.
FORAG and its supporters argued that information raised during the tour had the potential to compromise information commissioners heard during the permit appeal hearing, the Fulton Sun previously reported. At a November hearing, Judge Green required the CWC to turn over the notes they made during the tours. Now, FORAG is pursuing the lawsuit that claims the DNR violated the Open Records Law, also referred to as the Sunshine Law.
In the lawsuit, FORAG argued that the DNR failed to comply with the Sunshine Law when it submitted an incomplete public notice for the tours taken in March and April.
FORAG is claiming three separate counts of DNR Sunshine Law violations, arguing in its lawsuit the commissioners knowingly and purposefully violated the law, and is seeking damages for the alleged violations and to cover the cost of lawyer fees and other expenses that Judge Green determines are applicable.
FORAG's attorney, Steve Jeffery, said, if the court determines that the DNR purposely violated the Sunshine Law, the department could receive a civil penalty up to $5,000.
FORAG's separate lawsuit against the CWC is an attempt to have the commissioners who attended the tours be disqualified from making further decisions on the Callaway Farrowing permit. FORAG members argued that the potential to compromise information learned at the hearing, with information gathered on the tours, created a conflicting bias, Jeffery, said.
A decision following the April hearing could determine whether the CWC members who attended the CAFO tours will be disqualified from approving the permit for Callaway Farrowing.
But both sides can appeal any decision Green makes to the appeals court district in Kansas City.