Political Chowder's NUMBER OF THE WEEK - Sponsored by www.no-deal.org



December 02, 2007
NUMBER OF THE WEEK
 $30
From: From The Economist print edition Nov 22nd 2007



The hunt for the odourless pig
Regulating America's big farms


by CARROLL COUNTY

Fr
IN TWO long buildings in Carroll county, Indiana, some 8,000 pigs are doing what they do best: eating, defecating and squealing. Cute, they are. Tasty, they will be. But livestock operations like this one are increasingly under scrutiny. Above the pigs' heads are instruments measuring dust and noxious fumes. Farther east, in Randolph county, the local planning commission will vote next month on whether to limit the expansion of pig farms.

As America's pig, cattle and poultry farms have become bigger and more efficient, so have fears of the effect on their surroundings. Some 450,000 of America's 1.3m livestock farms qualify as "confined feeding operations" (a poultry farm, for example, with more than 30,000 hens). About 19,000 farms are designated as "concentrated animal feeding operations", with more than 100,000 hens, 700 dairy cows or 2,500 pigs. The question is how best to police these enormous flesh generators.

The huge farms have not carried on with total impunity—they have been regulated by the Clean Water Act's permit system for polluters since the 1970s. Last year, however, in response to a court decision, the Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA) was forced to limit the number of farms covered by its rules on permits and manure management. Some states are therefore stepping forward to create their own guidelines.

As officials work to set rules, the main concern has been to protect water supplies by dealing with waste properly. But there is another obvious problem: farms stink. The rise of mega-farms and the relentless expansion of America's suburbs mean that residents are encountering the pungent aromas of the countryside as never before—and are starting to sue. Quite apart from the nasal discomfort, the olfactory factor can depress property prices.

To gather proper data and fend off arbitrary penalties under the Clean Air Act and other laws, livestock producers are now paying for a national study of emissions. The study, led by Purdue University, Indiana, and overseen by the EPA, is proceeding well, despite a few hitches. (Pigs in Missouri chewed through some equipment.) Albert Heber, of Purdue, is also looking into ways to lessen the stink—by modifying animal diets, for example, or by biofiltration. To test the technology, he has graduate students sniff samples of smelly air from plastic bags. The able-nosed and strong-willed get $30 a session, and earn it.

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Verizon, FairPoint take issue with PUC staff report

Portsmouth Herald November 28, 2007

PORTLAND, Maine — Verizon and FairPoint Communications are taking issue with a Public Utilities Commission report that says Verizon's phone lines in Maine are deteriorating and its customer service is getting worse.

That assessment was part of the PUC staff's recommendation that the commission reject FairPoint's bid to buy Verizon's landline business in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont for $2.7 billion.

The 295-page report released Monday said the lines that FairPoint wants to buy need millions of dollars worth of repairs. Verizon is also falling far short of service quality standards set by the PUC; the company most recently failed to fix 41 percent of reported residential phone line problems within 24 hours, which is double the state benchmark, the report said.

Verizon and FairPoint officials said the report's conclusions are inaccurate.

"Any suggestion that the network is deteriorating is totally unsubstantiated and off-base," said Verizon spokesman Peter Reilly. He said Verizon spends millions of dollars a year upgrading its network in Maine.

Rose Cummings, FairPoint's vice president for corporate communications, said the company has made informed and conservative estimates of what is needed to meet quality standards and expand high-speed Internet access in Maine.

"The idea that we don't know what we'd be inheriting is absolutely incorrect," she said.

The analysis by the PUC staff is a key document in the long and complicated process to review the proposed deal. The commission, which is not bound by the staff recommendation, is scheduled to deliberate the case Dec. 13.

Regulators in all three states must give their approval for the deal to go through.

As part of its report, the PUC staff looked at Verizon's service record for repairing phone lines and showing up for repair and installation appointments.

Under a 1995 agreement with the PUC in 1995, Verizon is penalized when it fails to meet benchmark standards for customer service. The benchmark for failing to fix problems within 24 hours is 21 percent.

But the actual rates have far exceed the benchmark the past five years, with Verizon failing to fix 41 percent of residential phone problems within 24 hours in the 2006-07 fiscal year. At the same time, Verizon missed 19 percent of its repair appointments and nearly 16 percent of its installation appointments, the report said.

The penalties for not fixing the problems aren't stiff enough to motivate Verizon to improve its service, the staff wrote in the report.

"It is clear to us that Verizon made a business decision at some point during the past seven years that the costs associated with paying (service quality) penalties were less than the costs associated with addressing the root causes of its service quality problems, i.e., insufficient number of technicians, deteriorating outside plant and/or overtime policies," wrote Trina Bragdon, the PUC's hearing examiner in the case....



There are many, many more issues that need to be examined. This is just a snippet of what's wrong with this deal. For more in depth details, please go on-line to www.no-deal.org. This is a bad deal for consumers, tax payers, rate payers, our communities and for the economic growth of New Hampshire.