CHICAGO _ When the sickening odor swept across Matt Heissinger's farmstead, his daughter would sprint from their home to the car. Clinging to the girl's clothes and hair, the smell drove her to tears as she feared becoming a high school outcast.
Heissinger's wife often was forced to stay indoors, suffering from headaches and congestion, while the soft-spoken farmer worked his cows and crops with smarting eyes and a raspy throat.
On the field next door, pork producers had erected a 3,600-hog confinement facility, where hundreds of thousands of gallons of manure emit gases that have ruined the Heissingers' quality of life. The assessed value of their farm was cut in half because "breezes from the hog confinement across their property are awful," the state tax board concluded.
"A lot of our money is tied up in this farm," Heissinger said. "Our nest egg isn't there no more."
Across Illinois, the nation's fourth-largest seller of pigs, large hog confinements have exploded in number and size. Raising pigs for slaughter in an efficient, factorylike setting, the operations help hold down the price of the most widely consumed meat in the world.
But all that cheap pork comes at a harsh and until now unmeasured cost.
Documenting the impact of this profound shift for the first time, the Chicago Tribune found a state regulatory system that failed to protect rural communities as pork producers repeatedly exploited weak Illinois laws to build and expand the massive facilities.
The state Department of Agriculture, which is charged with promoting livestock production as well as regulating it, often brushed aside opposition from local officials to issue about 900 swine confinement permits in the last 20 years. Long-standing community residents were left feeling their rights had been trampled and the laws stacked against them.
In a wide-ranging investigation that spanned dozens of Illinois counties and analyzed more than 20,000 pages of government documents, the Tribune also found that the growth of these confinements has created a persistent new environmental hazard.
Pig waste flowing into rural waterways from leaks and spills destroyed more than 490,000 fish in 67 miles of rivers over a 10-year span. No other industry came close to causing that amount of damage, the Tribune found. Many operators faced only minor consequences; some multimillion-dollar confinements paid small penalties while polluting repeatedly.
The state also does little to investigate allegations of animal cruelty submitted by whistleblowing employees who work for some of Illinois' most prominent pork producers. Inspectors dismissed one complaint, state files show, after simply telephoning executives to ask if it was true that their workers were beating pigs with metal bars.
Other states and local agencies have moved aggressively to address the problems caused by large hog confinements. Illinois has not, the Tribune found, even as consumers demand more humane treatment of livestock and stronger environmental protections.
With the pace of new construction permits accelerating, state authorities say they are doing the best they can to protect neighboring communities and the environment. But they acknowledge that Illinois' Livestock Management Facilities Act gives them few tools to hold confinement owners accountable.
Twenty years after the state law was put in place, critics liken its provisions to a frontier-era timber blockade in the path of a bullet train.
"It is a nightmare of a statute," said retired Judge Steve Evans, who saw three hog confinements built around his western Illinois farmstead in Hancock County _ a fourth is planned this summer _ and made fruitless attempts to present specific legislative fixes.
Under one of several loopholes in Illinois law that promote the growth of industrial hog confinements, Heissinger's neighbor did not need to notify nearby residents that he had partnered with the giant producer Cargill Pork in 2007 to construct a facility where thousands of hogs would be penned on slotted concrete floors.
The $800,000 hog confinement, on a quiet country road 8 miles southeast of Illinois' capital, was not considered "new" under state statute. Instead, it was deemed an expansion of previous livestock operations _ even though the neighbor hadn't kept any pigs since shuttering a hog barn in the 1990s and razing it in 2004. He had maintained only a few dozen milking cows.
Said Heissinger: "We're not the 'poor pitiful us' type, but I think there's got to be laws changed and regulations in place to prevent this type of situation."
Pork industry leaders say modern confinements protect pigs from cruel weather and outdoor predators. The operations help crop growers by purchasing their corn and grain, provide jobs in financially strapped rural counties and enable young farmers to stay on the land.
But for those living nearby, the facilities often bring odors that represent more than an annoyance. Decomposing swine waste releases chemicals like hydrogen sulfide and ammonia that mix with the animal dander and fecal dust floating through confinement facilities. Vented out by giant fans, the gases and airborne particles can cause respiratory illnesses, public health studies have found.
"An awful lot of people have lost the enjoyment of their property," Evans said. "The neighbors of these facilities are impacted very significantly, and many of the people who are impacted are farmers."
As Heissinger's neighbor, Robert Young, began building his hog operation, six area families teamed up to file a civil lawsuit to halt construction. But Illinois law sharply limits the public's standing to challenge permitting decisions by the Agriculture Department, and their suit was dismissed.
At the time, Heissinger stood firmly behind Young. "They are just old-time farmers, like a lot of us. They been on this farm 90 years," he said.
But today he bitterly recalls how Young sat in his kitchen and described landscaping, filters and other measures that would control odors _ promises that Heissinger says were never kept.
A "contract grower" who raises pigs owned by big companies, Young told the Tribune he chose to make no adjustments. "We went with what we already had," he said.
He relished his legal victory over the other neighbors. "They literally fell apart," Young said, noting that one sold his home and moved out of state. "We was legal."
Heissinger is left to deal with the repugnant smells.
"If the wind is blowing, we're getting hit," Heissinger said. "You just hope that somebody would step in with authority to demand you protect your neighbors."
