Ban on new industrial swine CAFOs expected to fall by less than 300 votes after canvass
A countywide ban on future swine CAFOs was expected to fail as election officials counted the last ballots ahead of Tuesday’s official canvass.
Final official results were expected to be released by the state after 4 p.m. on Tuesday.
Those results will likely reflect that a slim margin of voters—possibly less than 300—doomed the widely debated proposition.
Only 282 votes out of almost 6,000 ballots cast separated each side of the issue, according to updated, unofficial election results released Nov. 10.
County Clerk Marki Rowley said on Monday there were only about 240 remaining ballots left to count. Even if all of them were “for” Proposition 6, the item would still fail.
David Remkes, one of the leaders of It’s Our Future, the grassroots group that petitioned to get Proposition 6 on this year’s general election ballot, said he was disappointed the item didn’t pass, but was encouraged by the amount of support it garnered among local voters.
“We did have a lot of support, we just didn’t have enough,” he said. “We’re going to go with that. It’s our political system. We’re going to go with what the majority says, unless something dangerous comes up that threatens a lot of people.”
As of Monday, 52 percent of voters were against the proposition to 48 percent for it.
Jared Buhler, president of the Millard County Farm Bureau, said he was excited by the results. The Farm Bureau lobbied heavily to defeat the ballot initiative.
Buhler said he believed support for local property rights is what swung the vote against the outright ban on industrial hog farming. A ban, he said, went too far, particularly when county procedures and a more robust concentrated confined animal feeding operation ordinance passed last year already protect residents.
“You still can’t just go have a pig farm,” he said. “You still got to take it to zoning and planning. You still have to do all the procedures. Your county commissioners are still going to have a choice. This (proposition) wouldn’t have even let anybody onto the playing fi eld if it passed.”
The Farm Bureau became so involved in defeating Proposition 6, Buhler said, because the group was afraid passage could have led to more such referendums regarding agriculture in the future.
“If they had gotten this passed so easily, what if next time it was because they didn’t want anymore dairymen?” He asked. “That was Farm Bureau’s big thing, if they don’t like something and it was so easy to get passed, then what’s next?”
A county-instituted moratorium against new swine CAFOs expired several weeks ago, said County Planner Adam Richins. The six-month moratorium—the county’s second in two years—was put in place to allow the election to decide the issue of swine CAFOs.
What remains to be seen is that now that the election is over and Proposition 6 failed, will there be new applications for more industrial hog farms.
Richins said there were two incomplete applications fi led with the county before the last moratorium as put in place.
“We had a couple that had applied a number of months back. But their applications were incomplete and then they put the moratorium into effect. There’s been discussion from what I’ve been able to gather they are considering re-applying,” he said.
The county planner said if those were to return, the applicants would have to first file for a zoning change on property that meets standards outlined by the county’s ordinance.
Only after successfully getting a zoning change—to the agriculture industrial designation—can an application for a conditional use permit be filed.
“Once it’s a CUP, it’s basically going to get issued, just with appropriate conditions,” he said.
Remkes and his group, meanwhile, say they will continue to meet. Asked what they plan to do if there are any new applications for swine CAFOs, he said it depends.
“There are other measures that we can do if somebody decided to put a big enough pig farm in a place that would be really detrimental to a lot of people,” he said. “We could do a referendum on the zone change. If we felt there was enough support in an area, we could have a referendum, if they had a zone change to ag industrial, to undo the zone change.”
The comment echoed one made during the great Millard County Pig Debate of 2019—that if a ban wasn’t enacted, the county would host a fight each and every time a new CAFO operation applied for a permit.
Buhler said even that scenario is better than an outright ban.
“At least you can have the debate. If Prop 6 passed, you can’t have a debate,” he said.
Meanwhile, in other election results, Tuesday’s vote canvass was expected to show the Farm Bureau’s candidate to replace Wayne Jackson next year on the county commission would easily best former sheriff, Ed Phillips, in the race for commission seat C.
Bill Wright, a local dairyman, took 61 percent of the vote to Phillips’ 39 percent, according to the Nov. 10 unofficial results. With a 1,300-vote lead, the remaining ballots to be counted were not enough to change the race’s outcome.
Jenni Finlinson also handily won her race for Millard School Board District 3, beating Kevin Chapman 66 percent to 34 percent.
Republican Donald Trump was the area’s favored presidential contender, besting the eventual winner, President- Elect Joe Biden, a Democrat, by 4,542 votes.
Trump has yet to concede the election to Biden two weeks after election day, claiming widespread fraud, though his campaign has made the claims with little evidence to back them up. Multiple court challenges brought by the Trump campaign have so far failed.
The presidential election was so disappointing to one local resident, according to police records, deputies were asked to escort three Secret Service agents over to the person’s home in Deseret last week for a conversation after threats were allegedly made on social media targeting the former vice president.
