"Let's Talk Poop!!!!!!!!!!!!"
 
2006 Census Population Estimate                                                                                 Industrial Scale Hog Production
                                                                                                                                                 Permits Issued and Pending
 
Ballard Co.              8,245                                                                                                       unknown
 
Calloway Co.         35,421                                                                                                       2,500
 
Carlisle Co.              5,317                                                                                                     50,000
 
Fulton Co.                6,949                                                                                                     60,000
 
Graves Co.            37,872                                                                                                     35,000
 
Hickman Co.            4,974                                                                                                     50,000
 
McCracken Co.      64,950                                                                                                    unknown
 
Marshall Co.            31,278                                                                                                   30,000
 
 
   Almost a quarter million hogs per year on top of hundreds of chicken barns already in the Jackson Purchase Area of Western Kentucky is a whole lot of animal poop.  By conservative estimates the pig poop alone is equal to fecal waste of all the people in the Jackson Purchase plus Louisville and Lexington-Fayette Co. according to the 2003 Census Bureau population update.
 
   The hog barns emit a stench so powerful as to make huge swaths of the Purchase uninhabitable.  All that poop runoff and leaching from soils will aggravate our poor water quality.  The Kentucky Waterways Alliance reports: "According to the 2008 Integrated Report to Congress on water quality in Kentucky, 70% of assessed stream miles do not support primary contact recreation such as swimming, rising nearly 47% from the last report two years ago."  This suggests that the Division of Water, Environmental Protection Cabinet who issued permits for these industrial scale animal barns is and has been asleep at the wheel or is incapable of protecting our waters because of weak environmental laws.
 
   We are rapidly approaching the animal poop saturation point in the Jackson Purchase.  This is a tipping point similar to that forcast for climatic change, a tipping point in which raw animal wastes totally contaminate our streams on its way to our drinking water supply and our kitchen faucet.