CLEAR LAKE – Eleven persons attended the Clear Lake city council meeting Monday and gave opinions on the proposed Prestage Foods pork plant that could be built in neighboring Mason City, culminating with a statement read by Mayor Nelson Crabb.
Of the eleven people that spoke, 10 were against and one in favor. Only five persons were actually from Clear Lake. One man drove down from Kensett, and another woman came from Fertile to speak.
NIACC instructor Bennett Smith “expressed (his) profound concern of the many potential negative impacts” the plant could present to the area.
“I would ask you (the council) to oppose it,” he said, pointing to “long-term” pitfalls versus the short-term.
Mason City’s Max Weaver spoke to the elected body, and even removed his trademark stocking cap “out of respect”.
Thanking them for their service, Mr. Weaver was agitated that Prestage Foods’ Jere Null left the meeting after making a statement and didn’t stay to take questions from the crowd. Mr. Weaver expressed most concern for CAFOs – confined hog operations, essentially – and the impact from them, as he predicted they would spring up around the plant and impact quality of life here. He said the pork produced in the plant would be exported to China.
In typical Max Weaver gusto, rousing the audience to applause, he said “I do not want to change my quality of life to feed China!”
As for Mr. Null, he did attend the meeting, along with North Iowa Corridor CEO Chad Schreck (who did not speak). Mr. Null made a statement despite the fact his company’s plant would be located in another town. He said his company has no permits to open any new CAFOs in Cerro Gordo county. He pointed to “speculation” from those opposed to the plant “about things we are not gonna do.” He also pointed to the “high quality of life” and “we wouldn’t want to do anything to change that”.
“We think that it would be a poor idea to build a (CAFO) in or near Clear Lake or the … vicinity of Clear Lake. Not only do we not intend to do it, we would discourage anyone else that’s involved in our business to do it as well.”
He pointed to a surplus of hogs already in the Northern Iowa – Southern Minnesota market.
After the public finished addressing the council, Mayor Nelson Crabb made a statement connected to the controversy with the potential pork plant development. While saying Clear Lake has no intent to “meddle” in the political process of another elected body, he pointed to “political precedent” in Clear Lake “opposing large-scale commercial confinement operations” and warned of potential future action by the Clear Lake council.
“As this potential economic development project, Prestage, evolves, it may come to be that the city council of Clear Lake would, perhaps in the future, possibly consider to take a position in opposition to such a proposal as being counter-intuitive to our community’s primary economic engine: tourism.”
The council’s next meeting is April 18th. That is one day before the Mason City council’s meeting, when the council could very well vote for the third and final time to approve the zoning changes that would allow Prestage Foods to build their $240 million plant.
CHITCAO was noted for its large kill/packing plants back 50 years ago and see how nice their city has evolved ! Even crapped out a socialist president that were all proud of. Get to wok you little chine owned sheepels.
Please sign this, https://www.change.org/p/terry-branstad-the-people-vs-prestage-water-quality-and-quality-of-life-across-north-iowa#petition-letter.
Gov Bumstead gets hundreds of these on line, on the cheap petitions every year. One more like this one wont make any difference. Go down to the statehouse, personally contact your representatives, show up at council meetings if you have any desire to be heard. While it make you feel better….. this approach is totally ineffective, IMO.
Clear Lakes mayor and City Council should voice their concerns about this facility because it will have an impact on their community and that is what they were elected to do stand up for their community.
Explain the impact…. maybe people from Clear Lake could work there. But, most people cannot afford to live in Clear Lake. Unless you make a minimum of $ 75,000 per year, u cannot afford it. To afford the houses, you need at list $ 200,000 per year. So, I don’t see how this will impact Clear Lake…
I just cannot believe the short-sightedness of some people. And, I did not see Mason City butting in when McKesson was coming to town. Now, TeamQuest has laid off 42 employees.. Clear lake needs to tend to their own business and let Mason City handle their own…. We need the new plant like a fish needs a bicycle– but I don’t see any other way of moving forward in Mason City. This is the first viable project for this Bookmeyer etc regime. With all of the work put in by the state, North Iowa Corridor, Iowa Economic Development, etc.. if we turn this one down. good luck being taken seriously again… We will remain the same dud of a town that we are now. Low paying jobs and the only new people coming into town are the thugs and drug dealers from Detroit, St. Louis, the Cities,. And what they do pays sometimes thousands per day. I would prefer a hard-working immigrant from anywhere over this.
“When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money”
https://youtu.be/FAA_So0d01w
Give me a break…
The zionist jews shitskins CLAIM to hate built that city so they could evade paying taxes and evade the legal repercussions of their criminal actions due to complete lack of any business ethics.
Of course it’s not a shithole when you park your money there.
I think everyone has their right to a “Not in my backyard” kind of attitude for this one! REGARDLESS of the “jobs” this may provide “locals”, the proposed building just cannot contain all of that stench. I understand this is Iowa but when my family visits I don’t want them to think my front yard smells, it could be built farther away from the city. I really hate people who say “oh it’ll be a faint smell, hardly noticeable.” or the cliche “it won’t be too bad.”……………..
If it “won’t be too bad” that means it won’t be good either! It’s going to smell the city up to its core. The workers will leave work, go into town and smell up our grocery stores and restaurants! They will be careless! Who could care if you kill for a living? This kind of violent work is only going to twist local individual’s minds and make them into monsters. They will have problems caring for other’s emotions. How can you care when its your job to kill the screaming pig in front of you and you have thousands more to kill? These pigs will be wrongfully abused——— potentially by our next door neighbors! I think this is going to wreak havoc on the psyche of all the Mason City residents, from the smell and the abuse!
For a year and a half I owned 2 acres of land in Franklin County Iowa. I was surrounded by hog confinement lots and the smell was terrible almost constantly. At night the hogs would howl and squeal in misery. It was like a scene from hell. The karma on mass execution of defenseless animals is beyond the pale. Society should be moving towards vegetarianism or humanely raised animals on open spreads. I’m 100% against this Auschwitz project. But with that said, I don’t think the Mayor should be “speaking” for the council. The council are their own independently elected public officials. They should have their own minds.
You owned that land like a teenager who “owns” a brand new car on a 5 year loan that he trashes and gets it repossessed on the 18th month. People have had longer bouts with skin conditions than you have had commitments. You have fooled yourself, stop trying to fool us.
Do you eat bacon?
“For a year and a half I owned 2 acres of land in Franklin County Iowa.” Yeah you did. And…you did nothing but leave the town of Burdette a huge mess. You drug those crappy tires into your sacred tire hut kingdom, then left it all for some else to clean up. You have no room to talk how you were impacted by anything. You are a slob and Burdette still suffers because of YOU!
Sounds like there’s a story there for Matt. Talk with the Burdette, and get the real story in Petey and his tire kingdom.
Boo Hoo-You owned a hole in the ground and left your mess like always. You are a damn no good whiner and a worthless piece of crap.
They will deport the illegals ???? Would that be part of the 15,000,000 ( million) already here including the ones who are over staying the HB Obamma work visas — Even if they are deported – BS) they would be back in 6 months because the democrats want them here for cheap votes and cheap labor –GO TRUMP 2016 – SAVE AMERICA !
You got it 1/2 rightabout democrats and votes. But I think you need to rethink the part where dems want cheap labor. I believe that the republicans got that corner of the market.
again no city wide vote on this matter, a few deciding on the living conditions of many…taxation without representation
Well you are wrong in thinking that way. So says Peter Lagios (former City Council Candidate 2013)
The council are their own independently elected public officials. They should have their own minds.
So much for mutual support and cooperation between MC and CL. Years of hard work building collaboration have just been torpedoed and in come the Clowns. The self appointed ring master and head buffoon Mad Max appears with his hat in hand.
Good for Clear Lake. Glad other towns are considering this. Don’t really care for Max but cudos to Max for stepping up. Now if we could get Steckman and Ragan to state a position on this. I’m waiting for the family farm angle to come out of this. This is going to be a polluting nightmare. We just spent 10 million on renovating Clear Lake and to take the chance of polluting it. There are hog confinements about 2 miles south of Ventura marsh. This past fall the owners were spreading hog sh111t . !/2 mile from the marsh on top of a hill no less. Do you think any of this ended up in the lake. Branstad’s brother was found guilty of polluting the Winnebago river last fall you think Branstad cares how much pollution this causes in Cerro Gordo.
Speaking of Max Weaver…… I bet the Clear Lake City Council would shut down The Rancho Deluxe in a heart beat on the grounds that it is offensive and in violation of their zoning regulations.
Max didn’t run Target distributing out..local employers that didn’t want to compete with $16 + an hour & good benefits jobs did. said ” we don’t have workforce for you”…do we have the workforce here for this? what’s different?
NOT $16 an hour
Bull Shit-I was there and know what I heard and saw. Max was the one who said there wasn’t enough workers here and that killed the deal.
How many jobs was Target going to bring in???
Good question – I think hundreds if not 1,000 – but that’s ancient history now. MC blew it on that, just like MC blew it on the casino, moving NIACC out of downtown (decades ago), allowing all its historic building to become rubble, building south bridge mall, and a lot more major mistakes. Is being a loser in this town’s DNA?
Yeah, I’ve always thought how vibrant downtown Mason City would be if Niacc were still there. There was enough vacant unused space to build it out too. And the mall is such a travesty.
Those decisions were made in the 70s era of suburban style development. But still, Austin, Albert Lea, and even little Northwood all have vastly better downtowns than MC.
Clear Lake and the Clear Lake Farmers and the other towns need to stay out of our business. Weaver should shut up and go back to living off his disability and wife as he always have. He cost us the Target Distribution Center years ago and now doesn’t want another opportunity. The Damocrats need to get their shit together. First they support open borders and then complain they might have illegals come to town.
There *might* be illegals coming to town? Apparently, you have never seen a large scale slaughterhouse before. 90% of those 2000 jobs will be filled by foreignes, many of whom will be illegals. Better brush up on your Español.
I have worked in large scale packing houses and have relatives that still do. There might be a few illegals, but when they are found they are fired. Company’s will not risk their business to give illegals jobs. And, there is nothing wrong with speaking Spanish. At least they are willing to work while all you want to do is live off the taxpayers and shoot off your mouth.
The big corporate farms have pushed out small farmers, that is their agenda, please study “Monsanto”, they want to own “all” of the food production including seeds, please also study “Agenda 21/30”, they have been messing around with human DNA, animal DNA, and seed DNA, they want triple helix strand DNA, that goes with their GMO seeds, please research this, youtube has many PHD’s and professors you can learn about these topics and any topic.
This is a “Factory Farm Map”, http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/, Iowa is saturated with animal factories, the abuse those animals go through daily, the damage to the environment, the adverse health affects on people.