Donnie Dendy

Region: Panhandle

Topics: Farming, Confined Animal Feeding Operations, Ogallala aquifer, Agriculture

 

Donnie Dendy is a wheat and soybean farmer in the north Panhandle town of Perryton, Texas, who has helped organize and operate the non-profit group, ACCORD (Active Citizens Concerned Over Resource Development). ACCORD has been seeking to improve operations among the region's confined feeding operations (CAFOs), chiefly hog facilities. Dendy and ACCORD are concerned about wastewater runoff, aquifer contamination, nuisance-level odors, increased flies, and airborne diseases emanating from these facilities. Also, given their large size (handling as many as 250,000 hogs), efficiencies of scale, vertical integration, and remote ownership, these new facilities threaten many family-run, locally-based businesses. Finally, Dendy and others within ACCORD are concerned about the erosion of due process rights to protect their communities' health, the local ecosystems, and their land values from the effects of these facilities under recently streamlined administrative procedures, which largely eliminated CAFO permit hearings. 

Interviewed

October 5, 2002
Perryton, Texas
Reel 2221 and 2222