The Bad Air Sponge

When we last left the Chicago Cubs, Lou Piniella was walking off his team’s field toward the dugout for the last time on Oct. 6, 2007. A fan shouted, “Get ‘em next year!” and the manager nodded and replied with a wave: “Yeah. We’ll do better.”

Fans were pouring stoically out of Wrigley Field toward the gates and some held back their despair, while others saw a storybook emerging.

“We hope every year that we’ll come here and it will be different,” Robyn Kane said on her way out after the Cubs were swept by Arizona in the National League Division Series. “We’ll keep doing it, too.”

When we last left the Chicago Cubs, Ryan Theriot was getting dressed one last time in the little home clubhouse and saying the kinds of things that have defined his team’s players and its fans for generations: “You’ve got to take a positive out of it. You just have to regroup and come back strong.”

Next year is here, but this is not just any next year. This is the next year. This is 2008, the 100th anniversary of the Cubs’ last World Series championship. Which leads to the obvious question: Will this be the year that the team with the longest drought of titles in North American professional sports finally win?

Will Piniella be right? Will they do better? Will Kane be right? Will it be different? Will Theriot and his teammates come back strong? Is there really a Curse of the Billy Goat, and if so, can it be reversed the way Boston reversed its so-called Curse of the Bambino in 2004?

Cubs’ pitchers and catchers are due to report on Wednesday to HoHoKam Park in Mesa, Ariz., and their first formal workout of Spring Training will be held on Thursday. It will feel like the same beautiful tradition as snowbirds gather and balls pop into mitts, signaling a new year. The backdrop this time is a big storyline for many observers around the national pastime, as if something so banal as a round number really can get you into a postseason, much less into a World Series victory parade float.

The number “100″ is so — what is the right word? — noticeable. A society is conditioned to see it and accept it as significant. Willard Scott and a jelly-maker have been glorifying people 100 years old for a long time. We are a society that rounds off numbers in just about every part of life. So here comes the big 100.

Just look at that letter on the Cubs cap. It’s a C, which is the Roman numeral for 100.

“My message, first and foremost, to this team — and I’ve been thinking about that — is don’t put the load of 99 other years of not winning on you,” Piniella said before heading to Arizona. “Worry about this year only. We’ve got a good ballclub; don’t put any pressure on yourself. Let this team stand on its own merit, and that’s really going to be the message as far as Spring Training is concerned.

“You can’t redo the past. We’ve got a good chance to go forward. If we start looking at what’s happened and for so long, you put undue pressure on yourself. Let this team stand on its own merit and go from there.”

Cubs fans have been counting the years for a long time. The last time the Cubs were even in a World Series was 1945. In 1908, they beat the Tigers and reigned as the best of 16 Major League Baseball clubs.

Along the way, a goat became a chief part of Cubs lore. Even Piniella alluded to it during the Division Series last fall. Upon hearing criticism for his removal of starter Carlos Zambrano after six innings during a 3-1 opening loss at Arizona — where reliever Carlos Marmol gave up a key homer to Mark Reynolds — Piniella said, “It’s like the billy goat came out of the grave.”

The billy goat. Here we go again, for those who somehow do not know.

Billy Sianis, a Greek immigrant who owned the nearby Billy Goat Tavern, had two $7.20 box seat tickets to Game 4 of the 1945 World Series between the Cubs and the Tigers. He brought along his pet goat, Murphy (Sinovia in some references), which Sianis had restored to health when the goat had fallen off a truck and subsequently limped into his bar. The goat wore a blanket with a sign pinned to it which read: “We got Detroit’s goat.” Sianis and the goat were allowed into Wrigley and even paraded around the field before the game.

Despite a heated argument with ushers, Sianis and the goat were allowed to stay in the box seats for which he had tickets. But before the game was over, Sianis and his goat were ejected from the stadium, at the command of Cubs owner Philip Wrigley, due to the animal’s odor. Sianis was outraged and allegedly placed a curse upon the Cubs that they never would win another pennant or play in a World Series at Wrigley again because the Cubs organization had insulted his goat.

Now it is the mother of all “next years” and, much like the deal that sent Babe Ruth to the Yankees went hand-in-hand with Boston’s championship drought, no one can write about it without mentioning the goat.

The Cubs have done more eliminating than adding since their quick 2007 postseason departure, and their fans are fired up. Gone are one-time savior Mark Prior, Jacque Jones and Cliff Floyd, and new is Kosuke Fukudome in right field, along with the return of pitcher Jon Lieber. Perhaps Felix Pie (center) and Geovany Soto (catcher) are ready for regular roles. Time will tell. The rotation is deep, led by Zambrano and Ted Lilly, and there is a strong offense, though it was one that went mysteriously silent in the NLDS.

If you are the Cubs’ front office, all you can do is build and promote the best team possible for 2008. It is a team and a ballpark and most important a way of life that more people want to experience than the Friendly Confines possibly could hold. There is no scheduled fanfare for a drought. Who would celebrate futility? However, on July 9, the team will give the first 10,000 fans at Wrigley a 1908 hat.

“In the back of your mind, from the players’ standpoint, you want to be one of the guys who is part of a winning team, always, and more importantly here because it’s been so long,” Theriot said. “One hundred years — wouldn’t that be a storyline finish? Then we could tell everybody, ‘All right, see you all in 100 more years and we’ll win another one.’”

He was just joking about waiting another 100 years.

“Last year, it was 99, and we wanted to do it then,” Theriot said. “But I can’t remember one time, honestly, in that clubhouse, when somebody said we haven’t won in 99 years. It wasn’t talked about. We want to win for the city of Chicago and ourselves and this organization, and not because of the length of time since we had a championship.”

The Cubs are ready to start another Spring Training. “We’ll do better” are three words that many people will hold on to as it all begins again.

Purdue students’ noses help refine odor mitigation techniques

By BRIAN WALLHEIMER

There’s a lot a struggling graduate student will do to make a buck.

Add to the list taking whiffs — for $30 per session — of air collected from barns full of pigs, cows and chickens.

That’s how much Albert Heber, a Purdue University agricultural and biological engineering professor, is paying them to help with his research on odor emissions from farming operations.

“Typically they’re farm smells — manure, farm waste, hay,” said civil engineering graduate student Anuj Sharma. “The only thing that is good is that we are not smelling it for a long time. It’s just a sniff.”

The students smell diluted samples of air taken from different locations on farms. The diluted air represents the odor that air would have at a certain distance from the barn.

The idea is to test different odor-mitigation techniques to see how effective they are. The less diluted the sample needs to be for the odors to be undetectable, the better the method works.

“If it has to be diluted 1,000 times, that’s a pretty strong odor,” Heber said. “We have had samples in the past that have been over 10,000.”

Heber’s work has led to a Web site in which people can input variables — the type of animal on the farm, the number of animals, any odor-elimination techniques used, how manure is processed, etc. — to see how far the odors will travel.

The information can be used to decide how close a residence can be and not be affected by the smells.

Heber said he’s worked with a number of methods to reduce smell. Some are high-tech, such as belts that run under chickens to remove manure as it’s created. Others are as simple as removing manure from the barn more often.

Sallie Fahey, executive director of the Tippecanoe County Area Plan Commission, said Heber’s work can help planning officials quite a bit. She said there are times when residents get upset about contained farming operations that want to set up shop.

“If it’s an area that’s a little close to where there has been a development … that’s when it tends to be contentious,” Fahey said.

Fahey said having data that shows how area residents might be affected could lessen the tension.

Heber’s paid noses said the job isn’t as bad as it sounds, especially since many of them grew up around similar smells.

“It gets a little intense, but since I go out and collect a lot of the samples, it’s not that bad,” said Sam Hanni, a research assistant for Heber. “It’s nothing really strong that would bother you.”

Luca Magnani, a doctoral student in animal science, said the pig farms are the worst to smell, but he’s used to being around animals, so it doesn’t bother him much.

“Grad students are kind of poor,” Magnani said. “I’ve done worse than this.”

WAUKESHA - A town of Delafield man was sentenced to serve nine months in the county Huber jail and two years on probation Monday, after a menagerie of animals was found in the Highway 18 home he and his wife and daughter had. George Kozlowski, 50, pleaded no contest last fall to three counts of mistreating animals after authorities responding to a 911 hang-up call found 19 dogs, nine cats, a squirrel, a skunk, two turkeys, four exotic birds, three ducks, 10 chickens and a raccoon at the home. A criminal complaint said there was feces in the house and a “toxic” odor.

Kozlowski also was fined $100 plus costs for a non-criminal citation for disorderly conduct. That matter was originally a misdemeanor but it was downgraded after Kozlowski completed a domestic violence counseling program.

But industry leaders say many complaints come from people opposed to factory farming, not because of excessive odor

By GAVIN OFF

January 2, 2025 | 5:16 p.m. CST

GREEN CITY — In a place where strangers wave to each other through the passing windshields of their pickups and neighbors tend to their neighbors’ crops for no more than a thank you, finding an unwelcome guest in this quiet town might seem unimaginable.

But several families in Green City, a blink-and-you-missed-it town surrounded by farms and wild sunflower fields in Sullivan County, say they’ve been fighting an obnoxious guest for 13 years.

Some residents have moved.

Others have complained.

Since 2000, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources has received more than 1,700 odor complaints against concentrated animal feeding operations, according to a Missourian analysis of records held by the state agency. Missouri is home to 450 of these operations, including 21 large enough to have their odors regulated.

Residents of Sullivan County in north central Missouri have registered more than one-third of the complaints against the feeding operations, which typically house thousands of animals.

“Hope you had a good Thanksgiving,” read a 2004 complaint. “Be glad you’re not here this morning. The hog odor would about bring your turkey back to life.”

Animal farm odors present the state with one of its most complicated environmental problems, said Leanne Tippett Mosby, deputy division director of the DNR’s Division of Environmental Quality.

The state must protect the interest of animal producers, who provide jobs, economic benefits and food for hundreds of residents. Meanwhile, it must also protect the interests of their neighbors, who say farm odors cause health problems and simply make their lives miserable.

“I know it’s a political hot potato,” said Mark Fohey, vice-chairman of the Missouri Air Conservation Commission. “You can do whatever you want, and you’re basically going to piss off one or the other.”

Complaints registered

Of the more than 1,700 odor complaints since 2000, residents filed nearly 1,400 of them —— about 80 percent — against Premium Standard Farms, according to the state database of complaints. Premium Standard, a pork-producing heavyweight, operates in five northern Missouri counties.

Small-farm owner Rolf Christen, 53, and his family have filed about 400 complaints against Premium Standard in 6 1/2 years — the rough equivalent of one every six days.

Christen’s home outside Green City sits four miles south of Premium Standard’s Green Hills farm and eight miles northwest of Premium Standard’s Valley View farm. Combined, they house some 200,000 hogs.

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Resource Conservation Service, 200,000 hogs produce about 650 tons of feces a year.

Winds carry the rotten egg-like smell across town, residents say.

A couple times a week, Christen said, the stench blows across picturesque corn, hay and soybean fields to his small home under towering maple trees.

“People move from the city to the country because of clean air and clean water,” Christen said. “Right now we live in the middle of a cesspool.”

Christen is one of about 270 Missouri residents mentioned in two ongoing odor nuisance lawsuits against Premium Standard Farms.

“Ill-smelling odors, hazardous substances and/or contaminated wastewater have escaped and continue to escape from the defendant’s swine factories onto the plaintiffs’ properties and thus have substantially impaired and continue to impair the plaintiff’s use and quiet enjoyment of their properties,” the lawsuits read.

According to the lawsuits, filed in Jackson County Circuit Court, odors from the feeding operations can cause nausea, vomiting, headaches, breathing difficulties and irritated eyes, noses and throats.

A January report released by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services says some studies have shown that odors exacerbate the pre-existing health problems of nearby residents while affecting their overall quality of life.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported in 1996 that the odors could affect a person’s mood and physical well-being.

“To me, that suggests it’s something we should be concerned with because as a society we want to protect all our people,” said Peter Thorne, professor with the University of Iowa’s Department of Occupational and Environmental Health.

Counter argument

Some say the odor complaints are the work of disgruntled neighbors who simply dislike corporate agriculture.

State records, they say, prove it.

According to the Department of Natural Resources database, two families — the Christens of Sullivan County and the Torreys of Putnam County — have reported 59 percent of the complaints.

Christen admits that even a light odor makes him feel disrespected, like being slapped in the face by a neighbor.

Leslie Holloway of the Missouri Farm Bureau said some residents have it out for certain concentrated feeding operations.

About 40 people have complained about odors from Premium Standard’s facilities, according to the database. Spokesman Jason Helton said that for each complainant, Premium Standard has scores of neighbors who get along well with the company.

“A handful of folks may not be representative of the five counties we operate in,” he said.

Only 10 times have DNR officials cited a farm for excess odor emissions. Supporters of the big feed lots say the low number suggests that most complaints are illegitimate.

Some researchers said that’s often the case.

“Odor tends to be the verbal complaint where there’s a lot of underlying issues,” said Colin Johnson, an environmental specialist with Iowa State University.

Johnson said the feeding operations are the target of complaints because their owners are often community outsiders and because the lots compete with small-farmer owners over land, workers and prices.

Tracking the smell

Sitting on his backyard patio one Sunday afternoon with his dog, Susie, at his feet and a cup of hot tea in his hand, Christen, who came to the United States from Germany in 1980, delighted in the day’s cool, odorless breeze.

“We’re very appreciative of nice mornings, beautiful afternoons,” Christen said.

He just wishes there were more of them.

Week after week, hog odors blow across his 1,800-acre farm, through his small chicken coop and over his barn to his home, Christen said.

John Mabry, director of the Iowa Pork Industry Center at Iowa State University, said depending on the topography and weather patterns, it’s possible for odors to regularly settle in one area.

“It could happen,” Mabry said. “If the odor rises and there is a consistent trade wind, it could potentially deposit in a particular location. I’m not sure how probable that would be.”

According to the EPA, the odors are generated from three sources: confined animal buildings, manure storage and treatment facilities and land application of animal waste.

Many Missouri farms, unlike others in top hog-producing states, store their animal waste in gigantic outdoor lagoons where winds can take hold of the smell.

Steve Boone, with the Department of Natural Resource’s Macon office, has the monumental task of helping track down the smells, which often vanish as quickly as they arrive.

Because the department does not have the manpower to look into each complaint, it has failed to conduct a post-complaint odor inspection nearly 900 times since 2000.

Instead, Boone said, it’s common for state regulators to inspect a complaint days or sometimes weeks after the state fielded the call. To increase their chances of finding an odor, inspectors go out when weather conditions mirror those at the time of a complaint.

“I think it’s very difficult to do it that way,” said Steve Hoff, professor of agriculture and biological engineering at Iowa State. “The smallest changes in the weather pattern can put a receptor in or out of an odor plume.”

Mabry said too many factors determine an odor’s strength and ultimate destination for state officials to predict when and where the smells might pop up. Factors include everything from wind speed, humidity and solar intensity to topography, the makeup of the hogs’ diet and the maintenance operations at the farm.

Johnson said some of the most effective ways of eliminating farm odors include planting trees around the animal buildings, regulating the hogs’ diets and storing their waste in indoor underground pits instead of outdoor lagoons.

“When the winds come across that lagoon, they lift the volatile compounds, the odors, continuously,” he said.

Capturing odors

Jack Parrish moved to Putnam County in 1990, three years before Premium Standard entered the state.

By 1998, after dozens of complaints to the Department of Natural Resources, Parrish screwed his windows shut. He grew tired of shifting winds blowing the sharp, pungent smell into his home.

Unlike Christen, Parrish has largely given up on complaining. He has filed 46 complaints since 2000, including two in 2006. Not one resulted in a violation.

“It’s like beating your head against a brick wall,” said Parrish, 58. “Your head swells up and starts hurting. Why continue?”

Christen said the Department of Natural Resources would receive dozens more complaints if residents believed their calls would make a difference.

When they do inspect odors, officials use a device called a scentometer to measure a smell’s strength. If two air samples taken within an hour of each other contain a dilution of at least seven parts of clean air to one part of odorous air, inspectors bag a third sample to send to an independent lab in Minnesota.

There scientists measure the odor to ultimately determine whether Missouri officials should issue a violation. The regulations apply only to large operations.

The Department of Natural Resource’s Tippett Mosby said about half the odor samples sent to the lab result in violations.

In July, department officials recommended to the Air Conservation Commission that the state stop sending samples to the olfactory lab and rely solely on the scentometer to determine odor violations.

“Laboratory olfactory is expensive ($500/sample), creates logistical challenges (mailing samples, sample holding times) … and may not be scientifically valid because of concerns with chemical reactions with the container,” the report read.

Neighbors of the big operations said the change, along with immediate post-complaint inspections, would result in more odor violations and thus better compliance with Missouri laws.

Conservation commissioners, however, declined to vote on the recommendation, saying they needed more scientific information before making a decision.

But Christen said he has all the information he needs. He smells it almost every week.

“To me, I think it’s an atrocity,” Christen said. “I invite PSF officials here. I will wine them and dine them. But they have to sleep with their windows open.”