New business

Remington now has murals. The main one is spectacular. The Remington Facebook page with a picture of the almost-completed mural received over 600 likes, an amazing number for a local post. Cameron also did some wings and a bird. Also in Remington, the new Holiday Inn Express opened on Monday, September 1.

SR 114 east of Rensselaer is closed at the Iroquois River for bridge construction. A block of Scott Street just off of SR 114 is also closed for a rebuild. Most of the paving in Rensselaer involves milling and then putting down a new layer of asphalt. This section of Scott Street is being rebuilt from its foundations so will be closed a while.

The Briar Patch, which is on Vine and McKinley, will be moving to Rutsen Street into the old Heritage Office Supply Building. Something called GracePoint Resource Center will move in next to First Merchants Bank. It will have an open house on October 19.

Morocco recently got a new tattoo shop.

Over the weekend there were two SJC alumni events, the homecoming sponsored by the Alumni Association and a go-kart race at the Fairgrounds. I briefly stopped by the Homecoming and when I was there the attendance was low. I did not get to the Fairgrounds but someone who was there said attendance was low there as well.

The events on Saturday had decent weather because the rains came on Friday and during the night. (The high school Homecoming was postponed to Saturday because of the storms.) My rain gauge had over four inches in it. The river rose about five feet, but because is started so low, it never reached flood stage.

Also over the weekend Mainstreet Rensselaer held its annual Oktoberfest.

The airport received the OK from DGLF (Department of Government Local Finance) to proceed with its plans to open a flight school. That was the last regulatory hurdle it faced.

On Monday the Jasper County BZA and the Jasper County Plan Commission held meetings to discuss a proposed CAFO in Union Township on CR 600N between CR 900W and CR 1000W. Like the previous CAFO on its agenda, this proposal was not completely new but rather wanted to rebuild on the site of a previous hog farm that had stopped operations. The petitioner was Northwind Pork LLC, which is owned by several people/organizations that are in the hog business.

The 20 acre site has been used as a hog farm since 1970. It was originally permitted by IDEM for 6748 swine but because the buildings had deteriorated, it was re-permitted more recently for 1482 animals. The buildings have continued to deteriorate and there are no longer hogs at the site. The proposal will totally demolish the old buildings and remove the two lagoons and replace them with four buildings, one for farrowing, another for gestation, a third for gilt development, and a fourth composting. There are presently four houses on the site. Two will be removed and the other two will house employees. Northwind already has one hog operation in Jasper County, in Barkley Township, but this one will be a bit smaller.

The BZA considered two items, a special exception, needed for all CAFOS, and a variance, needed because the site does not meet the new setbacks. There were some comments from the audience who did not like the proposal, but both the variance and exception passed by a 3-0 vote. (Only three members were present, which meant that only a unanimous vote would count.)

The Plan Commission then met to consider a rezone. A CAFO of this sort should have A-3 zoning, but the original CAFO was established before the current zoning regime. When the new zoning went into effect, the zoning of some of the CAFOs was not updated, so they became legally non-conforming. The Plan Commission granted the zoning request.

There was one other item on the agenda, a rezone from A1 to A3 for De Jong farms so that they can erect a building that will upgrade methane coming from cow manure to the standards needed to inject it into a natural gas pipeline. However, the project has changed its plans and the details of the new plans were not available, so the item was withdrawn. It will be resubmitted at a later date.