Construction of a hog-unloading-chute at the Swift Plant

At the end of August, an epic ten-hour hearing before the Board of Zoning Adjustments (BOZA) concluded that JBS Swift could continue operating in Butchertown after illegally beginning construction on a $560,000 expansion project.  Several restrictions were applied to the slaughterhouse and an aesthetic budget imposed.  What does all of this mean for the Butchertown neighborhood?  I recently had a chance to talk with Butchertown Neighborhood Association president Andy Cornelius about the implications  of the BOZA decision on the neighborhood.

Cornelius says the importance of the ruling is that BOZA actually made a stand on the issue and acknowledged that JBS Swift was in the wrong.  While BOZA did not terminate Swift’s conditional use permit for the violations, they did put several restrictions on the business, limited its expansion of slaughtering capabilities, and required the company to have a hearing before BOZA for any future expansions.

This is good news for Butchertown, Cornelius says, as JBS Swift has gone unchecked by BOZA since its last conditional use permit hearing in the 1980s, 29 years ago.  A substantial neighborhood audience weathered the long BOZA meeting to show their support of some kind of action.

An illegal construction project sparked this latest round of neighborhood vs. Swift tensions.  JBS Swift failed to obtain a building permit for a hog-chute enclosure expected to reduce odors off Mellwood Avenue (pictured above).  A $500 fine was earlier assessed to Swift to correct the permit problem.  Swift also plans a $1.5 million expansion to its boiler building to replace a broken steam generator.

BOZA’s solution pleases the Butchertown neighborhood.  The expansion project was 25% complete by the time it was halted.  Instead of requiring Swift to tear down what was built, valued at $137,000, BOZA requested the slaughterhouse provide the same amount in aesthetic improvements as a mitigating element to the area around the plant and the neighborhood.

While Butchertown’s lawyer Jon Solomon had compared such a measure to “putting lipstick on a pig,” Cornelius believes the hardscape and landscape improvements in the area will go a long way.  Swift must work in partnership with the neighborhood and city planning officials to determine the funds’ best uses and locations.  Swift’s lawyer has mentioned the company may appeal any landscaping obligations, but has made no move to do so yet.

The real importance of the BOZA decision is found in the restrictions on Swift’s conditional use permit.  A production ceiling has been set for the JBS Swift facility.  BOZA imposed a 10,600 pigs per day slaughter rolling average over six days.  That’s above the federal limit of just over 10,100 pigs per day, but Cornelius explains that the BOZA number allows for days of higher and lower production to be averaged out.  The 10,600 number, though, effectively prevents a two-shift slaughter operation that would run around the clock and holds production to current levels.

Overall, Cornelius believes a precedent has been set.  He says Swift probably won’t be in Butchertown forever, as the city continues its search for a suitable relocation spot in Jefferson County, but the BOZA decision definitely made headway for the neighborhood.  Further, Cornelius says the ruling is a victory for all in Louisville who were skeptical at the efficacy of BOZA to take a stand on an important issue.

The controversy isn’t completely settled yet.  An upcoming BOZA meeting will address another contentious point in the neighborhood-slaughterhouse relationship: storing meet in refrigerated trucks on a city owned parking lot.  That issue seems to revolve around the semantic differences between “meat” and “product” under the law.  We’ll have more info later.

• Butchertown Neighborhood Association (Official Site)
• More Broken Sidewalk coverage of Swift & Butchertown

Aerial view of the JB Swift plant (via LOJIC)

Monday morning, JB Swift will appear before the Metro Louisville Board of Zoning Adjustments (BOZA) to beg forgiveness for illegally starting construction on an expansion to their plant in Butchertown.  Swift needs a modified Conditional Use Permit (CUP) to operate at the site and continue with their expansion.  Needless to say, the Butchertown Neighborhood Association will be there to fight for the communities surrounding the facility.

According to the Ville-Voice, the Butchertown Neighborhood Association has drafted a 16-page “prehearing statement” of opposition to Swift’s approval.  All the gory details are there and nothing is spared.  Butchertown presents three arguments in their case: the neighborhood has changed dramatically in past decades, the expansion is inconsistent with the neighborhood plan adopted as part of the city’s Cornerstone 2020 comprehensive plan, and that the company has demonstrated “bad faith and unlawful conduct” in their expansion efforts.

Butchertown’s statement suggests the plant would be better located in another part of Jefferson County where it’s not incompatible with its surroundings and notes that a “sophisticated multinational corporation” such as JB Swift has behaved as if ignoring local law and regulation and paying the applicable yet paltry fines is just the “cost of doing business.”  The $47,800 fine paid by Swift last year for several years of violations probably goes unnoticed at a company that earned $1.5 Billion last year.

The statement notes the original conditional use permit was granted in 1969 when the Bourbon Stockyards directly neighbored the site (where the Home of the Innocents is today) with a staff report indicating that approval was granted “for the use as it now exists” and “increases in size of the present use, or alteration of existing uses or structures will need additional approval.”

The document then moves on to detail what it is exactly we’re smelling in the air in neighborhoods surrounding the plant and the foul problems of incompatibility that have become apparent with a revitalizing urban core:

“[T]he communities neighboring the Story Avenue Facilities have been subjected to a steadily increasing barrage of horrific odors, spills and sounds resulting from JBS/Swift’s dramatic expansion of its operations.  These gross nuisances have included the overpowering stench of pig feces, urine, vomit, rotting pig carcasses, souring pig blood, other decaying animal byproducts, boiling and burning animal remains (including heads, feet, hair, entrails, blood and other body parts) and chemical agents such as chlorine dioxide”

If that’s not bad enough, the report goes on to describe what’s left strewn on on our local roads around the plant and left to decay or wash into local waterways from slaughtering “nearly 4.7 million pigs” a year in the heart of Louisville.

And we’re only to page six!  It doesn’t get any better from there, although a little less grotesque.  (Read the full statement from Butchertown over here [Warning: PDF].)

Luckily the neighborhood has garnered the support of Metro Councilman David Tandy who has drafted his own letter in support of relocating the JB Swift facility.  He begins with the obligatory “keep the jobs in Louisville” and continues on to push the concerns of the neighborhood (read Tandy’s full letter here).

“I am committed to working to retain JBS Swift and the jobs it currently provides and will create in the future in Louisville Metro for many years to come.

“With that being said, I am strongly in favor, however, of developing a plan that would move Swift out of the Historic Butchertown Neighborhood in the near future and into a suitable location within Jefferson County that will provide the space needed for its continued service to this community as a viable business, while at the same time amicably coexisting with the environment around it.

“As for the issue before you tomorrow regarding the expansion of JBS Swift, while I understand this issue is under your authority as a board and respect your final decision, I am disappointed with the way this matter has been handled. In my opinion the neighborhood association and BOZA were not involved or notified in an appropriate manner.

“I respectfully ask that as the Board moves forward with this matter that the thoughts and opinions of the citizens that call Butchertown home be given your full attention and consideration.”

This seems to be the decision time on whether the JB Swift plant will ever be relocated.  Company-neighborhood relations are at an all time low and now Swift has been caught building an illegal expansion that could prove to be the straw that broke the camels back.  City officials have already endorsed the relocation effort and last year suggested that it could happen within five year’s time, but if we don’t hear something dramatic out of the BOZA meeting, when will another chance to relocate the plant and transform Louisville’s near-Downtown neighborhoods in such a dramatic way present itself?  Stay tuned for more.

More Bitchertown vs. Swift coverage from Broken Sidewalk:

• JB Swift Meets With Butchertown Over Illegal Expansion (Broken Sidewalk)
• JB Swift Starts Butchertown Expansion Without Approval (Broken Sidewalk)
• Butchertown’s Swift Plant Still Stinking Up The Room (Broken Sidewalk)