In Kansas, where there are more cattle than people, getting rid of animal waste and dead animals has always been a vexing problem.

Now, a project is under way that supporters say may provide solutions. But others are saying the project raises as big a stink ethically as the smell produced by the manure.

At the center of the issue is a compost-making venture being conducted by the Kansas Livestock Assn. that is partially publicly funded.

Under the compost project, which is being done at secret locations in western Kansas, manure is being spread in windrows and dead cattle are being covered with straw and manure.

The association says it is trying to come up with environmentally friendly and money-making solutions to dispose of animal waste and dead animals.

“We are taking an environmental negative and making it into a positive,” said Allie Devine, the association’s vice president and general counsel.

But environmentalists say that while the project may be worthwhile, the publicly funded part of it is another example of how the association, one of the largest and most influential agricultural organizations in the state, uses its connections in state government to dial up dollars.

“I think it’s a fine project,” said Craig Volland, conservation chairman of the Kansas chapter of the Sierra Club. “I question whether the public should be paying for it since it’s another subsidy to people who could pay for it themselves.”

The project

After leaving some of southwest Kansas' largest feedlots, cattle are brought to a beef processing and meatpacking plant in Dodge City. A program by the Kansas Livestock Assn. to compost cattle manure and carcasses is under fire for its use of taxpayer dollars.

Public records show that in the closing days of former Gov. Bill Graves’ administration in 2002, the state signed contracts appropriating $422,000 to the Kansas Livestock Assn. for a commercial composting project. In its grant applications, the association said it would match that amount from its own coffers.

Devine, who was state agriculture secretary under Graves before going to work for the association, pitched the project to state officials.

Essentially, the goal was to facilitate a composting business composed of livestock feeders. The project was groundbreaking, the association said, because there had never been such a large-scale composting operation.

Devine received support from then-Lt. Gov. Gary Sherrer, who also served as secretary of what was then the Department of Commerce and Housing — now the Department of Commerce — and from her state Agriculture Department.

In April 2002, Commerce decided to move $272,000 into the project — $200,000 that was passed through from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and $72,000 from the state for marketing.

Didn’t add up

Kansas Livestock Association USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant intentions

Then, Commerce and the state Agriculture Department went to bat for Devine when the association sought a $238,000 grant from another state agency, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

Sherrer and Connie Fischer, who was director of the agriculture marketing division for the Commerce Department, and Jamie Clover Adams, who succeeded Devine as state agriculture secretary, wrote letters in April 2002 to KDHE praising the project and telling the agency about their intent to fund it.

But when the livestock association’s grant application was thrown into the mix against 63 other applications for a total of $1.2 million in funds, the project didn’t make the cut.

At least at first.

According to a team that reviewed the grants, there were serious concerns with the grant application.

For one thing, the association said the project would produce 1 million tons of compost annually. That would have required 4 million tons of manure from 1.6 million head of cattle. That meant the project would have had to collect manure from nearly one of every two cattle in the state.

Review override

Transportation of all that manure would have been problematic, the review team noted. Also, broad participation by producers would probably be unlikely.

The review team also thought the project team had limited experience in composting, and that salaries of people involved in the project appeared high.

KDHE officials told the livestock association in July 2002 it had rejected the project, but that the idea had potential and recommended the association try to get money from another funding pot in the agency.

Asked about the first refusal of the project, Devine said it had to do with the project not matching the specific KDHE grant criteria. The application had been made for a solid waste grant, which generally are given to projects that reduce use of landfills.

Despite the review team’s refusal of the project, on Nov. 1, 2002, Commerce signed contracts with the association for the $272,000. On Dec. 17, 2002, then-Secretary of KDHE Clyde Graeber and Devine signed a contract granting the association $150,000.

Ron Hammerschmidt, director of the division of environment, said KDHE decided to grant the money because the association started considering how to compost dead cattle. He said he expected a final report on the compost project this fall.

Secret locations

Currently, the association has contracted with three commercial feeding operations with between 30,000 and 70,000 head of cattle to conduct the field work for the composting. The group will only say the feedlots are located in western Kansas, but refuses to say which ones they are. The feedlots will receive $5,000 per month up to a maximum of $25,000, according to an update Devine wrote to KDHE.

Kylo Heller, an environmental agronomist, is in charge of the field work.

He said the manure was taken from the pens and placed in long windrows, turned, sometimes watered, and monitored for temperature and oxygen levels.

Composting in relatively small quantities is an old, well understood process, Heller said, but the livestock association is trying to find the best way to compost a large amount of manure and remove weed seed from the manure.

With fewer weed seeds in compost, he said, farmers will use less herbicides once the compost is spread on fields.

That would be an advantage to the crop producer and the environment, he said.

Dead cattle

But shortly after the project began, the association decided to add to the project, composting dead animals.

Devine said that was necessary because of the increased costs of removing dead animals and threats of outbreaks of animal disease.

Heller said the dead animals were placed in a mix of manure and straw.

“The idea is, if you can compost these animals and break them down in a compost pile, it may be an alternative for some of these guys who are paying high rendering costs,” he said.

When told about the project, Volland said he could see the need for such study. But, he said, “it’s just another subsidy to agricultural interests.”

The players involved in solidifying the contract show “there’s clearly some influence going on here,” Volland said.

Devine denied her former position in the Graves’ Cabinet had anything to do with the association she now heads getting the grants.

“I just made the case. I don’t think it had anything to do with our former relationship,” she said.

Marketing consultant

Connie Fischer, the former state Commerce Department official, agreed.

“If it wasn’t a good project, we weren’t going to fund it,” Fischer said “If we didn’t believe it was going to have economic impact, we weren’t going to fund it.”

Fischer left the Commerce Department about the time Gov. Kathleen Sebelius took office in January 2003. Now Fischer works for Advanced Market Concepts, an agricultural consulting firm that has been hired by the Kansas Livestock Assn. to conduct marketing work on the compost project.

State law prohibits state employees who participated in making a contract between the state and a business from accepting a position with that business for two years after leaving the state payroll.

But Fischer said there was no conflict between her current position and her work to secure the contract for the livestock association when she was a state employee. She said Advanced Market was not getting a significant amount of money from the association, though she declined to say how much. She also said that she wasn’t the sole decision-maker in getting funds to the association.

Fischer said when the project was finished, Kansas would have advanced greatly in producing compost and marketing the product.

“In the end, state government will put this as a feather in one of their caps. This was one of the good ones, and we should be excited,” she said.