By TIM CARPENTER
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — A Phillips County jury awarded two landowners a total of $134,000 in actual damages after a prominent Kansas hog producer illegally installed pipe on their property to transfer a mixture of urine and manure from a confined-animal facility so it could be sprayed on fields from irrigation pivots.
The judge has not determined punitive damages against defendant Terry Nelson, who has operated a far-flung hog operation based in Phillips County and suffered a colossal barn fire four years ago that killed thousands of pigs.
The Nelson family also has been at the center of years of legal conflict involving the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Kansas Livestock Association and the Sierra Club regarding construction and operation of confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, in northcentral Kansas along the border with Nebraska.
Plaintiffs Laura Field as well as Rodney and Tonda Ross, who raise corn and soybeans on their farm, were awarded $65,000 each from Nelson for trespassing. That portion of the July 22 judgment was based on unauthorized placement of miles of underground pipe on the plaintiffs’ land.
In addition, the jury awarded plaintiffs $2,000 after concluding Nelson created a nuisance by allowing liquified waste sprayed on fields to drift onto neighboring property.