I thought it was back there. The smell of it.
It was Mersini Blanchard's first clue
Sasha like it come on.
I would take my dogs for a long
walk and I'd have smell in it.
I can't even tell you how bad it was.
Makes you sick and your stomach is so bad.
That smell was coming from a newly built
chicken farm just over a mile away from
her malakov home in Henderson County,
70 miles southeast of Dallas.
We had no idea that even built the 16
barns or even knew they were there until
we started smelling the odors, just
a terrible odor was an air
son, Frank Blanchard built his house
for his mom in 2013. She still pretty.
The family home sits on 1200
acres of land. Blanchard says
the value of the property plunged
75% when the chicken farm
and the smell moved in.
I was going to be stuck with
a piece of property here that
would basically be worthless.
Frustrated, the Blanchards and
their neighbors banded together
to file a nuisance lawsuit.
They asked that the operation be shut down.
A jury sided with the land owners
and a judge ordered it to close.
Now, almost two years later,
neighbors worry the smells could return.
Sanderson Farms,
which supplies chickens to the farm,
has appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.
So if you lose,
what do you think will happen?
We're
losing is not an option.
Because if I lose. This hell
area is going to be destroyed.
If the neighbors in Henderson
County were to lose.
It would absolutely
embolden Sanderson Farms.
I think what you'll see is a
domino effect of barns popping
up all over East Texas.
WFAA has found the Blanchards are among a
growing number of Texans who have filed
nuisance lawsuits against Sanderson Farms,
the nation's third largest poultry producer.
I am fighting for rural Texans that I
don't even know I'm fighting for everybody.
Sanderson Farms told us in an email that it
would not discuss any pending litigation,
but in court filings, the company said
if the farm operation can't reopen,
no rational investor will risk
investing substantial resources.
Knowing even a temporary problem can lead
to the permanent loss of the investment.
People have the right to use
their property, generate a profit
potentially from that property.
There's always been a catch though
that you can't use your property
in such a way that destroys your
neighbor's quality of life.
These images are graphic and
they were taken by a former
Sanderson Farms employee at chicken
farms throughout East Texas.
They are part of a lawsuit he filed
alleging bad working conditions.
The chicken farms are what's known as
concentrated animal feeding operations.
Sanderson Farms uses barns like these
all over Texas to grow chickens.
The chickens are owned by Sanderson Farms.
The barns, however,
are owned by contractors hired by
the company to grow the chickens.
Do you maybe want to go
outside and play in a minute?
Emily Martinez and her family
live just over a half a mile away
from the Malakov farm operation.
I think you can go super high.
We put everything into making
this what we wanted and then
the chicken farm moved in.
Anytime we smelt it, we just had
to pack up and go back inside.
Sometimes it would stay for hours.
You have a chicken for each and
every square foot in that barn.
Using the bathroom for 60 days
and it's not cleaned out correct?
And that's correct.
Can you understand, Sir,
how it could be devastating to find out
that a chicken farm is next door and it
prevents you from even going outside?
Can you understand that? That's.
Subjective, can you understand?
Do you have empathy for them at all?
We want to be good.
We want our producers to be good neighbors.
Good morning, Mr Frank this
is state win yes space.
This is a recording of a call between
the chicken farmer and Frank Blanchard.
Shortly before the neighbors
followed a lawsuit in 2017.
I don't set the chicken out against
the rules, so OK, so part of that,
but so part of the rules is is you can
stink up your neighbor's property.
I don't know about that
you don't know about that,
but that's what you're doing.
He did not care what he was doing to me,
my family, or our neighbors out here.
I had to talk to somebody else about this.
About you stinking up my property.
Yes, Sir, because I just followed the rules.
Have you ever had any
odor control training?
Yes, Sir. How
many classes have you attended once
one class? How long
was that class?
Three to four
hours. Testimony showed that Sanderson
Farms did turn in a required plan
to control the odors to regulators,
but didn't give the plan to
the operators for months.
So how in the world would Sanderson
implement an odor control plan
on property they don't own?
On chicken barns they don't
own with employees they don't
employ. Hello anybody here the contract
farmers did not respond to our phone
calls or letters and after repeated
odor complaints from neighbors,
state environmental investigators had
issued the Malakoff farm operation. 10 air
quality notices of violation.
The state investigator wrote he could
smell the odor inside a moving vehicle
with the air conditioning on
and the windows rolled up.
The case went to trial in October 2019,
a top ranking Sanderson Farms
official testified during the trial
that the farmers followed their
policies and no changes were planned.
However, at the end of three weeks
of testimony, the neighbors won.
Awarded the neighbors almost $6 million.
Ronald Repp was one
of those jurors. Come on,
everybody was happy until the stink.
So if the chicken farm gets shut
down forever, that'll make me
happy for them.
In the end, the neighbors all agreed they
didn't want the $6 million jury award.
Instead, they asked that the chicken
farm operation be shut down. And a judge
ordered it to close,
and that's what they wanted.
Was to be free of the smell.
To enjoy their properties again,
have their lives back.
That was far more important
and had far more value than
any check that Sanderson could
ever write. And Malakoff,
I'm Tanya Iser.