The cited article does not provide any proof that the EPA is using drones to look at feedlots in Nebraska.
Quite the contrary, it is a good example of sensationalized and misleading news reporting. If you actually watch/listen to the article, you find it full of stock footage of large military style drones, much of it showing take offs from desert airfields in the mountainous west (not Miami nor Nebraska).
Yet at time 0:57 in the footage, the drone that the Miami police actually purchased is described as "20 pounds" -- basically a medium sized model airplane and entirely different from all the footage shown in the article.
I personally oppose the idea of Federal Agencies expanding police powers within US boarders. I"m not trying to debate whether or not the EPA should be cracking down on these feedlots.
My argument here is a practical one. Why would the EPA want to use drones? What would drones accomplish that a rented Cessna 182 with a camera port could not? They don"t need the aircraft to be aloft for long periods, they don"t need to do continuous surveillence, they don"t need to view the property from 9 miles away, and (except for the most radically opposed farmers) they don"t need to worry about hostile gunfire.
The US Government has for years used tethered balloons over the Gulf of Mexico to watch for low flying drug planes. There has been talk of drones for this, and similarly for using drones to patrol the US/Mexican border and the US/Canadian border. Here the rationale is clear -- you need to be up there a long time to monitor relatively fleeting events. So it makes sense to use drones, for purely practical reasons.
But it doesn"t make sense to use drones to monitor feedlots. The letter of complaint sent by Congress to the EPA never mentions drones. The Omaha newspaper article never mentions drones. (Both talk about "aerial surveillence", but neither mentions drones.)
I disagree with Mr Dean that he has cited a reliable article connecting the EPA, drones, and Nebraska/Iowa feedlots.
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