Updated - As Adams County in central Wisconsin sees plummeting property values, the County implements a TIF grant for the proposed Keiser golf resort. (Mal Contends)
The idea is promoting tourism and recreation will offset the economic drag caused by the rapid decline of the paper mill industry in central Wisconsin.
It's a pay-to-play move, but TIF grants do make sense. And so does promoting tourism and recreation. (Madden, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune)
An ever-present problem is pollution caused by manure runoff.
How about Wood County?
Wood County won't make a move without the okay of Big Ag's James Wysocki whose potato operations already befoul area lakes. Wysocki is a big funder of Scott Walker.
Now, Wysocki proposes a massive Concentrated Agricultural Feeding Operation (CAFO) in central Wisconsin that is driving down property valuations and freezing economic activity.
Even Wisconsin largest daily newspaper with a rightist bent comes out editorially against runoff, pointing out the fact that Scott Walker's budget actually increases runoff, (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).
"Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation’s (CAFOs) [factory farms] burden our society with an array of negative externalities [costs borne by adjacent communities]. The environmental damages that CAFO’s have caused are nearly impossible to put into a numerical figure that the average individual would be able to grasp and comprehend. The primary detrimental effects that CAFOs produce consist of water pollution, air pollution, animal welfare concerns and the mismanagement of waste," notes Joshua Yelle, native of central Wisconsin, now working in graduate school.
Most of the Wood County Board of Supervisors are 100 percent behind Wysocki and 100 percent against the community opposition to the proposed Wysocki CAFO and current aerial spraying of liquid cow manure, a highly destructive practice. (Hanson, NASA/Harvard University)
The community needs to be discouraged from intruding in public policy. It's so bad that the Wood County Board actively discourages citizen attendance at public meetings. (Mal Contends) (Madden, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune)
Even as Wysocki operations suck up area aquifers with numerous high-capacity water wells, and area lakes and streams are polluted, Wysocki wants to make the situation worse against widespread community opposition.
Wysocki doesn't care much about community sentiment though, and unfortunately for those living in Wood County neither does the Wood County Board of Supervisors.
This is a crazy public policy commitment: A choice between a massive factory farm-CAFO v. Tourism and recreation is no choice at all.
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