Clean Water in Wisconsin Comes in Focus

Clean water activists in Saratoga, Wisconsin fight for
water and oppose the siting of a proposed factory farm.
Clean water activists statewide fear a future where
clean and safe lakes will become a memory.

Madison, Wisconsin — Wisconsin lakes are not bottomless sewers that take in millions of gallons of liquid cow manure and like magic create speaking-clean water safe for swimming, fishing and boating.

Rather, factory farms and other rapacious agricultural practices destroy and poison the water in the land of 15,000 lakes with devastating health, economic, and quality-of-life consequences.

These outcomes are acceptable costs to Big Ag, Gov. Scott Walker (R) and Wisconsin Republicans who run state government for polluting operations.

Congrats are in order for Steven Verburg of the Wisconsin State Journal for his critical reporting on the health of the Yahara lakes in Dane County in an important series this week. See also the related site, the Yahara lakes project.
---
This weekend also comes news from 100 miles north of Madison that three factory farm owners — Wysocki Produce Farms, B and D Farms and Okray Farms — "say they have joined together to help supply clean, safe water to residents with high nitrate levels in their wells" in the town of Armenia in Juneau County in central Wisconsin, reports Karen Madden in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune.

Wysocki Produce Farms, B and D Farms and Okray Farms are industry suppliers of pathogen, nitrate and phosphorous-laden cow shit to area communities.

After poisoning the private water wells of objecting families, the Wysocki corporation is offering cartons of uncontaminated water in trade. This is widely considered not to be an equatable deal.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is investigating the water poisoning in the region.

Area residents are sounding a skeptical note as they work to stop operation of another proposed massive factory farm in the town of Saratoga in Wood County. The Golden Sands factory farm is owned by the Wysocki corporation.

"I'd feel much better about it had they, (factory farm owners), done it without the EPA and county health officers breathing down their necks. They're trying to get in front of a very ugly situation made public because of citizen pressure from Saratogans and Armenians. The Wysockis didn't do this out of the kindness of their hearts, and it wasn't done because a state Senator or Assemblyman stepped in. This is the result of well-directed citizen activism. Well done my friends!," writes Don Ystad in an email to clean water activists this weekend.

Ystad live in Adams County, some six miles south of the proposed Wysocki factory farm.

Ystad's reference to a "state Senator or Assemblyman" points to central Wisconsin legislators, State Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) and State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa), both of whom are politically owned by factory farm interests.

Krug faces presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party nominee for the 72nd assembly district, clean water activist David Gorski, in the general election this November.

These is caution optimism that Wisconsin has finally, after years of citizen action, come to the point where Republicans can be defeated in the gerrymandered legislative districts.

An activist rightwing Wisconsin Supreme Court bent the law to arrive
at a pre-determined decision green-lighting a proposed massive factory farm
in central Wisconsin. Corrupt justices hold a 4-3 majority at the
Wisconsin Supreme Court.