Mega Factory Farms Contribute $100,000-plus to Buy, Deplete and Pollute Wisconsin Water

Pollute-and-Deplete Attack on Water Backed by Full-spectrum Dominance of Political Culture

The United States Department of Homeland Security, (DHS), maintains a vigilant commitment to protecting our water and wastewater systems sector.

We take clean water and the safe elimination of sewage for granted, a mark of a first-world country.

As the DHS explains: "Safe drinking water is a prerequisite for protecting public health and all human activity. Properly treated wastewater is vital for preventing disease and protecting the environment. Thus, ensuring the supply of drinking water and wastewater treatment and service is essential to modern life and the Nation’s economy."

Not all see protecting water the same way as DHS.

The threats to safe drinking water are here, industrialized agriculture or Big Ag.

Big Ag is without conscience, and almost every politician has their hands out for its money and support, and don't look for DHS to do anything.

Industrial special interests have no qualms about poisoning private water wells, and surface and ground water aquifers. Lost your safe drinking water, your infant is hospitalized? Dead areas in Lake Michigan? What are you going do about it? Call the EPA, the DNR?

In rural regions in Wisconsin, and not just Wisconsin, industrial agricultural operations (CAFOs or Confined/Concentrated Animal/Agricultural Operations), are annually dumping 100s of millions of gallons of untreated animal feces mixed with water into the environment to often tragic consequences, and it's getting worse.

Wisconsin Republicans, and many Democrats such as State Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa, (D-Milwaukee), are happy to take the money and endorsements of Big Ag and sell out our clean and safe water. Zamarripa has a safe near-southside Milwaukee assembly seat, so why not take any a few hundred bucks from ag interests and get an endorsement?

By Don Ystad of Adams County in central Wisconsin

Concerned Citizens,

While I don't want to politicize this issue, the following article points out the power play of the large ag concerns in our central sands area.  We saw it firsthand with the WPVGA, (Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association), junk science groundwater blitz of our county boards recently.  And, from the article, further evidence that the rush is on: "Most of these contributions, about $106,350, were also made during the last six months of 2016 after the GOP-controlled legislature failed to pass bills last spring aimed at loosening rules for controversial high-capacity wells".

So, let's build on the momentum from our Feb 8th statewide Citizens Water Lobby Day in Madison.  We need to be our own lobby, large enough to challenge the efforts of the big ag grower lobby.  Five hundred of us showed up on the 8th.  Join us and reach out to your friends and tell them to go to the link for the new Citizens Water Coalition of Wisconsin.

Be a part of this citizens lobby. We may not be able to outspend them, but we do have the votes!

From Matt Rothschild, of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign

Several large farms with an interest in the issue of high-capacity wells have been throwing tens of thousands of dollars over to Republican legislative campaign committees.

Until the drastic rewrite of Wisconsin’s campaign finance law in November 2015, it was illegal for farms or other corporations to give money directly to legislative campaign committees. But the new law allows them to give up to $12,000 in a so-called segregated account, which isn’t supposed to go toward electing specific candidates.

During the second half of 2016, several large potato, vegetable and cranberry farms made corporate contributions totaling $56,250 to the four legislative campaign committees, which are used by legislative leaders to milk special interests for campaign cash to spend on elections. Those contributions included:

• $28,000 to the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee;
• $21,200 to the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate;
• $4,950 to the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee;
• $2,100 to the State Senate Democratic Committee.

Several of the owners and employees of these farms also gave personal donations to the legislative campaign committees, including $27,200 to the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate and $12,900 to the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee. The two Democratic legislative campaign committees received a combined total of $4,900 from large farm owners or employees. Last month, GOP Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, of Juneau, said he wants to approve a bill that would let high-capacity well owners repair or replace existing wells without a permit.

A review of the individual and business contributions to the legislative fundraising committees and legislators shows:

• Most of the contributions, about $133,750, went to Republican lawmakers, and $12,450 went to Democrats. Republicans control the Assembly and Senate by margins of 64-35 and 20-13, respectively;
• Most of these contributions, about $106,350, were also made during the last six months of 2016 after the GOP-controlled legislature failed to pass bills last spring aimed at loosening rules for controversial high-capacity wells;
• Nine officers and board members of the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association, their families, workers and businesses made about $78,500 in contributions to legislators and legislative fundraising committees;
• In addition to campaign contributions from its officers and board, the Vegetable Growers Association spent about $183,600 during the 2015-16 legislative session lobbying on high-capacity well, groundwater, wetlands, shore land zoning and other measures.

Topping the list of contributors to legislators and legislative fundraising committees were:

• The Wysocki family, of Bancroft, their businesses and employees, $38,800;
• Jeremie Pavelski, of Wisconsin Rapids, co-owner of Heartland Farms, $23,625;
• James Mortenson, of Wisconsin Rapids, and Mortenson Brothers Farms, $17,750.

The farms want looser rules governing controversial high-capacity wells and groundwater that already allow them to draw 100,000 gallons of water a day for irrigation. But as the number of large farms has grown, the huge volume of water drawn by high-capacity wells has become a major concern, as rivers and streams throughout Wisconsin shrink or dry up during the summer.

Wisconsin Towns Fight Big Ag, Republicans and a Few Dems

Town of Saratoga, Wisconsin fights proposed massive
factory farm or CAFO, (Saratoga, Wisconsin, established 1857)

Saratoga, Wisconsin — In decades past, tourism and recreational enterprise in partnership with multi-generational Wisconsin families and communities working for economic prosperity would draw many Republicans to the project team.

Restaurants, parks, hotels, inns, boutiques, vineyards, the limits are the imagination.

No more.

Wisconsin Republicans are now an anti-social racket, cultivating a parasitic relationship with the very communities whose interests the people pay them to represent in the capitol.

Republicans protect corporate Bi Ag polluters destroying rustic Wisconsin communities and regional economies.

Corporate officers and members live 10s of miles away from the damage they inflict by the 'modern' model of agriculture: The CAFO, or Confined Agricultural (Animal) Feeding Operation, (Yelle).

Corporate polluters pay Republicans to stave off anti-pollution laws and local-control ordinances, funding the Republican Party's work against public-interest electoral candidates campaigning on clean water policy.

School privatization and rightwing dark-money groups funded by billionaires pump in $100,000s in each campaign cycle for Republicans, helped by rural state legislative districts heavily gerrymandered and drawn by Republicans to fend off electoral threats.

Dim Dems

A few Democrats feed at the corporate polluters' trough such as Wisconsin State Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa (D-Milwaukee), (Dairy Business Association, (DBA)), though Zamarripa lives in one of the safest blue districts in the state, frequently running unopposed and winning the 2016 cycle with 98 percent of the vote in the near-south side of Milwaukee, (Milwaukee County 2016 Unofficial Results).

Consider as well former Wisconsin Gov. James Doyle, (2003-2011). As noted in these pages, Doyle carried out Big Ag's poisoned-water agenda leading to his seven-point reelection in 2006.

Doyle took in a hefty sum from Big Ag, even a contribution from the infamous polluter James Wysocki now wreaking havoc in central Wisconsin. Wysocki, also a financier of the National Potato Council has been upping his contributions to the National Republican Congressional Committee the last few years as the GOP may attempt to legislatively kill the federal EPA under president-elect Donald Trump, as Scott Walker has done to the Wisconsin DNR.

The Wisconsin Livestock Facility Siting law that CAFOs sometimes use in litigation is pure political payoff to the Dairy Business Association, (DBA), signed into law by Doyle, which became effective in May 2006.

Wonder what Doyle has to say about getting the monstrous CAFO-industry juggernaut moving and polluting Wisconsin waters. Heck of a job, Jim.

Central Wisconsin

In the town of Saratoga, Wisconsin, (population some 5,100), in southern Wood County an entire municipal government is mobilized for survival, as a proposed 5,300-cow factory or CAFO in Saratoga would "likely contaminate residents’ drinking wells and pump out more groundwater than some cities," (Anderson, USA Today Network-Wisconsin).

Big Ag is betting the 5,300 cows, or "units" in the lexicon of Big Ag, are more important than the some 5,100 human beings in Saratoga, and 1,000s more people just south in the town of Rome in Adams County.

Town mothers and fathers fear an economic moonscape in this central Wisconsin region bouncing back from the decline of the paper industry.

Clean water advocates who double as economic protectors of their communities look to what they have: A beautiful region, the central sands, and abundant waters brimming with a nucleus of natural attractions.

The world-class Sand Valley golf resort, under construction in northern Adams County, is sited just south of the proposed Wysocki CAFO and already has spawned spin-off development.

Yet for reasons surpassing understanding Sand Valley officers remain publicly silent about the threat the Wysocki CAFO present to its own investors.

If Sand Valley is launched as scheduled for 2017, and the Wysocki CAFO subsequently begins operations, golfers, if not the investors, will understand why a north wind laden with tons of liquid cow manure is not fit for golf enthusiasts relaxing at a resort. But Sand Valley remains silent on the proposed Wysocki CAFO.

The proposed CAFO in Saratoga is owned by self-conscious polluters at the Wysocki Family of Companies, that proposes to vector millions of gallons of untreated cow waste—with nitrates, phosphorous and pathogens—into the environment every year.

Consider the pathology of people like the Wysocki corporate officers who would also poison children, a predictable consequence of directing this scale of pollution into communities.

Last week at Saratoga townhall, some 300 residents met to hear updates on the legal and regulatory states of affairs in their four-year effort to stop the operation of the Wysocki's proposed Golden Sands CAFO, a comprehensive project to save the town from the nitrates, phosphorous and pathogens, as well as the surrounding region, including the Tri-Lakes community in northern Adams County, (Wisconsin DNR), .

As Jonathan Anderson, who is covering the Wysocki CAFO controversy, reports this week with respect to nitrates:

An excessive amount of nitrates in water can restrict the flow of oxygen in the bloodstream, which is especially dangerous to infants who can develop a condition called blue baby syndrome, [notes Saratoga attorney, environmental law expert [Paul Kent]

Monitoring wells at Wysocki’s 3,800-cow Central Sands Dairy, in the town of Armenia in [neighboring] Juneau County, showed nitrate levels substantially higher than state drinking water standards last year. Tests in one well showed nitrate levels at 77 parts per million in July 2015. The state considers nitrate levels above 10 parts per million unsafe, [Hribar, CDC]. 

What does Wysocki have to say? No comment.

The situation in central Wisconsin sees entire communities and scientists screaming warnings and the polluters' response is to give money to corrupt politicians, attorneys, and refuse comment to the press.

Said Dr. John Ikerd, professor emeritus in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri, who spoke on CAFOs in Wisconsin: "What can be more important to our right to life than our right to clean water, clean air, and safe food? More than fifty years of research and real world experience clearly link factory farms to major public health risks associated with polluted water, polluted air, and chemically and biologically contaminated food. It’s time to hold our government accountable for failing in its most fundamental responsibility: to secure our God-given, unalienable, constitutional rights to clean water, clean air, and safe food."

If you are a Big Ag polluter, what is more important than communities, families and children is money.

Saratoga Fights

Last week, a scientist and an environmental attorney spoke at the Saratoga townhall to set the record straight on where the region stands in the fight against the Wysocki CAFO.

Stay tuned this week for an extended update on the legal and regulatory states of affairs in this four-year effort to stop the operation of the proposed Wysocki Golden Sands CAFO.

The Future

If central Wisconsin does not halt the Wysocki poisoners, northeastern Wisconsin offers a cautionary tale for what in store, specifically Kewaunee and Door counties.

Ever been to Door County? It's stunning, some call it the Martha's Vineyard of the Midwest.

So who would possible want to pollute this region?

Big Ag and Republicans.

From an email sent after the election by clean water advocates from northeastern Wisconsin:
---

Always waiting for the other shoe to drop, we dreaded what could surpass the newly permitted "spray irrigation of manure"--shit aerosolized into our ambient air-- permit language stating that drift would be assessed as "droplets felt on skin" or as "seen on the windshield of your car." Both Door and Kewaunee County currently receive "F"'s for air quality from the American Lung Association.

Well, here's the latest push from the industrial agricultural agency--a biogas plant for Kewaunee County!  This is falsely being touted as the 'help' we need to clean up our water--many of the mega farms already have digesters, and it has not stemmed the amount of ongoing contamination occurring in Kewaunee!

Remember that digesters and a biogas plant would use literal tons of "industrial wastes" to 'stoke' their systems--resulting in EVEN MORE INDUSTRIAL WASTES INFILTRATING our community! Wastes from meatpacking, rendering, cheese factories, mink ranches, and other industries which are already taken here-- farms/landowners receive a "tipping fee" for the taking of these wastes--which are ultimately land spread.

This is about big business, $$$ profits for the few, and further externalization of the costs of this bloated, polluting entity--a continued poisoning of the land, air, water and people where we live-- and the resulting health threats, plunging property values, and considerable diminished quality of life in our already greatly compromised county.

WE DO NOT WANT A BIOGAS PLANT IN KEWAUNEE!!! We are NOT a sacrifice zone!ENOUGH!!!

Republican Pols' Words Should Point to Halting Wysocki CAFO in Central Sands

Sites of High Capacity Wells in Central Wisconsin
Map by D.J. Mechenich

Big Ag Propaganda Supported by Tax Payers

Last week Wisconsin agricultural groups were given $10,000s to pretend these heavy polluters are really conservationists concerned about the health of their respective regions' watersheds, (Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection). They are not so concerned, it's about public relations and probing how gullible the public is to Big Ag and Wisconsin Republicans.

Also last week Wisconsin Republican politicians met with Scott Walker to discuss the diminished groundwater protection by the Walker administration, (Ebert Yancey, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin).

The meeting agenda is not public. But judging from the Walker administration's devastation of Wisconsin's generations-long commitment to protecting water, it's fair to assume Scott Walker and Republican pols are not joining the John Muir Chapter of the Sierra Club, though the famed environmental group notes "70 percent of Wisconsinites depend on groundwater for drinking water."

The meeting reportedly included State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) and State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) both of whom will face strong Democratic Party challengers this November in their gerrymandered assembly districts, (Mal Contends).

Reports Karen Ebert Yancey:

Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, met with Gov. Scott Walker Wednesday and said that they had agreed that different DNR rules governing agriculture were needed for 'unique geological areas of the state.'

'He understands that one size fits all doesn't work,' Kitchen(s) said, referring to DNR regulations that govern statewide agricultural practices, particularly for manure spreading. ... Rep. Scott Krug, who represents the Central Sands areas of the state, also participated in the meeting with the Governor because of that region's unique geology, Kitchens said. Krug recently spoke in Kewaunee County and said that issues due to runoff polluting rivers and lakes was one of the biggest concerns of residents in the state.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Scott Walker understands and cares different DNR rules governing agriculture are needed for different geological areas of the state.

Consider the Central Sands of Wisconsin, (Central Sands Hydrology Working Group).

Adams and Wood county residents have been arguing the Central Sands region is uniquely unsuited for industrialized agriculture operations. The Central Sands already has over 3,000 high-capacity, industrial water pumps drawing over 100,000 gallons of water per day, (Prengaman, WisconsinWatch).

Residents point to research in support of their conclusion the geology and composition of the Central Sands make the region unsuitable for industrialized agriculture operations, (United States Department of Agriculture - Natural Resources Conservation Service) (Water Resources Committee, Town of Saratoga).

Will Walker and State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) now demand the Wysocki corporate interests withdraw its proposal for a massive factory farm in Saratoga in light of this unique geological area of the state?

No.

Wisconsin's industrialized agriculture and the politicians bought have to shape up their public image, an enterprise now underway nationally as well, (Eller, Des Moines Register).


Politicians Lie

Walker and the two politically endangered Big Ag frontmen, Kitchens and Krug, have been hostile to clean water advocates to the point of supporting the decimation of the Department of Natural Resources and facilitating the depletion of aquifers and surface waters by statute.

The meeting was about keeping Republicans in power and allowing polluters and poisoners to keep their operations going irrespective of citizen concerns over the depletion and pollution of aquifers and surface waters.

Last week Walker tried to shore up Joel Kitchens' non-existent environmental bona fides by appointing him to Wisconsin Coastal Management Council, (Kowols, Door County Daily News).

Walker, Krug and Kitchens will say or do anything to hang onto political power, and selling out their constituents' safe and clean drinking and recreational waters is high on the list.

Krug and Kitchens will disingenuously acclaim they are really champions of clean water, and Gannett Co. newspapers and other outlets will dutifully and uncritically pass on the news.

Scott Walker, GOP Reps Probe Public's Gullibility on Clean Water

Protect our water, say Wisconsin residents. No, says Big Ag
and its Republican protectors in Wisconsin.

Clean water is necessary for life, and is good business. Wisconsin Republican politicians won't listen.

Don Ystad, a retired business consultant living in Adams County Wisconsin, has penned 10,000s of words to Wisconsin policymakers and officials charged with protecting the water.

Ystad has met with success in forming alliances with local citizens across the political spectrum in central Wisconsin, but Scott Walker and the Republican Party remain in unified opposition to clean water advocates as 1,000s in central Wisconsin fight a proposed massive factory farm sited in the town of Saratoga in Wood County and the vile practice of dumping millions of tons of cow manure into the environment.

Wisconsin State Reps. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) and Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) represent districts in which aquifers and surface waters are being depleted and toxified by industrialized agriculture.

Both legislators are notorious yes men to Big Ag polluters in northeastern and central Wisconsin respectively. Both run political interference for industrialized agriculture operations as children are literally being sent to the emergency room after bathing or drinking water contaminated by the massive amount of cow manure and associated pathogens vectored into the environment.

"When Doug Jones and his wife, Sherryl,
bought their home in Spring Green
15 years ago, they had a vision of a place
where their family could gather,
enjoy the beauty of a restored prairie,
and where their grandchildren could
experience fresh air and a peaceful, rural life.
Their land included an 11-acre oxbow lake
and sloughs connected to the
Lower Wisconsin Riverway."
(Midwest Environmental Advocates)

Clean water advocates and other citizen groups—Kewaunee Cares, Saratoga Concerned and Citizens Concerned about Lake Superior CAFOs, for example—have worked for years with municipal, county and state policymakers only to find themselves blacklisted by the Department of Natural Resources and besmirched by Republican legislators such as we-don't-need-the-EPA Joel Kitchens and Krug, and some have become the victims of threats and vandalism in their very homes.

Now, water advocates, (aka Wisconsin families), are fed-up and frustrated as children are poisoned, well water continually contaminated and property valuations plummeting.

"We have played nice with our County Board of Supervisors long enough, it is time to start calling them out publicly on their lack of leadership and accountability to citizen concerns," notes Saratoga Concerned Friday night on their Facebook page.

In a letter to the Wisconsin Rapids City Times, Criste Greening of Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors rips the Wood County Board (central Wisconsin) pointing to outright hostility from Scott Walker ally, Wood County Board Supervisor and Chairman Lance Pliml and other Board members politically allied with Big Ag in Wisconsin.

Citizen groups across the state are aligning, a phenomenon assisted by social media such as Facebook. Look for a change in tone this election cycle.

Following a report from northeastern Wisconsin that two schools in embattered Kewaunee County received letters warning of well contamination last week, (Karen Ebert Yancey, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin), Scott Walker, Kitchens and Krug were featured in a piece yesterday morning reporting:

In response to continued groundwater problems in Kewaunee County, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) expects to issue new administrative regulations for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and other farmers in karst areas, state Rep. Joel Kitchens said Thursday.

Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, met with Gov. Scott Walker Wednesday and said that they had agreed that different DNR rules governing agriculture were needed for 'unique geological areas of the state.'

'He understands that one size fits all doesn't work,' Kitchen said, referring to DNR regulations that govern statewide agricultural practices, particularly for manure spreading, (Karen Ebert Yancey, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

No activist reached expects anything to come from the latest lip service from Scott Walker and Republican representatives who have decimated the DNR, and who use the hyper-partisan Republican attorney general to further the aims of polluters, money donors and anybody willing to pay to play.

Will Republicans stop the proposed Wysocki factory farm? Will Republicans restore scientists and the autonomy of the DNR? Will Republicans restore the autonomy of administrative law judges?

One thing is certain: 'No' to all questions.

Said one clean water advocate from Door County, (aka 'Wisconsin's Martha Vineyard'): "I won't hold my breath on anything actually happening, but the heat is apparently on."

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel fetes Big Ag's candidate for state
senate, Patrick Testin, on Feb. 14, 2016, (Twitter)

Polluters' Toady for State Senate in Central Wisconsin, Patrick Testin

"We need to protect our natural resources
without limiting their use in Central
Wisconsin's agricultural economy," writes
Big Ag toady, Patrick Testin, in typical
polluters and poisoners' twaddle.
.

Patrick Testin has a mandate for his campaign for Wisconsin's state senate, district 24.

Do whatever the polluters, in particular the Wysocki corporate interests, want. Testin is well-paid for his efforts.

One problem facing Testin is he has no idea what the issues are as central Wisconsin's natural resources—aquifers, streams, lakes, (and to be candid property valuations)—are under assault by polluting factory farms.

Testin's incoherence on these critical issues is on display.

Have a look above-right at Testin's recent thoughts on the proposed massive factory farm by the Wysocki polluters in Saratoga, Wood County Wisconsin.

"We need to protect our natural resources without limiting their use in Central Wisconsin's agricultural economy," opines Testin.

What?

This is apparently Testin-talk for central Wisconsin should be a repository for millions of tons of liquid cow manure.
---
Golf resort designer Mike Keiser wants to build an environmentally friendly golf resort, Sand Valley Resort, sited along the bottom of the ancient Glacial Lake Wisconsin, a can't-miss recreational and tourism project.

Unfortunately for Keiser and Adams and Wood counties, the resort, now under construction, is adjacent to, and just south of a massive proposed Wysocki factory farm, halted for now.

If residents can't stop this polluting operation, it won't be just the residents of Wood, Adams and surrounding counties being poisoned, an enterprise protected by Testin and Wisconsin Republicans including Wisconsin's Republican attorney general and governor.

A stiff north wind carrying the stench of millions of tons of liquid cow manure would quickly educate golf enthusiasts on some the unsavory aspects of a Wysocki factory farm. If they breathe deeply, golfers will understand with a precision central Wisconsin residents are working to avoid.

Drink the area's well water, and it is advisable golfers are aware of the area's hospitals as well as tourist destinations.

As for Patrick Testin, he's looking for more money for his campaign and pushing hard for a tax-payer-funded gig in the Wisconsin State Senate.

China Says 80% of Tested Wells Had Water Too Polluted to Drink

As Scott Walker and state Republicans abandon safeguarding Wisconsin's waters for polluters, a piece in the New York Times shows where we are heading: "Grim pollution in underground water."

Report Chris Buckley and Vanessa Piaoapril:
 

BEIJING — Although the Chinese have become used to hazy skies as a measure of environmental blight, statistics that received wide attention on Monday pointed to grim pollution below citizens’ feet, in underground water that is heavily used by farms, factories and households.

More than 80 percent of 2,103 wells for underground water tested across heavily populated plains of China were so badly contaminated by industrial and agricultural runoff that their water was unfit for drinking and home use, according to the numbers cited in a recent survey by the Ministry of Water Resources.

“From my point of view, this shows how water is the biggest environmental issue in China,” said Dabo Guan, a professor at the University of East Anglia in Britain who has been studying water pollution and scarcity in China.

“People in the cities, they see air pollution every day, so it creates huge pressure from the public. But in the cities, people don’t see how bad the water pollution is,” Professor Guan said. “They don’t have the same sense.”

The latest statistics are far from the first about the damage done to China’s underground water reservoirs and basins by runoff from farming and industry ...

This is where Wisconsin is heading unless we stop the Republicans.

Big Ag Targets Wisconsin State Senator Julie Lassa

Manure and pathogens vectored into Wisconsin's environment by Big Ag to
tragic consequences, as state Republicans take the polluters' side

As she has done countless times, State Senator Julie Lassa (D-Stevens Point), listened to her constituents' concerns last week about the depletion and poisoning of water by the vile industrialized agriculture, (WSAW-TV), (Anderson, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin).

As Scott Walker plays the outside, and State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) plays the inside, Wisconsin Republicans protect the polluters, Big Ag.

Krug's role is particularly odious as his mendacity apparently knows no bounds, and his own constituents' health, and economic well-being are suffering grievously.

Now, Big Ag is targeting Sen. Lassa.

Lassa grew up on a small dairy farm in Portage County where "her parents taught her the important of hard work, the value of a dollar, and that honesty and integrity are everything," as she notes in her biography.

Here's a report from Wood County:

By Rhonda Cain-Carrell

While Senator Lassa participated in a Groundwater Listening Session in Saratoga, the Wysocki's were busy at the Stevens Point Country Club plotting her demise as our Senator. In one night, HOSTING and contributing $1,000 per plate as PLATINUM DONORS to the man they are running against one of very few legislators brave enough to stick their neck out for Wisconsin's water.

Please support Senator Lassa in the upcoming election.

Wysockis are working to get Patrick Testin in Lassa's seat.

$17,000 in donations from their family and very close business contacts JUST at last night's event:

Bob & Mary Berard ($2,000) - Paramount Farms recently purchased by Wysocki Companies, massive polluter
Paul & Dawn Roberts ($2,000) - Roberts Irrigation (reportedly the company that would sell irrigation systems for proposed CAFO/cropland in Saratoga)
Jeff & Kathy Sommers ($2,000) - Runs Central Sands Dairy, massive polluter
Nick & Diane (Wysocki) Somers ($2,000)
Kirk & Jackie (Wysocki) Wille ($2,000)
Bill & Marla Wysocki ($2,000)
Francis & Harriet Wysocki ($2,000)
Jim & Sharon Wysocki ($2,000)
Louis Wysocki ($1,000)

SO, the long and short of this is: NO TO TESTIN! He is sponsored by the Wysocki CAFO Family. A vote for Testin is a vote against Saratoga (Wood County), Rome (Adams County) and all of Wisconsin's water.

Wisconsin Legislators Hear Residents' Concerns over Poisoners

"I don't think it's too much to ask of them, (industrialized agriculture), not to poison our water or dry up our wells," Nekoosa, Wisconsin resident Rick Potter told Wisconsin legislators yesterday.

It may very well be too much to ask of Big Ag and the psychology of the poisoner.

Rebecca Cardenas of WSAU-TV (Wausau, Wisconsin) has the story.

Patt Pisellini of central Wisconsin writes:

"Last night was an exercise in futility. The legislators were there to hear our concerns, and to act on them; but all we got out of the evening was that our voices are being heard - and ignored, but a Republican-led legislature that votes along party lines, and spouts the same tired rhetoric fed to them by the DBA and the veg growers lobbyists. It infuriates me that we have to keep going to Madison to grovel before legislators, begging for something that should be our natural right - the right to clean safe water."

Amen. 

Wisconsin Sends SOS Re Safe Water

Mary Dougherty of Bayfield, Wisconsin works with a group,
Citizens Concerned about Lake Superior CAFOs,
fighting the siting of a massive industrialized factory farm
in far-northern Wisconsin.

Clean water activists in Wisconsin continue asking the EPA for help as they face a hostile Republican state government helping polluters pollute.

Drinking water in the country's 160,000 public drinking water systems to the private water wells serving rural regions are under assault.

Wisconsin citizens are working to protect Wisconsin's abundant fresh waters, (U.S. DHS, Mal Contends, Orlando, In These Times, Water Watch Wisconsin, Kewaunee Cares, Tri-Lakes Management District, Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors, Citizens Concerned about Lake Superior CAFOs, Farms Not Factories).

The many other citizen groups are too numerous to list.

Appeals to the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources fall on deaf ears.

Last year the DNR's "eliminated ... the agency's crucial water division," a fact known but not acknowledged at a March 31 event in northeastern Wisconsin attended by two Republican state representatives pretending to a concern about clean water for their political survival—State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) and State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay).

"Krug and Kitchens refused to acknowledge that there is no will at the DNR to do anything to protect clean water now that Scott Walker has eviscerated the scientific staff and refused to allow the DNR to do its job. The general consensus at the (March 31) Friends of Crescent Beach event was that Krug and Kitchens have no regard for surface water or aquifers just like the rest of Wisconsin Republicans and were just putting on a PR show," said an event attendee living in Door County.

Facing a hostile DNR, clean water activists representing citizens in Kewaunee County in northeastern Wisconsin—where some one-third of residents have private water wells unsuitable to use as drinking water, tests revealed—have made several appeals to the EPA:

"After a year of talks, Kewaunee County residents are still waiting for local solutions to this continued drinking water crisis," said Lynn Utesch, member of Kewaunee CARES and EPA petitioner. "We need the EPA to know that local residents are still facing unreasonable delays in drinking water contamination test results. The DNR or EPA did not provide safe drinking water in the fall of 2014, however citizen efforts and donations supported a clean drinking water kiosk for residents with contaminated wells. Now that the kiosk has been vandalized and shut down, residents are again out of options."

A clean water kiosk is a place where residents can obtain jugs of clean water, (Ebert Yancey, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin).

Where is the EPA?

Laura Orlando at In These Times magazine has a piece out asking the same question:

Where is the EPA in all of this? Eviscerated. It started when Reagan took office in 1981 and appointed Anne Gorsuch, a Colorado state representative who vocally opposed federal regulation of energy and the environment, as administrator. She cut the budget by 22 percent, hired people representing industry while firing long-time EPA staff, relaxed existing regulations and resisted new ones. She was cited for contempt of Congress in her involvement in the misuse of over a billion dollars in Superfund money. Her deputy, Rita Lavelle, went to jail over the scandal. The agency has been under assault by industry-friendly Democrats and Republicans ever since.

Current drinking water regulation has little to do with the realities of what is actually in our drinking water. Like all chemical regulation in the United States, regulatory responses happen—if at all—decades after health threats are documented. Regulators turn a blind eye to problems that can only be remedied through radical changes in how we do things (for example, where we source our drinking water or how we grow our food). As a result, drinking water regulations are inadequate, and those on the books are not being competently monitored or properly enforced. 

Knowing Republican candidates for the presidency are actually calling for the elimination of the EPA: To Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, Wisconsin's clean water citizen activists are sending a SOS from their homes, Save Our Water.

Wisconsin Admin. Blacklists Clean Water Activists; Minnesota Gov. Says 'Clean Water' Ethic Needed at Summit

Good for Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) addressing clean water crises at his Minnesota Water Summit.

Right across the Mississippi, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is aggressively pursuing the interests of the polluters, and incredibly blacklisting Wisconsin clean water activists.

On the very weekend of the Minnesota summit, it was reported the Scott Walker administration maintained a blacklist of Wisconsin citizens about whom the Department of Natural Resources agency staff was ordered to not to respond with any communications, and to ignore all communications from these 16 Wisconsin citizens.

Report Jason Stein and Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The state Department of Natural Resources blacklisted a group of 16 citizens and activists with complaints about how the agency managed wildlife and administered clean water and other rules.

Being put on the 'do not respond' list was supposed to mean that going forward agency staff would not respond to the complainants except for those responses required by the state's open records law.

Blacklisting citizens now.

The news of the Walker administration's blacklisting of citizens follows by some two weeks Scott Walker's signing Republican-passed legislation "overhauling the state's century-old system of merit hiring and firing," which will incorporate a system where politically vetted state workers will have access to confidential citizen information maintained by the state bureaucracy, (Stein and Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Easy to contemplate a blacklist of citizens—viewed with suspicion and hostility—veering into an enemies list as state workers become political instruments of the Walker adminstration.

Criticism of the black list is already growing across the state, especially among clean water advocates.

Writes Criste Greening of the clean water citizens' group, Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors, in a widely circulated email this weekend:

Friends and concerned Citizens,

Once again, politics at its best when it comes to our current administration in Madison. Lynn and Nancy Utesch [of Kewaunee CARES (Facebook)] are great friends of mine and vocal advocates for the land and waters of the state that are becoming increasingly polluted by industrial agriculture. Please read the forwarded correspondences below and remember these tidbits of information when election time is upon us.

The Utesch family are family farmers in Kewaunee County, where 1/3 of private drinking water wells have been made unusable because of pollution attributed to manure runoff from the 16 dairy CAFOs in Kewaunee County. They, like 15 others, have been blacklisted by the DNR for requesting internal information pointing out the DNR's lack of enforcement.  Does anyone think this is a level playing field for citizens of Wisconsin?  With DNR enforcement down by half over the past few years, citizens are compelled to protect their water, and barring them from requesting information, or delaying it, contradicts the open records laws.

Agency people and politicians copied here, please explain how this is justifiable. Citizens blind copied here, please remember this when you vote.

Back in Minnesota, reports J. Patrick Coolican in the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Gov. Mark Dayton sought to unify Minnesotans around solving the state’s emerging water challenges at a St. Paul summit Saturday that brought together hundreds of activists, farmers, lobbyists, legislators and regulators.

But even as those present spoke of hope and resolve, the costs and conflicts surrounding water issues were immediately evident, as a group of demonstrators interrupted Dayton’s opening remarks to protest the construction of oil pipelines they said would threaten water quality and cultural touchstones like wild rice farming in tribal lands.

After Dayton promised to meet with the protesters, they left the stage, and he continued, not by proposing laws or regulations, but by sounding more like a pastor, [preacher], of water.

'What we really need is to establish an ethic of clean water practices,' he said. 'I urge you, and I ask you, to spend today establishing our ethic: that clean water practices are every Minnesotan’s responsibility. That anything less is unacceptable. And that it’s achievable if all of us do our part.'

Can anyone imagine Scott Walker understanding much less preaching the ethics of fresh, clean water?

One has to ask is Scott Walker so deluded, so ignorant, this man-child is not aware clean water is the lifeblood of Earth?

The Scott Walker administration's BlackList includes the following Wisconsin citizens:

Greg Graunke
Mark Tillotson
Roger Kerr
Patricia Randolph
Paul Wennesheimer
John Weisbrod
Dennis Hoeser
Lyle Zimmerman
Armond Alsteen
Lynn and Nancy Utesch
Tom School
The Sprecher family: Terry, Dawn, and Milton
John Rasmuessen
Tom Miller
Owen Buske
Karen Gething

Hillary the Chickenhawk and Henry Kissinger

In Milwaukee last night Bernie Sanders called out Hillary Clinton's ludicrous admiration for (and mentoring from) war criminal, Henry Kissinger, (Informed Comment), as Clinton sent her message to the war-mongering neocons: I'm with you.

Sanders would have none of it.

"I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. ... So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger."

Henry Kissinger? Are you kidding?

Three Questions for Sanders-Clinton Debate in Milwaukee

• Is this really the election when SuperDelegates—one Super equals 9,000-plus voters in delegate math out of New Hampshire—should determine the Democratic Party nominee for the presidency?
• Why have primary elections if Establishment Party insiders are calling the game?
• Ought polluting fresh water—literally our lifeblood—be considered a crime against humanity, and will you pursue policies reflecting this ethic?

Lobbyists Fret Clinton Loss

Lobbyists and consultants paid good money for Hillary Clinton, and she was slaughtered last night; they are not happy.

Lee Fang at The Intercept has the story.

Sanders and Clinton, Save Our Water

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debate in Milwaukee on Feb. 11.

The candidates should be asked: Will you as president commit to massive, new funding for the EPA, aggressive federal enforcement of the Clean Water Act and declare a war: A war to protect our water?

Scott Walker and Idiots Have Another Great Idea for Wisconsin's Water

The predictable consequences of Scott Walker and the Republican scheme to sell off municipal water systems to an out-of-state, for-profit corporation is a health and environmental catastrophe.

Combine this imbecilic idea with the complete abdication of the state protecting our life-blood, fresh and safe water, and it should be clear Scott Walker is selling off the future of Wisconsin.

Charles P. Pierce has the details at Esquire.

Does anyone contend describing Scott Walker and his band of idiots as sociopaths, plotting to toxify Wisconsin citizens, is a reach?

When Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders debate in Milwaukee on Feb. 11, the candidates should be asked: As the "out of state money and the rising plutocracy chose Wisconsin as their lab rat for the new gilded age (Pierce)," will you as president commit to massive new funding for the EPA, aggressive enforcement of the Clean Water Act and declare a war: A war to protect our water?

Wisconsin Lead Pipes Threaten Water, GOP Pushes Anti-clean Water Laws

Silke Schmidt and Dee J. Hall report from the Center for Investigative Journalism shows Wisconsin is poised to become home to "abundant" Flint, Michigans as Wisconsin's Republican governor is actively pursuing a bizarre, anti-clean water approach to water protection.

The public interest law firm, Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA), has filed a "complaint in Dane County Circuit Court against the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for violating state open records laws by unreasonably delaying DNR responses to MEA open records requests."

Scott Walker is pursuing polices to literally toxify Wisconsin waters, and Walker is shutting down public scrutiny to his administration's complicity with the polluters.

Meanwhile, Walker and Republicans are selling out the peoples' water to corporate interests, (Viste, Door County Pulse).

In Sturgeon Bay in northeastern Wisconsin, citizens are fighting more sell-off of Wisconsin waters to private and polluting developers, (Alyssa Bloechl and Warren Bluhm, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin).

Scott Walker Is as Bad as Michigan Gov in Abandoning Water Protection

"There are approximately 160,000 public
drinking water systems and more than
16,000 publicly owned wastewater treatment
systems in the United States, (DHS)." In
Michigan and Wisconsin, clean water
is under siege by Republican governors
as desperate citizens look to the federal
government for relief and protection.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder (R-Michigan) is getting huge amount of lurid publicity for ignoring (indeed causing) the water crises in Flint, Michigan in which toxic lead was effectively vectored into the children and families of Flint, (Lederman, In These Times).

The coverage is spot-on, as Snyder now pushes back against the EPA efforts to mitigate a disaster.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker has ignored (indeed caused) the water problem in Kewaunee, Juneau, Adams, Wood counties, inflicting the same polluter-friendly, anti-family health agenda he has pursued since he was elected.

But the national U.S. media is giving Walker a pass though Walker and his policies vacating his responsibility ensuring clean and safe water has already resulted in tragedy, (Mal Contends), including the poisoning of children, as Walker has circumvented the law to carry the toxic water of special interests.

We are in crisis mode in Wisconsin and Michigan as the level of health and environmental toxins vectored into Wisconsin's waters often exceeds safe levels, yet Scott Walker moves boldly for less protection against the polluters, and the abandonment of our state Constitution's Public Trust Doctrine.

This comes as the Walker adminstration changes the language in the DNR and Legislative Reference Bureau's (LRB) public explanations of the state's water protection roles and responsibilities.

The London Guardian notes: Flint water crisis: governor's brand of corporate politics set stage for disaster. Snyder and Walker's anti-water policies and "imperial manner" are clear and present dangers to America's lifeblood, water.

Notes the Guardian's Joanna Walters: Both Snyder and Walker's virtually handing over state governance to the "American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) ... supported by the like-minded, Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and backed by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers," have resulted in environmental disaster. The Wisconsin-based Bradley Foundation, big tobacco companies like Altria/Phillip Morris and the State Policy Network have inflicted the same crimes against families through politicians, and policymakers are legally immune, (Fischer, PRWatch).

Appeals to the EPA are a last resort, and Wisconsin families remain alarmed calling for a Sanders or Clinton adminstration to vow to protect families, and reel in the polluters' anti-social industries, (Walton, Circle of Blue), (Ikerd, Ethics, Not Economics, Key to Climate Change Fight).

Water is a national security issue, consider the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security: "Water and Wastewater Systems Sector-Specific Plan (PDF, 88 pages – 1.39 MB) details how the National Infrastructure Protection Plan risk management framework is implemented within the context of the unique characteristics and risk landscape of the [Water] sector. ... The Environmental Protection Agency is designated as the Sector-Specific Agency for the Water and Wastewater Systems Sector."

As with natural disaster planning and emergency preparedness, Scott Walker is asleep at the switch.

Concludes the Guardian's Walters:

A Snyder candidacy could not have survived the Flint water catastrophe, which developed under his brand of corporate-culture politics while, at best, he stood by.

Whether Snyder will survive as governor remains to be seen.

Walker's political fate appears more certain, as he remains mired in the 30s-level approval rating.

More significantly, citizen groups have sprouted around the state, as a desperate Walker moves to destroy local control of municipal and county government and renew furtive efforts to destroy the Wisconsin Idea, transparency in government and independent government watchdog agencies.
---
Bizarrely, the Walker adminstration has gone so far as to include a copyright warning included in the LRB's public webpage on the Constitution Article IX, Section 1: Public trust doctrine page stating:

WARNING CONCERNING COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS: The copyright law of the United States (title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specific conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use" that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law.

Never noticed this before in a public document.

The LRB's website includes a link to Robin Kite's—a former LRB staff atty—disquisition on the Public Access Doctrine.

Water Crisis Isn't Looming, It's Here

Note: Our friends in Wood and Adams counties are reminding us what's at stake, (Anderson, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune): Jan 16; 1 p.m. Saturday with the Rome Town Board to discuss the possible implications of the proposed Golden Sands industrial farm. Rome, located in Adams County, is adjacent to Saratoga.
---
Thanks to our friend Charles P. Pierce at Esquire.

Big Ag is, in an act of lunacy unhinged even for these scoiopaths, working with Republicans at the state and national level to eviscerate the Clean Water Act.

Writes Pierce:

The commodification of something as fundamental to human survival as water already has begun. It's tied into climate change. It is the battle of the next 100 years and, unlike the oil wars, you can always decide not to drive a car or use gasoline. You can't decide not to drink any water.

Notes Pierce in his lede:

It has long been the opinion here at the shebeen that we are dooming ourselves to nearly endless political, cultural, and perhaps literal fistfights over water over the next several decades. We're seeing a particularly grotesque example of this underway in Flint, Michigan, at the moment. (Most recently, Governor Rick 'Accessory Before The Fact' Snyder has called out the National Guard to help hand out bottled water and other supplies. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the need for possible 'pacification' duties if the residents of Flint finally get completely fed up with being poisoned.) But there are things happening in the Congress as well. 

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker has already handed over clean water to the polluters. Time for Wisconsin's sleepy rural municipalities to wake up, and protect their water ... by any means necessary.

Water Not Everywhere, Too Toxic to Drink—Big Ag Is Perpetrator

Wisconsin citizens fight back against politicians cowed by Big Ag in America's Dairyland as the authoritarians appear desperate

"Please contact all of your neighbors, friends and relatives who own property in our town and ask them to help get the word out about the meeting on January 16th at the Rome (Adams County, Wisconsin) town hall. We need to stand together as a community to understand the issue and decide what we can do individually to protect our own interests and our community [against the proposed Golden Sands Dairy CAFO in the town of Saratoga next door in Wood County]. And please, in addition to contacting others, attend this meeting yourselves."

So reads a typical message by citizens against industrialized agriculture, the CAFO (Concentrated (Confined Agricultural Feeding Operations), sited or proposed across Wisconsin.

There's a new gang of perpetrators in town. They're called Big Agriculture and citizens are fighting back as the lifeblood of humanity and the biosphere—fresh, safe water—faces a grave threat.

Corporate polluters are not just DuPont, Dow Chemical Co., Monsanto Co., (putting aside energy extraction sectors for this discussion), they're the worst offenders in polluting water, even as too many in the state of Iowa and Wisconsin look to become a corporate subsidiary, ((Eller and Doering, Des Monies Register).

When industrialized conglomerates operate, most Americans realize the corporations want—exist for—profits and market share.

Toxic waste produced ... , well, it's not like corporate officers live and work in the factories, the camps of industrialized agriculture and liquid manure lagoons.

Health and environmental poisons, aka toxic wastes, emitting from industrialized agriculture and vectored into American society are acceptable costs of doing business, acceptable to the corporation (Masar, Socially Responsible Agricultural Project) (Hansen, NASA; Fabien, Jacob, Harvard University).

Poisoning our water though is a crime too far.

Sustainable Agriculture

Among the last major sectors of our economy to become industrialized is agriculture, (Yelle, Western Illinois University).

Abolitionists and assorted progressives had destroyed slavery, (and later drove up migrant labor (loved by Big Ag) costs (troublemakers)), and for a considerable historical period, agriculture was a pillar of rural America and progressive politics.

Small farmers were often politically progressive, working intimately with land grant public universities in the American heartland, (University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Idea for example), roughly from the later 19th through the late 20th century.

Politically, in Wisconsin for example, a force of state history in the early 20th century was the Sewer Socialists of Milwaukee and myriad progressives making common cause with rural, small farmers.

Likewise the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and Minnesota Democratic Party "provided the organic connection between labor and the party," as noted by Graeme Anfinson, (Anfinson, CounterPunch; Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) .

Industrialized Agriculture 

The rise of industrialized agriculture (Big Agriculture) has greatly assisted in weakening this political farm-labor coalition, and the results have been catastrophic: Politically, economically, environmentally, medically, and morally.

No cause for despair, citizens are fighting back and to use Wisconsin as an anthology the new business model of Big Ag embodied in the CAFO, (Concentrated (Confined Agricultural Feeding Operations) is generating popular opposition and citizen activism increasing seemingly by the week.

To be precise, the CAFO is poisoning Wisconsin's water, air and land, (chemically and biologically), is driving down small home property valuations, as Gov. Scott Walker (Sociopathic Party-Wisc) has usurped the historical and mythical ethos of the vanishing small farmer and existing hyper-segregation, creating a veritable axis Party of racism and corporatism.

Any nihilist is welcome to join the "Koch Industries Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin," as Charles P. Pierce nails it in his Esquire dispatches.

Wisconsin Citizens and the Counterattack

As Prof. John Ikerd, an ally of citizens protecting water, writes:

[Aldo] Leopold’s Land Ethic mostly simply stated is: 'A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.' I propose the following maxim for an ethic of sustainability: A thing is right when it tends to enhance the quality and integrity of all life on earth by means that honor the unique responsibilities and rewards of humans as members and caretakers of the earth’s integral community. A thing is wrong when it tends otherwise." I believe it is important that we begin to guide the sustainability movements by questioning what is right and wrong. (Partridge, The Philosophical Foundations of Aldo Leopold’s 'Land Ethic' cited in The Online Gadfly)

It's a presidential election year, folks, stay tuned, poisoning the peoples' lifeblood just does not play well politically.

Just a matter of time before a people "stand together as a community to understand the issue and decide what we can do individually to protect our own interests," as a central Wisconsin citizen writes.

Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, time to call for vastly expanding the EPA, as people living in states under Republican rule suffer, a project national Republicans wish to expand.

Water wars are coming

Republicans and Big Ag want to dismantle the
EPA protecting the 160,000 public drinking
water systems, and 100,000s of private wells in the
rural U.S. Costs of drinking water pollution
is borne by consumers, and subsidized by
the taxpayers.

 

"[D]emand is driven by [industrialized] agriculture, which accounts for more than 90 percent of freshwater use each year ... placing unsustainable pressure on water supplies," writes Vikram Mansharamani at the PBS Newshour, citing the September 2015 U.S. National Intelligence Strategy.

This should scare the hell out of everyone concerned for future generations and presently residing anywhere near an industrialized factory farm or CAFOs.

Factory farms are subsidized and pollute the water, air and land, demanding of the politicians they own that surrounding communities pay for the health and environmental destruction.

Recent press series

• Failure at the Faucet - Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting   
• Ryan Schuessler' Something’s in the water in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin
• Big Ag Is Poisoning the Dairy State

Citizen groups

• Kewaunee CARES (Facebook) 
• Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors 
• Midwest Environmental Advocates
• Farms not Factories
  
• Citizens Concerned about Lake Superior CAFOs  
• Clean Wisconsin
• Rome and Saratoga Friendly
• River Alliance of Wisconsin
• Friends of the Central Sands
• Sierra Club - John Muir Chapter 
• Aldo Leopold Foundation

Academic pieces

• CAFOs - The Promise of Prosperity Versus the Ugly Truth (Joshua Yelle, (Research Fellow, Western Illinois University))
• Food Sovereignty: A Revolution in US Farm Policy, Dr. John Ikerd
• The Inevitable Economic, Ecological, and Social Consequences of CAFOs. University of Missouri-Columbia. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. Ikerd, Dr. John. [See also Past and Recent Papers of Dr. John E. Ikerd.]
• Factory Farming: Unintended Consequences. Factory-Farming. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2014.
• How Do CAFOs Impact the Environment. EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2014.
• Research Clarifies Health Costs of Air Pollution from Agriculture, Hansen, Kathryn.. NASA. NASA, n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2014. 
• How Sustainable Agriculture Can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial Agriculture, Horrigan, Leo, Lawrence, Robert S., Walker, Polly, Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Livable Future, July 9, 1999, n.d. web 24 Sept. 2014
• Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities (n.d.): n. pag. National Association of Local Boards of Health. Centers for Disease Control. Web, Hribar, Carrie.