Wisconsin Manure Spill Brings Water Contamination Warnings in Beautiful Region

Calumet County in Wisconsin is on the eastern shore of the huge inland lake, Winnebago.

As recently as the 1970s-80s, swimmers in the summer could hug the lake shore from Fond du Lac and swim north some 10 miles to the Columbia Park observation tower to meet friends, and if she were young and had not consumed too many beers, head north to Calumet County

Beautiful area. County and state parks and campsites dot the lake, a little to the south lies the awe-inspiring Kettle Moraine region.

Summer news reports the latest injection of 10,000s of gallons of liquid cow manure into Lake Winnebago has resulted in water contamination warnings.

Observers may ask why the water poisoners, industrial agricultural operations, are allowed to toxify the waters, (WLUK-TV, Wisconsin Public Radio), and why contamination is now a frequent occurrence in Wisconsin surface and ground waters.

Why would some ass do this and why isn't water protection a top priority in Wisconsin?

Because the poisoner, named Gordon Speirs—president of the Dairy Business Association and owner of the industrialized Shiloh Dairy LLC CAFO in Calumet County in the city of Brillion, Wisconsin—and industrialized agriculture make big money, and not polluting would be a cost to them.

Speirs and his ilk do not care about the costs to the waters that they treat like sewers in which they dump their untreated cow manure.

Protection of clean water falls to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Wisconsin Department of Justice. Both agencies are now Republican operations funded ultimately by Republican donors who will not tolerate state and country efforts to protect safe and clean water.

As Big Ag has taken over the state with the toxic CAFO business model, areas such as east-central Wisconsin take a big hit.

These are costs Big Ag is willing to see the people of Wisconsin pay for the profits of Big Ag.

Big Ag has purchased the Wisconsin governor, the Wisconsin attorney general, Wisconsin Republican legislators, and many county governments in this largely rural state.

As Wisconsin lakes, streams and aquifers are contaminated each year by industrial CAFOs, many people will leave the state, fleeing what is becoming a colony for corporations protected by Republicans.

Young friends and lovers will have to find other ways than swimming of meeting in the Wisconsin summers.

Pollution of water is bad and getting worse, and polluters across Wisconsin are more brazen in how they tell clean water advocates to get lost.

A large summit addressing water polluters is planned for September in Green Bay.

In Kewaunee County Wisconsin, northeast of Lake Winnebago, the chair of the Kewaunee County Land and Water Conservation Committee is a polluter and member of the Dairy Business Association (DBA), who uses his country committee chairmanship to protect other DBA polluters.

From the Green Press Gazette:

Pagel promises obstruction

Claiming that significant “momentum” is underway by farmers in Kewaunee County and defining that as the “right direction” to be finding a balance between clean water, public health and industrial dairy financial profit, while addressing known groundwater pollution in Kewaunee County, John Pagel, the county’s largest liquid manure producer and chair of the Kewaunee County Land and Water Conservation Committee, declared his personal inflexibility on the issue of groundwater pollution regulation with a public accusation that forces are trying to stymie that “momentum,” when he finished his sentence with, “there are some people that are trying to take that away from us, but I’m not going to let them.”

Pagel then insinuated the existence of a near insolvable rift in the Groundwater Work Group membership by literally pointing to the members sitting on either end of the tables, and to their needing to begin working together, and that they hadn’t been doing so thus far when he repeatedly insisted the sooner cooperation ensued, the better. That statement seemed exceptionally hypocritical coming from the work group member who just declared his intended obstruction to recommendations being reported from the Groundwater Work Group.

Mr Pagel went on to employ what easily fits the definition of the proverbial “victim” card, claiming that the factions needed to begin to work together, “… without accusations and insulting and so on and so forth …” Ask yourself, who appears to be making accusations and who appears to be issuing actual insults? Perhaps another definition, “psychological projection,” should be recommended research for those who don’t know of it.

The unmistakable initial value of the public meeting and presentation of the June 2016 Groundwater Work Group Report for Kewaunee County, to me, seems quite obvious. A self-declared obstructionist to the reported direction for addressing groundwater pollution, which may not fit one person’s interests or views as to the “proper” direction to pursue, currently chairs the county committee which is tasked with bringing resolutions for those pollutant solutions officially before the Kewaunee County Board of Supervisors for further action.

The sentiment from those people attending, overwhelmingly appeared to be, let us finally begin to implement the solutions being presented and a call for immediate action. Despite their county corporation counsel’s opinion about what constitutes a legal conflict of interest, the removal and replacement of a county supervisor from an initially appointed committee chair position, to the best of my understanding, does not require that high of a legal bar to begin that said removal action. My understanding is that any committee chairperson serves solely at the pleasure of the county board chair.

Donald Freix
Fish Creek

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.

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.

Big Ag Is Poisoning the Dairy State

Agrarianism v. Industrialism—Dairy State's Big Ag Poisons Water, Hits Clean Water Advocates with Defamation

Wisconsin's tourist and recreational treasures are under assault from its domestic industrialized dairy model emitting toxins through the annual dumping and spraying of 100s of millions of tons of liquidized cow manure into the environment.

Think of the dairy polluters' full-spectrum assault as an airborne, land, water, chemical and biological attack.

The polluters could not care less, as property values plummet and areas around sited CAFOs or industrialized factory farms create unofficial red lines.

Even as long-time and young residents flee Wisconsin, the Dairy Business Association (DBA) calls for more migrant labor on one side of its mouth, and tells Wisconsinites they're all about jobs and feeding the world on the other.

The 'Sage of Baltimore,' H.L. Mencken, once said, "When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money."

Mencken knew hucksters when he heard them, and the DBA are hucksters writ large polluting on a massive scale, now employing defamation for public image damage control.

Clean water advocates from Kewaunee, Brown, Door, Bayfield, Ashland, Wood, Adams, Portage, Waushara and Dane counties and more are blossoming. The River Alliance of Wisconsin has all lights blinking red.

The heavily Catholic Fox River Valley appears to be taking seriously Pope Francis' call "that the earth is essentially a shared inheritance, whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone," a corollary of which is don't poison your neighbor. (Ikerd)

If the Fox Valley is coming around to the value of clean water under the Pope's influence, the DBA is effectively the anti-Christ. Children almost dying is a tragedy that resonates and most people won't forget the bastards who almost poisoned children to death with more tragedy to come in the Green Bay and Fox River Valley watersheds.

In Green Bay, a community bank's CEO in Green Bay decided the costs, the externalities (Ikerd) (Mal Contends), to area communities, families' health and water are issues worth discussing.

The gentleman, Robert B. Atwell, offers a presentation advocating dialogue and solving the water-pollution crisis and Wisconsin is in crisis.

Brown County Wisconsin (where Green Bay is located), after all, is the place where a six-month-old infant landed in intensive care after drinking well water in 2004 from the faucet, an activity becoming more dangerous across northeastern Wisconsin and the Fox Valley in east-central Wisconsin.

Reports Charles Duhigg in the New York Times (Oct. 15, 2009)

Judy Treml, of Wisconsin, told [federal] lawmakers that her 6-month-old daughter was hospitalized after drinking water that had become contaminated when a nearby farm covered its land with manure, which then seeped into her family’s well. One of the problems, lawmakers said, is that such pollution often goes unpunished or is outside the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act.

'I just can’t imagine turning on your faucet and manure coming out,' said Representative Phil Hare, an Illinois Democrat. 'We’ve got to fix this, and we’ve got to fix it quickly. It’s shameful that your family has to go through this.'

The Treml family was lucky their infant survived, and only though the extraordinary efforts of medical professionals.

The very young, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are the most vulnerable to the array of toxins industrialized ag sickos inject onto communities and surface and ground water in pursuit of money and political power.

Green Bay in Lake Michigan is turning into massive dead zones.

Other stories on the record concern similar occurrences in Door and Kewaunee counties, also in northeastern Wisconsin, with background assurances from toxicologists the DNA of bovine toxins can be traced to individual CAFO and near-CAFO operations with the same industrialized ag model.

"Door County Public Health Director Rhonda Kolberg said 16 people living in or visiting homes in the area were sickened after coming in contact with water from nearby wells, including a 3-month-old child who had visited Paul and Leona Lysne's home," notes Peter J. Devlin in the Green Bay Press Gazette. See also Lundstrom, Door County Pulse.

"Nitrates and bacteria," Mark Sagrillo of Kewaunee County says. Sagrillo drinks all of his water from bottled water for more than a decade now.

So what is the response of the industry pressure group, the Dairy Business Association (DBA)? Deny, attack and defame.

Treml, Lysne, Sagrillo, well they're fearmongers if they blame CAFOs and industrialized agriculture.

The DBA tried to shut down discussion, released a smear job in early September on the Green Bay community banker, Robert B. Atwell, who is the founder and CEO of Green Bay’s Nicolet National Bank (publicly traded as Nicolet Bank Shares Inc.), and targeted clean water activists in the press.

Mr. Atwell is a staid numbers guy as you might expect of a banker and declines all press interviews, preferring to engage the public in an occasional presentation he gives entitled, "Water, Money and Community."

The DBA threw a brush-back pitch with the message: Shut up, Atwell.

Atwell has been giving his talk for over a year and stays low-key, but one suspects this long-time Brown County resident knows fully well about the Tremls, Lysnes and so many other Wisconsin families.

Below is a factual retort to the DBA from Lynn and Nancy Utesch, small sustainable farmers with Kewaunee Cares [Kewaunee C-A-R-E-S (Citizens Advocating Responsible Environmental Stewardship] (Facebook)], to the hit job on the banker concerned about his patrons' health and community.

Residents living in northeastern Wisconsin may wish to consider opening a checking account with Green Bay’s Nicolet National Bank if they want to continue to drink water from the faucet.

Many refuse to drink the water now, it's not worth the risk.

Here's some fact checking on this DBA propaganda piece by the DBA's Gordon Speirs entitled 'Environmental discussion needs facts, not fearmongering'.  

DBA: "Unfortunately, Atwell’s speech is lacking on both fronts." [DBA references environmental policy enforcement and the scientific underpinnings of those laws.]

DBA: "[Atwell] repeatedly talks about a March 1 helicopter flight over a field 'saturated in manure,' often implying or saying it was a CAFO operation."

... It is a near 100 percent probability that any field covered in manure over the winter is a non-CAFO operation. According to state law, 'unless there is a department approved emergency situation … liquid manure may not be surface applied (by a CAFO) from February 1 through March 31.'

Fact Check: Actually it may well have been from a smaller farm or from a CAFO.  Many CAFO's ask for emergency spreading during times even during the restricted times mentioned by Mr. Speirs. Volumes of manure generated at these operations are so voluminous that emergency spreading has become quite a regular practice, rolling back all of the good work by those, such as the Treml family, whose own tragic experience with e-coli poisoning due to winter spreading helped enact winter spreading regulations.

DBA: Atwell states the Bible of manure/nutrient management on each farm — the Nutrient Management Plans (NMPs) — "are not followed and not verified … regulations without compliance testing is useless," specifically in regard to "industrial-scale operations."

Violations of the Clean Water Act can cost more than $30,000 a day — that’s a penalty that not even a deep-pocketed banker could weather for long.

Fact Check:  Many Clean Water Act violations are NOT met with any fine, and minimal enforcement. Most efforts are made in merely making the farm and polluting violation "Come into Compliance." Sometimes "coming into compliance" can take multiple years, while the citizenry is repetitively exposed to "BMP's"--Bad management Practices-- that contaminate, poison and pollute.

DBA: Among the environmental safeguards built into the system:

CAFOs are required to report where every drop of manure goes and distribute that manure in accordance with an NMP (specific to the needs of the crops, and not an ounce more).

Fact Check:  Many farms have workforce and haulers onsite who are not even aware of how much manure is actually supposed to be distributed per acre. NMP's and self-monitoring aren't working in Kewaunee County where 79% of our farmland is in Nutrient management plans, accompanied by the mass contamination occurring there. An Environmental Integrity Project report Spring 2015, revealed that some CAFO's are applying excess nutrients that could never be taken up by a growing plant.

DBA: CAFOs report manure distribution annually to the DNR and provide detailed information as to what fields were applied, when application was done, volume of the application per acre, as well as the sampled nutrient content of the manure as analyzed by an appropriate lab.

Fact Check: Often reporting comes in a full year later after the application has occurred. Samples analyzed for nutrient content are not done on a regular consistent basis, prior to manure being applied. 

DBA: CAFOs are required to test their soil at least every four years to demonstrate they are not over-applying nutrients.

Fact Check: While this is a true statement, soil samples are pulled from questionable areas, and all sampling is done by the farms' self-monitoring agronomist, not a third party.

DBA: If the DNR sees potential problems in the reporting or discrepancies in the projected amount of manure generated versus the amount reported, they will investigate further.
   
Fact Check: Annual reports often are not fulfilled, including logging of amounts, content, fields spread on, etc. What does a further investigation by the DNR here-- really mean? Any further investigation could be taking place a full year after the application in question has occurred. 

DBA: Atwell cites California’s dairy and environmental struggles as a reason for alarm, suggesting Wisconsin dairymen have long emulated the West Coast model and are engaged in a 'race to the bottom.'

Wisconsin has a long history of pursuing far more progressive environmental standards. Wisconsin enacted siting laws under Gov. Jim Doyle specifying standards for CAFOs and accounts for factors including livestock structures and their location on a property, nutrient management, odor and air issues, waste storage facilities, runoff management, and local approval involvement.

Fact Check: Under Gov. Doyle the Livestock Siting Laws were enacted - that take away local control and help impoverish our rural communities. CAFOs exist without realistic odor standards or air emissions outside of the facility itself - yet the majority of all these issues take place on spreading fields where nothing is regulated.

'Strict standards' for manure storage allows for a leakage rate of 500 gallons per acre, per day. 

Local approval?  Livestock siting laws stripped communities of having a voice-- and protecting the places they call home.

---
Former Gov. Jim Doyle (D-Madison) (2003-2011) deserves condemnation for carrying the DBA'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, a financier of the National Potato Council who has been upping his contributions to the National Republican Congressional Committee in the GOP quest to kill the federal EPA as Scott Walker has done to the Wisconsin DNR.

The Wisconsin Livestock Facility Siting Law that CAFOs use in litigation is pure political payoff to the DBA, signed into law by Jim Doyle, and which became effective in May 2006.

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

For future reference, if the Dairy Business Association puts out a press release, assume it's a series of lies.