Citizen Ystad: CAFOs Threaten Tourism, Golf Resort and Tax Revenue

Proposed Massive Golden Sands Dairy,
 in Adams and Wood Counties, Wisconsin

"In centrally located Adams County, (property) values tumbled 20.3 percent, the most of any county in the state," according to a Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance report released in August. (Carlson, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune.)

In Wood County, property values stayed flat.

Because tourism, recreation and lake homes are abundant in the region, the Taxpayers Alliance's report was troubling to area residents, many of whom blame the proposed massive Concentrated Agricultural Feeding Operation (CAFO) by the Wysocki corporation.

Even as construction of a proposed multi-course Sand Valley Golf Resort is proceeding (Lawder, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune) and an area hotel is planned, existing CAFOs and the Wysocki CAFO would exceed the "carrying capacities" of the central sands to absorbs the 10s of millions of liquid cow manure, said Gordon Stevenson, former runoff management chief for the DNR (2001-2011), in an August interview here.

The public posture of Michael Keiser Jr. who is running point on the resort project is effectively let's see how one course does and decide how to proceed on that basis.

The threat to surface water and aquifers by CAFOs still has many in the area shaking their heads because they see the successful operation of Sand Valley and the proposed massive CAFO as mutually exclusive.

Put another way, residents fear that the 10s of millions of pathogen-laden liquid cow manure and liquid cow manure lagoons that would dot the region do not mix well with the proposed high-end golf resort.

An open letter to Gov. Scott Walker from Don Ystad, retired business consultant, resident of Rome and opponent of the Wysocki CAFO proposal follows.
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Governor Walker,

Think about the recent reports of the E Coli poisoning of a visiting family in Door County just a few weeks ago and the negative effect on Door County tourism if this persists. The E Coli strain was tied to cow manure, not surprising since 30% of drinking water wells are unusable because of high nitrate levels in neighboring Kewaunee County where there are 15 dairy CAFOs. This is a dangerous trend for our tourism economy, not to mention the health and well being of our citizens and visitors. As a citizen of Rome facing the possibility of an 8,000 acre, 5,130 cow dairy CAFO right next door in Saratoga, I'm concerned for our future. As a community with a healthy and vibrant recreational tourism industry based around our existing lakes, Arrowhead golf courses, Tri-Norse ski jumping facility, Dyracuse ATV park, new Wisconsin Trapshooters state facility and now the Sand Valley Golf Resort, will we face the same future with drinking water wells polluted and our visitors sickened by agricultural runoff?

Coming from a dairy farming family, I support the reasonable growth of family farms. But Rome and neighboring Saratoga are population-dense, existing communities with a solid history of commerce as an established residential/recreational area providing revenue to Wisconsin's tourism industry. Adams County ranks 15th in tourism revenue in Wisconsin and the Rome/Saratoga area contributes $20 million annually to area businesses. The Town of Rome contributes nearly a third of the total tax revenue to Adams County. Allowing an 8,000 acre dairy CAFO to insert itself within this existing recreational community can only lead to our decline. Your intervention is needed to preserve these communities and allow tourism revenue to grow as Sand Valley Golf Resort attracts visitors from around the country.

Thanks,

Don Ystad

Mary Burke: Cash and Cow Manure

Mary Burke: You DON'T want
liquid cow manure in your drinking
water? Send me money, idiot, or
vote for Scott Walker—he cares
about your issues less than I do.

"In the 1980s, Wisconsin had a half dozen Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), all poultry. We now have about 250 CAFOs; 220 of them are dairies. Recent applications to the DNR for dairy CAFOs are approaching cattle populations of 10,000 head each. That’s a far cry from the forty-cow family-run dairies of 25 years ago. In terms of a very common measure of water pollution potential, biochemical oxygen demand, the organic pollution potential of a 10,000 head dairy is equal to 180,000 people. That’s bigger than the city of Green Bay. Green Bay has a waste-water treatment plant. CAFOs do not. A 10,000 head dairy produces enough manure to fill up Lambeau Field where the Packers play all the way to the top of the cheap seats on the fifth story bleachers,… four times a year," said Gordon Stevenson, a 26-year veteran of the DNR where his last assignment was serving as the Chief of Runoff Management until his retirement in January of 2011.

Updated - Mary Burke's challenge to Scott Walker is, as every politico knows, conditioned on money and getting out the vote in numbers resembling the 2008 and 2012 presidential races against the 2010 midterm turnout when Scott Walker was first elected.

In 2008, Wisconsin had the second-highest voter turnout in the country at 72 percent, second only to Minnesota (McDonald. George Mason U.).

In 2010, Wisconsin's voter turnout was 52 percent, the fifth highest in the country (McDonald. George Mason U.).

In 2012, Wisconsin again was second to Minnesota in voter turnout, reaching 73 percent (Sullivan, Washington Post).

The 2008 and 2010 voting electorates present a difference of 825,755 Wisconsin voters, people whom Scott Walker and the Republicans wish would sit out the November 2014 election as well, though many of Scott Walker's election-rigging attempts have been declared unconstitutional.

As Jonathan Alter reported and wrote later in his seminal book, The Center Holds, Obama and His Enemies (Simon and Schuster, 2013), the Obama campaign utilizing its high-tech veritable wizards compiled voter Obama support scores on the 180 million American voters (p. 107), and successfully demolished Mitt Willard Romney in 2012, in significant part by using social media, Facebook, Tumblr and so on to reach supporters and persuadable voters.

Mary Burke brought in some of the same top talent in the political world (Glauber, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), including top Obama-2012 strategists so it stands to reason that Burke is not ignoring innovations in using social media in reaching voters to up the turnout rates to 2008 (and 2012) levels.

"(Jim) Margolis and others with the Obama team were credited with running an effective media campaign. They used analytics and data to reach voters in ways beyond television ads," noted the  Journal-Sentinel's Bill Glauber, and Alter.

The campaign techies don't get mentioned in the press but they're there and are critically important in the Mary Burke campaign.

This explains in part Mary Burke's disdain for retail campaigning and the lack of feedback to voters' stated concerns. Burke thinks she can win with just techies and money. There are many grassroots issues that the Democratic party and Burke need to address.

You won't find Burke's team, and certainly not Burke, talking to Wisconsin folks about backyard issues like the health of their families or local community control under assault by the Walker administration and the corporate interests to which Walker is beholden.

Geez, your water and the air you breathe are being poisoned by concentrated agricultural feeding operations (CAFOs) or factory farms' liquid cow manure; tough shit, get it? Tell it to someone who cares.

Mary Burke better start caring because the 10,000s of Wisconsin people affected by the pathogens being directed into waterways, streams, lakes, and aquifers trump any political allegiance to Scott Walker or the not-Scott Walker stand-in of the Democratic Party.

Backyard [literally in the case of the Scott Murray family of Juneau County (Seely, Golden; Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism)] local issues like drinking water and the tourism dollars of a clean environment trump any politician, and in strength apparently escaping notice of the Mary Burke campaign.

CAFOs are all about not creating jobs, not using workers, using whatever natural resources they want to use, and dumping cow manure with its pathogens onto communities, and the Wysocki farm corporation (quietly deploying CAFOs around the state) does not ask for permission from communities.

CAFOs do what CAFOs want, secure in the knowledge that the Scott Walker administration with its new politicized Department of Natural Resources will follow the Walker administration always, period, and grant permits for CAFO to run adjoining communities right into the sewer.

"In the 1980s, Wisconsin had a half dozen Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), all poultry. We now have about 250 CAFOs; 220 of them are dairies. Recent applications to the DNR for dairy CAFOs are approaching cattle populations of 10,000 head each. That’s a far cry from the forty-cow family-run dairies of 25 years ago. In terms of a very common measure of water pollution potential, biochemical oxygen demand, the organic pollution potential of a 10,000 head dairy is equal to 180,000 people. That’s bigger than the city of Green Bay. Green Bay has a waste-water treatment plant. CAFOs do not. A 10,000 head dairy produces enough manure to fill up Lambeau Field where the Packers play all the way to the top of the cheap seats on the fifth story bleachers,… four times a year," said Gordon Stevenson, a 26-year veteran of the DNR where his last assignment was serving as the Chief of Runoff Management until his retirement in January of 2011.

These CAFOs are a statewide issue and need to be dealt with systemically rather than being left to individual towns and communities to handle on their own. Politicians for statewide offices should know this.