Hitting Wisc Communities for Unwanted Products by Polluting CAFOs Is Not Worth It

Why would anyone consider imperiling Wisconsin communities for the profits of corporate ag, while destroying small farmers, depleting our water and polluting municipalities so badly, families are being driven out of their homes?

Politicians do it for the money, and the money.

The same with CAFOs, using corporate ag's anti-community business model, they do it for the money.

The hell with everyone else.

Your children poisoned? Too bad.  Your home uninhabitable? Breaks my heart.

Got a call from an old friend. He told me liquid manure spreading is so bad, he can't open his windows. He lives in Door County.

Big Ag is destroying Wisconsin, and Republican politicians from Joel Kitchens to Scott Krug to Scott Walker are running a con.

Governor Walker and concerned citizens blind copied here

By Don Ystad,
Rome, Wisconsin

With milk prices down 41% since September of 2014, and the recent announcement that the US government is buying 11 million pounds of excess cheese for distribution to food pantries, does it still make sense to continue offering grants to increase dairy farming in Wisconsin? And more importantly for those of us living in the Rome/Saratoga, (Adams, Wood counties), area, how long will your administration continue supporting the proposal for an 8,000 acre, 5,300 cow dairy CAFO in the midst of our established residential/recreational area?

Seriously, how can one justify putting at risk the property, health and lifestyle of a population dense community for a dairy CAFO in a seriously depressed market where producers are hanging on through government insurance programs and subsidies?

Were we under a drastic shortage of necessary food product, one could rationalize the argument that my neighbors and I should sacrifice in order to feed our fellow citizens. But, when the supply far outpaces the demand for dairy, as it has the past two years and is worsening, it makes no sense to allow these communities to spin in the wind, fighting to preserve their property values, health and well being, and their lifestyle, while the proposed Golden Sands Dairy remains an unbelievable possibility for the thousands of us in harms way.

Please explain why this proposed project, or any expansion of dairy for that matter, is still viable in Wisconsin. Facing additional state budget cuts, it makes no sense to offer grants and other incentives to increase dairy. A neighbor asked me who that one decision maker is that considers all the factors where this proposed CAFO is concerned, and makes the determination that the well being of this existing residential/recreational area is more important than the CAFO.  I would hope that person is you, Governor Walker.

Thank you,
---
See, Say cheese to a market glut. (Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune).

Wisconsin Towns—Saratoga, Rome—Promote Their Region, as Big Ag Targets Area for Destruction

No rational, healthy human being deals well when sociopaths live in their midst.

In central Wisconsin, the industrial agricultural operation, the Wysocki corporation, and its partners are doing their worst to upset residents and poison, (literally), the environment.

Long-time residents are fighting back as two small Wisconsin towns, Saratoga and Rome, are hitting the Net to promote the recreational and tourism attractions the central Wisconsin region holds dear.

Several citizens reached the last several days said their communities are experiencing feelings they find difficult to describe as Big Ag is willfully toxifying this picturesque area known as the Golden Sands.

Folks are not taking this lying down.

This writer has standing invitations this summer to fish on ponds and lakes, drink cold beer, and have some laughs.

Central Wisconsin invites the world to visit and enjoy life.

From Rome:

Weekend in Rome, Wisconsin

From Saratoga: Water is for all to share. It knows no town, county or state boundary.

The Town of Saratoga and its citizens are working hard to protect this wonderful resource for all. Please join us in our efforts to keep Golden Sands Dairy -- and any other entity that might threaten our resources -- out of Saratoga.

Targeting a Wisconsin Region

Industrialized Agriculture are some sick SOBs.

Rhonda Cain-Carrell (Facebook) reports from central Wisconsin, under assault as Big Ag moves to literally drive people out of their homes with political backing from all Wisconsin Republicans with no dissent.

A massive liquid manure truck in central Wisconsin, making one of 100s
of trips as the the Wysocki corporation attempts to drive multi-generational
families out of their homes. The truck which transport massive amounts of
liquid manure drives by signs reading: Clean Water, Clean Air,
Wisconsin DNR, Please Care, (Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors).
Photo by Rhonda Cain-Carrell.

Big Ag Dumps on Wisconsin

Industrialized agriculture is self-consciously destroying entire regions of the state, and trying to chase citizens out of their own communities.

The assault was captured in central Wisconsin last week by Rhonda Cain-Carrell.

As awful as this shot is, the reality of what Big Ag is doing to Wisconsin
is much worse. It took approx. 2.5 minutes to dump the liquid manure
waste contents of a tanker in Portage County, Town of Grant, next to a
popular trout stream. Across the street is Saratoga, Wisconsin where the
Wysocki corporation wants to build a massive factory farm in Wood County.
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

Republicans, Big Ag Inflict Nightmare onto Central Wisconsin

Liquid manure/waste trucks coming and going in a downpour.
This is the worst time to spread because of the risks to groundwater
and surface water. BUT ... the trucks just kept coming non-stop for 24 1/2
hours ... rain or shine at a stone's throw from the Ten Mile Creek trout stream
in central Wisconsin, days before Memorial Day weekend.
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

Proposed Golden Sands Dairy, in Saratoga, Wood
County, Wisconsin will devastate an already
troubled region.

Happy Memorial Day

No time to take our eyes off what Scott Walker, Scott Krug, the Wysocki corporation and its collaborators are doing to central Wisconsin—a picturesque region of sand, dense pines, streams and lakes now dying before our eyes—under tons of liquid cow manure, high capacity wells sucking up ground and surface waters; political corruption, and apathy.

In the field on 80th Street (County Hwy. U in central Wisconsin) an injecting rig sits poised before the Memorial Day weekend just waiting for the manure trucks to start their relentless circling from two counties away (Juneau County, Town of Armenia) to pick up and deliver Wysocki/Sommers liquid manure to Portage County, Town of Grant via Saratoga, Wisconsin.

Nice way to honor the fallen, Big Ag.

Rhonda Cain-Carrell chronicled the carnage last week, taking pictures showing an effort by massive polluters to drive down property valuations and befoul the environment in an area service professionals acknowledge on background is already effectively red-lined.

One of the objectives of Wisconsin Republicans is to make Wisconsin so inhospitable and toxic that citizens objecting will leave the state.

"The Wysockies quietly buy up land, use it up, literally poison their neighbors, the hell with everyone else. These people do not live on the CAFOs; they live far-away. And, yes, there is something sociopathic about this."
—Saratoga, Wisconsin resident

No time to ask, but what is wrong with these people?

Corrupt Republican government will wait until ground and surface waters are so befouled and depleted that safe drinking water in central Wisconsin is no longer feasible, and then deflect all accountability.

Shots below at bottom.

By Rhonda Cain-Carrell

The Ten Mile Creek is a beautiful trout stream that starts in Portage County, Town of Grant, Wisconsin and runs through the Town of Saratoga in Wood County. On the Portage County side, the Ten Mile has much less flow because of heavy pumping of high capacity wells for agriculture, picking up flow the further west it travels through wooded, unirrigated land of Saratoga.

In Jan. 2015, a man from Adams County named Scott Kotlowski applied for two high capacity wells for irrigated agriculture on two Managed Forest Land parcels just east of the Wood County, Town of Saratoga in Portage County, Town of Grant. I very suspiciously watched these parcels, as they are adjacent to our beloved Ten Mile Creek and were taken out of Wysocki's original footprint of the proposed Golden Sands Dairy CAFO.

I knew Kotlowski was a straw buyer and applier for Wysocki. The DNR assured us these wells would not be considered/approved until after the Wysocki project was sorted through and done. In Feb. 2016, Kotlowski applied for another high capacity well permit for a large parcel that borders State Hwy. 73 and County Hwy. U (80th St.) that he had bought. This parcel was also part of Wysocki's original footprint for the proposed crap factory they want to site in Saratoga.

THEN the horrible legislation pertaining to high cap wells begins. Transfers of well permits, rapid approvals, rubber stamping, deregulation of protections for water, wetlands and doing away with public rights stages for waters of the state. When some of the garbage did not pass, they went to the AG for his bought-and paid-for opinion on cumulative impacts not needing to be observed, (Verburg, Wisconsin State Journal). What the hell?! The level of corruption!!!!

The Ten Mile Creek runs through this section where Kotlowski's wells have been applied for. In these same fields, on Thursday, May 19th, Wysocki Produce Company trucks started hauling solid manure for two days straight. On Tuesday, May 24, 21 liquid manure trucks carrying the liquid waste/manure from Central Sands Dairy to the Kotlowski field on 90th Street between Tower Road and Oak Street.

It rained so many times before, during and after this process ... literally gully-washers, (an extremely heavy fall of rain usually of short duration), ... and they still kept hauling and injecting. Approximately 490 liquid manure trucks carrying 7,000-8,000 gallons of liquid manure to one little 73 acre field ... a stone's throw from our beloved trout stream, the Ten Mile Creek. This was after two days worth of solid manure the previous week.

The part of this that you will love is that they trucked the massive amounts of waste two counties to dump it next to our creek and just across the Portage County line. They have many acres where this could have been disposed of very close to Central Sands Dairy, (Backer of Saratoga CAFO tied to tainted wells, (Anderson, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)), and thousands of acres that were not adjacent to Saratoga, a township with the second highest population density in all of Wood County and last ... but not least ... why right next to the Ten Mile Creek? What do you think the answer to this question is?

Saratoga has made it very clear industrialized agriculture and CAFOs are not sustainable in our sandy soil. Our groundwater is extremely susceptible to contamination under the best circumstances. In gully-washing rain ... wouldn't you be careful so close to our trout stream?

Pictures of Devastation in Central Wisconsin. All photos by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

Ten Mile Creek on Tower Road, east of Hwy. U (80th St.). —
Portage County, Town of Grant, Wisconsin
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

A dozen liquid manure/waste trucks sitting in Ellis Industries field (90th Street)
adjacent to Kotlowski field (Wysocki may have bought from Kotlowski, who purchased
the land after Wysocki pulled it from the original proposed Golden Sands Dairy plan).
The others sit at the Central Sands Dairy in Juneau County, Town
of Armenia ... two counties away. Notice the ponding? Liquid cow manure.
A stone's throw from Ten Mile Creek, a trout stream.
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

Ponding. Too much liquid manure and rain.
— at Portage County, Town of Grant, Wisconsin
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

Liquid manure/waste trucks coming and going in a downpour. This is the worst
time to spread because of the risks to groundwater and surface water.
BUT ... the trucks just kept coming non-stop for 24 1/2 hours ... rain or shine.
— at A stone's throw from the Ten Mile Creek. This hazardous waste, the
trucks are carrying, make no mistake.
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

It took approx. 2.5 minutes to dump the liquid manure waste contents of a tanker.
— at Portage County, Town of Grant. Across the street from Saratoga.
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

Risk of runoff HIGH for much of Wisconsin that day and they were spreading
in the rain.
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

A, center pivot pump, chemical tank and power box in the
Ellis-Wysocki field with new center pivot rig in background.
Why would 2 systems the same age look SO different?
— at Across the road from Saratoga in Portage County.
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

In the field on 80th Street (County Hwy. U) the injecting rig sits
poised before the holiday Memorial Day weekend just waiting for the manure
trucks to start their relentless circling from two counties away
(Juneau County, Town of Armenia)
to pick up and deliver Wysocki-Sommers liquid manure to Portage County,
Town of Grant  via Saratoga.
Notice the draglines? —
Pic taken from Oak Street.
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

New center pivot irrigation rig in a field in which Scott Kotlowski, of Adams County,
applied for the high capacity well permit. This parcel and the one on
90th Street were part of Wysocki's proposed Golden Sands Dairy
project that asked for 40 hi cap wells. He scaled back to 33 wells and
Kotlowski bought the property and did the same thing
Wysocki had planned on doing.
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

90th Street is the field Scott Kotlowski applied for one of the two high capacity
wells in this section. Until last year, this was Managed Forest Land.
Portage County, Town of Grant, Wisconsin.
Image by Rhonda Cain-Carrell

Proposed Industrialized Farm Kills $300,000 Home Sale in Wood County

The proposed "Golden Sands" factory farm in the town of Saratoga killed the sale of a beautiful $300,000 home, a Saratoga resident reported this weekend.

Rhonda Cain-Carrell is long-time resident of Wood County and with many of her neighbors is an opponent of the proposed CAFO (Concentrated (Confined) Agricultural Feeding Operations) sited in the town of Saratoga.

Residents fear what scientific research has demonstrated: The some 50 million gallons of liquid cow manure sprayed and leeched into the environment each year would pollute the region, drive down property values, and present dangerous health hazards to residents, especially children, folks with compromised immune systems and the elderly.

Writes Cain-Carrell in her Facebook page:

This evening I spoke with a Saratoga resident that has their home up for sale. Shortly after listing the home, they received a full price offer. They accepted. The realtor disclosed a little info on the CAFO to the buyer from Illinois and [their] family backed out. Every perspective buyer LOVES the home and feels its 300K + price tag is a fair price ... BUT HAVE NO INTEREST IN LIVING NEAR THE PROPOSED GOLDEN SANDS DAIRY. Wysocki Companies, you have no right to hold our community hostage!!! GO AWAY & STAY AWAY.

Cain-Carrell, along with neighbors from Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors, Friends of the Central Sands, and Rome and Saratoga Friendly and other allies, have opposed the proposed CAFO since it was sprung onto residents in July 2012 (Mal Contends).

Informed residents say area realtors and financiers regard the area around the CAFO as a red line, and the killed sale of the residential home is just the beginning of a downward spiral.

The owner of the proposed CAFO is the Wysocki Family of Companies, (through two LLCs which insulate Wysocki from liability of the expected pollution and contamination if the factory farm were to begin operation).

Wysocki owns another CAFO, contaminating water in adjacent Juneau County (Anderson, Gannett Co News) (Mal Contends).

Wysocki doesn't live on the CAFO factory farms he owns, he's lives safely away in Custer, Wisconsin and runs operations some 20 miles away in Bancroft, Wisconsin so it's no skin off Wysocki's back if he economically and ecologically kills a region trying to make a come-back with tourism and recreation.

Wysocki is also infamous in the area for his profuse use of high capacity water wells, another 39 of which would take at least 100,000 gallons of water per well, per day to produce the liquid cow manure he wants to spray into Saratoga and the surrounding area (Mal Contends) (Mal Contends).

Wysocki is politically protected by local State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa), Scott Walker and Walker's new polluter-friendly Dept of Natural Resources.

Krug is sponsoring a bill, Senate Bil 291, to help Wyscoki and other Big Ag operations suck up groundwater through high capacity wells and is attempting to neuter the legal recourse of Wisconsin residents and municipalities to object (Janesville Gazette) as Wisconsin Republicans play legislative games with the Wisconsin peoples' lives.

Rep. Scott Krug Skips Wood County Groundwater Ordinance Meeting

Facing heavy lobbying from the polluters' lobby, the Dairy Business Association, the Wood County Board of Supervisors narrowly passed a groundwater protection ordinance Tuesday. (Anderson, Gannett Co. News) (Mal Contends)

Wisconsin State Sen. Julie Lassa (D-Stevens Point) spoke in favor of the groundwater ordinance.

State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa and ALEC) was absent.

Why did State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa and ALEC) blow off this meeting?

Krug is quietly assisting Scott Walker, Walker's DNR and the Dairy Business Association in their project in which one objective and inevitable consequence is to contaminate and literally toxify area lakes and groundwater.

Nice.

This is what a corrupt group of politicians and Big Ag do when they sell out the people of Wisconsin for money.

The owners don't live on the industrialized factory farms, they safely live far away from the millions of tons of liquidized manure they deposit into the environment.

Krug is running a con on the people of 72nd state assembly district in central Wisconsin. Krug pretends to care about the health of water, and even instituted an informal surface-water citizens advisory group in which members say Krug never took minutes, often didn't show up, and then made numerous references to the group during campaign season.

Wood County Enacts Ordinance Protecting Ground and Surface Water

"I just want safe water," said Julie Kreutzer at the Wood County County Board of Supervisors meeting yesterday in Wisconsin Rapids. (Anderson, Gannett Co. News)

Sounds reasonable enough.

But Kreutzer is a resident of the town of Saratoga in central Wisconsin where a proposed industrialized, Concentrated Agricultural Feeding Operation (CAFO) or factory farm is sited, and the CAFO owners, the Wysocki corporation through its entities limiting their personal liability, are not keen on what Ms. Kreutzer wants.

The problem for Kreutzer is the CAFO owners, the Wood and Adams county citizens, and CAFO experts—know if the CAFO is to be built, it will pollute on a massive scale, befouling waters, land and the air with nitrates, phosphorous and ammonia from millions of gallons of liquidized manure produced annually.

The groundwater ordinance passed on a close 10-9 vote on Tuesday, after heavy lobbying by Big Ag, the Dairy Business Association (DBA), that works against safe groundwater ordinances all over Wisconsin as the DBA seeks its right to pollute.

The CAFO would be an environmental and economic disaster for a region gaining its footing after the decline of the paper mill industry.

In response, residents are citing the abundant natural resources of the area and promoting the recreation and tourism potential, efforts that would be imperiled by the massively polluting CAFO.

These are costs the CAFO owners are willing to inflict onto Wood and Adams county, negative externalities.

Wysocki already sucks up huge quantities of groundwater through its numerous high capacity water wells that make for an unsustainable future for the region.

These are also costs Wysocki is willing to see inflicted onto the community.

Wood County joins other Wisconsin counties and towns in enacting ordinances protecting groundwater from CAFOs within the past year, including Kewaunee County, Bayfield County, Ashland County and Oneida County.

But for James Wysocki it's mind over matter, Wysocki doesn't mind polluting and using up groundwater because area families don't matter.

Big Ag Pressures Wood County Board to Drop Groundwater Protection Initiative

Dairy Business Association fights local efforts
protecting against toxic, liquidized cow manure. DBA
members are the worst polluters of Wisconsin waters.

Protect groundwater and we'll pollute more, says Dairy Business Association

Update: See also this morning's Farms, environmentalists spar over manure measure (Jonathan Anderson, Gannett Co. Newspapers); and rebuttal letter to the Board by Midwestern Environmental Advocates, dated August 12, 2015.
 ---
As residents of Wood and Adams counties fight to protect groundwater, Big Ag in Wisconsin as embodied in the Dairy Business Association, is arguing for the right to pollute.

The Dairy Business Association (DBA) in a letter dated August 6, 2015 to the Chair of the Wood County Board of Supervisors (and Cced to Board members) calls a proposed groundwater protection ordinance "unnecessary and potentially counterproductive."

The proposed ordinance will be considered in a County Board meeting on August 18th.

The DBA's members are among the worst polluters in Wisconsin, and DBA lobbyists still disingenuously cloak its operations in the image of the small farmer as industrialized factory farming corporations take over the production of agriculture in the Dairy State in the model of the huge Concentrated (Confined) Agricultural Feeding Operation (CAFO).

The text of the August 6 DBA letter by John Holevoet, Director of Government Affairs for the DBA, is reproduced below.

The DBA is politically aligned with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and local State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) both of whom worked to decimate the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources water protection division, with Walker now calling for dismantling the federal EPA to whom clean water advocates have appealed for water protection from DBA members.

The DBA's Holevoet admits clean water advocates' point on groundwater and pollution and argues in a ludicrous line of reasoning that protecting groundwater by law will "discourage investments in new technologies and facilities that would better prevent the possibility of groundwater contamination."

Protecting groundwater by law will only hurt you, argues the DBA in its letter reading more like a threat.

Blue Baby syndrome (aka methemoglobinemia now prevalent in Yakima Valley in Washington state, caused by too many nitrates in surface waters and aquifers) will come to Wisconsin, and the DBA will keep on its pursuit for money over people.
---
August 6, 2015

Mr. Lance Pliml

Wood County Board of Supervisors, Chairman
4030 Woodhaven Court
Wisconsin Rapids, WI 54494

Dear Chairman Pliml:

This letter is written on behalf of the Dairy Business Association (DBA) and its Wood County members, regarding the proposed Animal Waste Storage, Nutrient Management and Groundwater Protection Ordinance. DBA urges you to vote against this proposed ordinance, which has a questionable legal basis. This type of regulation is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive.

When the County Board previously discussed the proposed ordinance, Corporation Counsel Peter Kastenholz was clear that he did not believe the county has the authority to impose its own groundwater standards. The authority to produce such regulations has been granted to Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR); it has not been delegated to the counties. This is no doubt why the most recent ordinance draft avoids direct groundwater regulation and attempts to address this issue through manure storage standards and the implementation of nutrient management plans (NMPs). These are areas over which counties have had some limited authority.

The ordinance's attempt to walk the fine line between legality and illegality calls its enforceability into question. At a minimum, concerns over the legality of certain provisions will likely produce legal challenges if enforcement attempts are made. For example, the ordinance has the potential to require NMPs for some very small farming operations. Any farmer who builds or alters a manure storage facility is subject to the requirements of the new ordinance, which includes the preparation of an NMP.

Nutrient management planning is worthwhile and should be encouraged, but it is doubtful the county can require it for non-CAFO farms unless the county provides cost sharing. (See ATCP 50.54(2).) Large farms that fit the legal definition of CAFO already have to prepare NMPs. This ordinance would impose additional requirements on such farms. This could create an issue if/when the requirements in a county manure storage permit conflict with the state requirements these farms must follow. This ordinance sets the stage for a situation where the county would deny a permit to a farm seeking to make an alteration to their manure storage that is required of them by WDNR.

This ordinance is meant to safeguard groundwater quality, but it will likely discourage investments in new technologies and facilities that would better prevent the possibility of groundwater contamination. Existing manure storage facilities are not generally subject to regulation under the proposed ordinance, unless they are altered in some way. This would discourage farmers from adding additional storage or updating existing facilities because that would subject them to all of the requirements associated with an animal waste storage plan. Discouraging investment and improvements on farms is not good public policy.

Farmers that only stack manure but might be considering constructing a more secure manure storage facility could be discouraged by the ordinance requirements. This could prevent them from growing their herd size and leave them stacking manure even if the runoff risk from their stacking location is far greater than it would be from a new manure storage facility. We want to encourage farmers to grow, invest, and innovate. This ordinance does the opposite.

Agriculture plays a vital role in Wood County economies. Our farmers are valuable members of our community. They are our neighbors and we know them to be good stewards of the land. This ordinance is a solution in search of a problem. There is no reason to believe that groundwater quality is significant concern in Wood County, nor that it is likely to become one. DBA asks you to seriously consider whether this ordinance is worth the added costs to farmers and all the taxpayers of Wood County, especially considering that portions of it may be unenforceable.

Unfortunately, this ordinance appears to be an example of legislating rules for the entire county based upon unfounded concerns regarding one proposed farm in one small section of the county. Wood County is home to a handful of geographic regions, two radically different types of soil, nearly three dozen municipalities, and approximately 1,000 farms ranging from cranberries to dairy. It is a diverse place. Even if the proposed ordinance was a sensible approach for southern Wood County, which it is not, it would make absolutely no sense for the clay fields found in the northern portion of the county. To dictate policy for the entire county based upon incorrect perceptions that only relate to a small corner of the county anyway is foolish. It would be bad governance, and we ask that you reject it.

Regards,

John Holevoet
Director of Government Affairs

cc: Wood County Board of Supervisors

Farmers investing in community earn respect, Polluting CAFO‏s have none

Families in central Wisconsin working to stop an industrialized factory farm from beginning operation know one outcome is certain.

With the inception of a Concentrated (Confined) Agricultural Feeding Operation (CAFO) comes pollution to water, air and earth to which children are especially susceptible.

Academics call these health and environmental costs, negative externalities.

Families call them mortal threats to children and health—as in Kewaunee and Door counties in northeastern Wisconsin.

Notes Jim Lundstrom last year in the Peninsula Pulse. "A young family visiting Door County for a weekend in mid-September were the subject of a public health investigation when they returned to their Calumet County home and their four-month-old daughter came down with an illness that was identified as E. coli bacteria from a bovine source."

Typical. Near deaths are becoming common now across the nation, a warning impossible to ignore.

Scott Walker has called for more mega dairies, CAFOs, producing liquid cow manure by the millions of gallons annually running off into surface water and aquifers. Walker of course rakes in $100,000s from Big Ag, and proposes eliminating the EPA after gutting the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

When sociopaths such as Walker and James Wysocki, a Wisconsin CAFO polluter, propose more land being used as a huge toxic waste dump, nothing good follows. Land and water are not infinite sewers.

Adams County (Wisconsin) resident, Don Ystad, wrote an op-ed column in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune this weekend. An excerpt follows.

Writes Ystad in an email:

Concerned citizens, friends and neighbors,

For those of you who do not receive the Tribune ... I was introduced to the Malm family and their farm a few weeks ago. They embody the term "America's Dairyland".  You would enjoy knowing them. They are polar opposites of the Wysockis who care only about profits and nothing about community, neighbors, or the environment.

From the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune:

By Don Ystad

We’re watching a cow enter the automatic robotic milking parlor and Bob Malm says, "Sally, the kids and I left the sand country of Minnesota, where you have to pour tons of fertilizer and millions of gallons of irrigation water onto your forage crops. We found this rolling terrain in Clark County (Wisconsin) with solid, nutrient-rich soil and enough natural moisture that we don’t irrigate any of our 700 acres. I’ve not lost a single crop since buying here in 1981, and we don’t irrigate. The rich soil here has enabled us to build a profitable dairy farm that provides a decent income for the three generations of Malms who live here and work the farm." ...

Bob [Malm] is not a fan of huge dairy concentrated animal feeding operations. In fact, he left the sand country of Minnesota for the historically rich soil of Clark County to get away from sandy soils that don’t naturally hold nutrients or moisture. He’s seen how hard farming in sandy soils can be on the ground water levels and water quality. And he understands the 'carrying capacity' of the land, applying manure at a concentration of 3 acres per cow instead of a typical CAFO’s 1.2 acres per cow.

The Malms are the kind of farmers we embrace as 'America’s Dairyland.' And, as my Rome and Saratoga (Wood County Wisconsin) neighbors would agree, we don’t want to live in the midst of Wysocki’s proposed 8,000-acre, 5,300-cow dairy CAFO, whose operators have no concern for the health of the thousands of us living within harm’s way, and no concern for the existing recreational environment we live in. The sandy soil around the Rome and Saratoga area mimics the soil the Malms left for greener pastures. The Malms had the good sense to avoid environmentally sensitive sandy soils and located their farm in good soil within existing farm country. They’ve earned our respect. Not so much the Wysockis.

Let’s hope common sense prevails as the Department of Natural Resources considers permits later this year.
#

Groundwater: Diminishing Resource, Increasing Conflict

Christa Westerberg has a piece out in the Wisconsin Lawyer.

As Scott Walker partners with polluters to befoul our waters, Westerberg writes:

Wisconsin’s waters have been protected since before it was a state. The concept of the public trust doctrine, or the state holding navigable waters in trust so they remain forever free and open to the public, was passed down from the Northwest Ordinance to the Wisconsin Constitution, article IX, section 1.1 State statutes have since been crafted to protect Wisconsin’s groundwater and surface water and to give the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) primary responsibility for overseeing this resource.

What Walker and Big Ag are doing in befouling our waters is crazy and likely unconstitutional.

Homes Under Attack in Wood Counties: Big Ag Suspect Number One

Message from proposed Wysocki CAFO to residents in
Wood County delivered in April 2015

Threats, Death Threats, Vandalism, Assaults and Now Slander

Residents in Wood and Adams counties in central Wisconsin working to halt a massively polluting proposed industrial dairy operation, a CAFO, are crime victims being met by a new spate of theft, criminal destruction, intimidation and a possible cyber attack on a home in the Town of Saratoga. (Madden, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune)

The proposed siting of the massive 5,300-animal, 7,000-acre Wysocki CAFO has already driven down property valuations in the area because of the predictable consequence of the pollution and inflictions on health that come with CAFO operations. (Mal Contends)

Ten more signs vandalized the weekend of May 29-31, 2015
in Wood County.

On one hand are multi-generational families working to stimulate the economic activity associated with tourism and recreation, and to protect their homes and their families' health.

Then there is James Wysocki whose proposed CAFO is already depressing a troubled economy, and should the CAFO ever begin operations tourism, recreation, streams, lakes and aquifers—already being drained by Wysocki's high capacity water wells used in potato-growing operations—would in short order become relics and the area an economic wasteland.

Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors are fighting back but Wysocki is protected politically by Gov. Scott Walker and local Wisconsin State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) whose first public words on the proposed CAFO siting were "Quit your bitching," made to Nancy Koch, on July 19, 2012 at a special Saratoga Town Board meeting drawing 100s of people so the meeting was held at the Wisconsin Rapids Performing Arts Center.

"Your Hous [sic] Is Next," reads a threat left near the home and
on the land of a family protesting the proposed massive Wysocki
CAFO in central Wisconsin. It take a certain pathology of CAFO
owners to deliberately poison neighbors, and another pathology to
leave this type of sick threat. The note was left after the sign of a
cow (below) had the cow's head removed. Photo: Nancy Koch

Wysocki and his political allies in the GOP have nothing but contempt for the people of central Wisconsin.

"These good people are trying to protect their homes and existing lifestyle from this proposed CAFO that would surround their homes with the stink, dirt, noise, and water quality issues that come with these huge industrialized farms. Any of us would do the same to protect our own property values, and in fact, those of us living in the surrounding area will be the worse for it if this goes through. The odors from their existing CAFO in Armenia can be smelled 11 miles away in Nekoosa. How far away are you from the proposed CAFO?," writes area resident, Don Ystad in an email.

A resident of Wisconsin Rapids, in a letter to the Wood County Sheriff, references threats and vandalism on land owned by Thor Lasy—a cordial 84-year-old retired businessman with property in Wood County, who has not even taken a position on the proposed CAFO—but is a recreational enthusiast who believes a depressed area economy could become vibrant again if people could come together and promote the recreation and tourism potential of the region. (Madden, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune).

Following is Rhonda Carrell's letter of Wisconsin Rapids:

Sheriff Reichert,

I am aware that Thor Laisy has spoken with you. ...

Every time I enter a meeting that pertains to Saratoga and see city police or sheriffs deputies, I just cringe. ... We are residents of an area where a bad business plan is in the process of being executed. We have been wronged. Our lives have turned into a living hell because this will not go away. We, at our home, have been on the receiving end of so many possible acts of intimidation, I will not be able to recite them all. I have, at times, felt unsafe on my own property and keep a gun close. I am alone a lot because my husband works out of town. This has taken a major toll on my health and our lives.

1. Man threatened me at the Saratoga Town banquet hall (in the parking lot) before the first meeting pertaining to the proposed CAFO. I was circulating a petition in the parking lot pertaining to asking our Town Board to fight the proposal. I asked my husband to keep an eye on him. When he left, he got into a Wysocki truck.

2. Man threatened my life if I did not back off from opposing this project at the PAC Center in Rapids on July 17, 2012. He then went and stood at the end if the row where my family and friend were sitting and stood there the entire time.

3. The night before we submitted 43 lbs of info to the DNR as part of the EIS, I was sitting in our living room going over materials to be submitted. After 11:00 pm someone was banging on the French doors next to where I was sitting. It happened in the middle of the night on the French doors outside our bedroom. We could not locate who it was by the time we got outside. Our deck is almost 700’ off Evergreen Avenue. This was not a coincidence. No one would just stumble onto our deck.

4. We have had broken glass at the end of our driveway NUMEROUS times and roadkill twice.

5. My husband was at our mailbox parked in the ditch (not in the road at all). He heard a vehicle coming toward him, accelerating quickly, and looked up just in time to see a late model green Ford F150 4X4 supercab (identical to my husband’s truck except color different) swerving toward his car. The truck missed him by an estimated two inches. The truck had the Wysocki logo on the door. We asked around to see who it belonged to because it was not one of their field trucks and were told, at the time the incident occurred, the only green late model supercab in the fleet belonged to Louis Wysocki’s grandson.

6. Computer has been hacked. Will not type all details. If interested, I will share details. Phone also hacked via email.

7. We have had many signs & pink cows stolen as have my husband’s parents on Mill Avenue. They have had their ditch torn up many times. Their home is across the road from Wysocki field in Saratoga.

8. I have been followed several times by a Wysocki worker. Sometimes in work truck, sometimes in a different vehicle. I don’t know who he is but it is uncomfortable. He may be the same man that threatened me at the PAC & Saratoga Town Hall.

9. Someone used a shotgun to destroy a scarecrow that was wearing a Protect Wood County T-shirt displayed at the end of our driveway.

I have actually heard the Heart of Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce blamed us for the tipping over of a beautiful stone community events sign just south of the Nepco Lake bridge. I have heard the developers who own the land have repeated this untruth. WHY would anyone do that? Through a source within the DOT, I was told the developers tore it down themselves for one reason or another. I’m not clear as to who owned the sign but have been concerned about this accusation since I heard of it. This is simply NOT true.

We are here and were living our dream until all this started. We do not deserve what we have been going through. I’m certain I have left out many incidents, but I believe this is enough to help you understand something isn’t right.

Late Sunday night and into Monday morning many of our signs were damaged and torn down. One resident who will not speak up said theirs were damaged at approximately 1:20 am Monday. Whomever is doing this drops someone off by the signs/cows and the person working on signs has tools. There have been bolts, nuts and other materials used to erect the cows left on the ground after they have taken them down. This is the current description on what occurred early Monday. We are aware of 1- pink cow beheaded and 4 other anti CAFO signs on Hwy. 13 at top of 5 Mile Creek hill being thrown out in the road, 1- large pink cow at Evergreen & Hwy. 13 and also tore down the 4X8 STOP THE WYSOCKI CAFO sign & frame, 1-large pink cow at Ten Mile Creek, 1- small pink cow beat up with a hammer on 10 Mile Ave. East of Hwy. 13, 1- large pink cow beheaded & tipped over at Bell Road along Hwy. 73 aling with 2- 4X8 signs, one a painting of cupped hands holding water and on the back of that was a STOP THE WYSOCKI CAFO.

I’m told this info should be referred to Deputy Christiansen with case #15-8145 attached. If you wish to speak with me, our number is [xxx].

If you could help, please do. We have just been doing our best to live some sort of normal life in the middle of this mess.

Sincerely,

Rhonda Carrell
Wisconsin Rapids, WI 54494

County Sups Reduce Wood County to Wysockiland

Updated - As Adams County in central Wisconsin sees plummeting property values, the County implements a TIF grant for the proposed Keiser golf resort. (Mal Contends)

The idea is promoting tourism and recreation will offset the economic drag caused by the rapid decline of the paper mill industry in central Wisconsin.

It's a pay-to-play move, but TIF grants do make sense. And so does promoting tourism and recreation. (Madden, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune)

An ever-present problem is pollution caused by manure runoff.

How about Wood County?

Wood County won't make a move without the okay of Big Ag's James Wysocki whose potato operations already befoul area lakes. Wysocki is a big funder of Scott Walker.

Now, Wysocki proposes a massive Concentrated Agricultural Feeding Operation (CAFO) in central Wisconsin that is driving down property valuations and freezing economic activity.

Even Wisconsin largest daily newspaper with a rightist bent comes out editorially against runoff, pointing out the fact that Scott Walker's budget actually increases runoff, (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

"Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation’s (CAFOs) [factory farms] burden our society with an array of negative externalities [costs borne by adjacent communities]. The environmental damages that CAFO’s have caused are nearly impossible to put into a numerical figure that the average individual would be able to grasp and comprehend. The primary detrimental effects that CAFOs produce consist of water pollution, air pollution, animal welfare concerns and the mismanagement of waste," notes Joshua Yelle, native of central Wisconsin, now working in graduate school.

Most of the Wood County Board of Supervisors are 100 percent behind Wysocki and 100 percent against the community opposition to the proposed Wysocki CAFO and current aerial spraying of liquid cow manure, a highly destructive practice. (Hanson, NASA/Harvard University)

The community needs to be discouraged from intruding in public policy. It's so bad that the Wood County Board actively discourages citizen attendance at public meetings. (Mal Contends) (Madden, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune)

Even as Wysocki operations suck up area aquifers with numerous high-capacity water wells, and area lakes and streams are polluted, Wysocki wants to make the situation worse against widespread community opposition.

Wysocki doesn't care much about community sentiment though, and unfortunately for those living in Wood County neither does the Wood County Board of Supervisors.

This is a crazy public policy commitment: A choice between a massive factory farm-CAFO v. Tourism and recreation is no choice at all.

Golf, Sand and Money in Pay-to-Play Game

Golf developer Mike Keiser gives $100,000s to Republicans and Wisconsin Republicans are giving back.

From the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign: "Mike Keiser, who is a frequent, generous contributor to state and federal Republican candidates and committees and conservative causes, contributed $11,100 to Walker between February 2012 and September 2014, and $10,000 to the state Republican Party last October, about two weeks before the November general elections."

In exchange, comes news, that "Two Republican legislators are sponsoring a bill that would allow an Adams County town to give a developer, who has contributed more than $21,000 to GOP Gov. Scott Walker and the state Republican Party in recent years, cash grants or loans to build high-end golf courses. The bill would make a one-time change in state Tax Incremental District requirements to allow the town of Rome to provide direct grants or loans to Chicago businessman Mike Keiser to build up to four golf courses and lodging on about 1,500 acres of land about 15 miles south of Wisconsin Rapids. Tax Incremental Districts are created by local governments through the state Tax Incremental Finance (TIF) program, which uses tax breaks and other incentives to encourage new businesses to locate on blighted land or in economically depressed areas."

See also Golf Course Developers and Walker Contributors Want State Favors.

This explains Keiser's silence about the proposed James Wysocki Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) near Keiser's proposed resort in the Golden Sands in central Wisconsin.

Keiser's resort bombs and Adams County which has the fastest falling property tax valuations in the state would be left to hold the bag.

When Big Ag Comes to Your Community

Clean Air and Water - Fighting the James Wysocki
proposed CAFO in central Wisconsin in Saratoga
as property values plummet, and Wysocki
sucks up the area's fresh water from
high-capacity wells used in Wysocki's
potato-growing operations. Wysocki, the
model of the sociopathic industrialized
CAFO factory owner lives far away from the
devastation he inflicts on central Wisconsin.
I wonder how a sick bastard like James Wysocki
sleeps at night.

Industrial agriculture is making Americans sick and is literally killing us

Update: Big Ag and the Wisconsin DNR have crafted an emergency rule, EmR 1417, secretly sprung onto Wisconsin citizens last year, blocking citizen input into any DNR policymaking across the state. The Emergency rule also has the effect of enabling the DNR to "ignore local (read town and county) ordinances as long as state and federal environmental policies are taken into account," as noted by Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors and Jimmy Parra, Staff Attorney of Midwest Environmental Advocates.

The Wood County Board of Supervisors is considering a resolution challenging Wisconsin Emergency Rule EmR 1417 on Tuesday morning, March 17, 2015.

The Emergency Rule is set to expire March 28, 2015, and citizens are working to voice their concerns that the Rule does not become permanent. Who knew the DNR could block out citizen input with a rule?

It is clear that Scott Walker's proposed budgetary moves to move administrative law judges adjudicating citizen complaints against the DNR (for example) and the DNR itself under the purview of Walker's Department of Administration (DOA), or the Department of All as it is known in the Capitol, is simply a means of blocking Wisconsin citizens and selling out Wisconsin to Big Ag and other Walker contributors.

Any Wisconsin citizen marginally concerned about the health of drinking water and surface water who voted for Scott Walker or sat out the election just might be rethinking that vote or instance of doing nothing.
 ---
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, NASA, the World Health Organization (WHO), and medical health professionals warn time and again against the health consequences of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), now proliferating in Wisconsin as Scott Walker green-lights the destruction of the regulatory and family health protection agencies.

Public safety will have to move over for Scott Walker's presidential ambitions as Walker dismantles health protections in his quite insane budget proposal.

At the bottom of an ancient glacial lake, Mike Keiser plans a spectacular golf resort in the Golden Sands of Wisconsin in the center of the state.

Tourism, recreational and family health advocates are uniting so this beautiful region of Wisconsin can prosper in Adams, Wood, Juneau and Portage counties.

But a predator is active, a venomous monster destroying the environment and poisoning the waters: Big Ag.

Big Ag has its protectors, Wisconsin State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa in Wood County), State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay), Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin dedicated to carrying the poisoned water of Concentrated (Confined) Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) spreading like a virus.

Communities can fight back.

The citizens of the central Wisconsin region have not connected all the dots yet, but they have made substantial progress in less than three years in fighting James Wysocki's proposed dairy Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO).

In Bayfield and Ashland counties in the far north, communities are more profoundly in touch with protecting the environment and are more successfully working in enacting community ordinances to ultimately halt the operation of a proposed swine factory operation before it begins.

Lake Erie - The future of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior
if Wisconsin Republicans and Big Ag get their way
Image: Tom Archer

In Kewaunee, Brown and Door counties in northeast Wisconsin, once a thriving tourist area, you won't find many people on the beaches of Lake Michigan in the Door Peninsula any more. The 'carrying capacities' of the Green Bay and Fox River Valley watersheds have been exceeded.

You will find nearly one in three aquifers unfit to drink in Kewaunee County, a common state of affairs.

You'll hear stories of children poisoned and hospitalized by Ecoli from local liquid manure runoff from Big Ag operations. People—and this is astonishing that Big Ag's factory owners fail to realize this—do not like their children poisoned and their aquifers and surface waters destroyed as a growing oxygen-deprived Dead Zone in Lake Michigan looms as Spring approaches. At the present rate of CAFO proliferation and pollution, Lake Michigan will rival Lake Erie and its Dead Zone in the future. 

E.coli - The new face of America's Dairy State. From the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Know what billions of tons of liquid manure dumped annually does to water? This summer, take a small glass, fill it up with water from Lake Mendota, Lake Michigan, Lake Winnebago or Nepco Lake and drink up. Just have the location of the nearest poison center on hand because you will need it.

You can find the empirical, scientific case against dumping pathogens, nitrates and phosphorus into the environment via billions of tons of liquid cow manure vectored annually. Reading up is much safer than drinking up.

Mike Keiser's plans for a golf resort in the Golden Sands are going to run head-on into the pathology of Big Ag, and if Keiser is thinking strategically about his golf resort project, his investment syndicate had better join the fight against James Wysocki and proposed giant poisoning operation a few miles north of Keiser's planned resort as Wysocki calls the shots from Custer or Plover or whatever gated community from which he takes refuge from the poison he delivers to his factories' neighbors.

Below, Gordon Stevenson, Wisconsin DNR runoff chief from 2001-11, delivers a Feb. presentation in Bayfield County with scholars, farmers and activists fighting a proposed massive swine Iowa-based Reicks View CAFO: