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!!!

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.

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.

Judge Sends Wisconsin DNR and DoJ Memo, as Polluters Benefit by Aggressive Work by GOP

Scott Walker, Four Supreme Court Justices and Wisconsin Legislators Are True Friends to Wisconsin Polluters

Following the politicization of the Wisconsin Dept. of Justice (DoJ) and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) by the Republican Party, expectations the DoJ and DNR will protect Wisconsin surface and groundwater have evaporated under the administration of Gov. Scott Walker.

Infants and young children sent into intensive care after drinking faucet water in Brown and Door counties, a massive regulatory failure in Kewaunee County resulting in 30 percent of tested water wells contaminated by liquid cow manure by large industrialized dairy operations in the area in a massive regulatory failure, have led residents in northeastern Wisconsin to expect little from environmental agencies charged with protecting their families' health from polluters.

In a breaking development, Wisconsin Administrative Law Judge, Jeffrey D. Boldt, who found a "massive regulatory failure" in October 2014 in a ruling that "ordered the DNR to modify a discharge permit for Kinnard Farms," wrote a letter to the Chief Legal Counsel of the Wisconsin DNR alerting the attorney to a body of case law and legal precedent.

Residents in northeastern Wisconsin are still shocked from developments last week when an area polluting industrial dairy—a CAFO or (Concentrated (Confined) Agricultural Feeding Operation)—Kinnard Farms Inc. in Kewaunee County, was given carte blanche by the DNR and DoJ to expand and pollute. (Bergquist, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

"Kewaunee County has become a focal point of opposition of large dairy farms because of numerous instances of polluted wells in the area. Also, the county has areas of karst geography, which is formed by the breakdown of rocks and contains underground drainage systems. This type of landscape makes it easier for manure to seep through soil and enter the aquifer," notes Bergquist.

Protecting water as a Public Trust in Wisconsin is part of the state Constitution, implemented by statutes and rules; and case law which is part of a Republican project to erode water protection for the benefits of water polluters by GOP-funded jurists.

Industrialized agriculture has benefited by the open corruption of the four Republican-affiliated members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, as seen in a major environmental law case in 2013. (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Republican legislators and Scott Walker are moving to enact laws abandoning the Public Trust Doctrine protecting water.

The end-run move by the DNR and DoJ on behalf of Kinnard Farms Inc., "circumventing the October 2014 Administrative Law Judge's decision that the agency does have the authority under state law to include and animal unit limit and groundwater monitoring requirement in the industrial livestock operation's permit," to protect the region's water is an audacious legal-political maneuver, as noted by the Midwestern Environmental Advocates. A court challenge in state circuit court is expected.

Kinnard Farms Inc. would "become the fifth-largest dairy in Wisconsin and would produce more than 70 million gallons of manure a year," to the bewilderment of area residents. (Seely, WisconsinWatch)

An April 2015 letter sent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by numerous environmental groups "... contained evidence that Kinnard Farms Inc.'s practice of spreading millions of gallons of liquid manure on local fields every year is contributing to bacteria and nitrate pollution in ground water, drinking water wells, and Casco Creek, which drains into Lake Michigan. The groups are urging officials to investigate further and require Kinnard to cease and clean up any unlawful pollution.

"Town of Lincoln residents deserve to have the long-standing pollution in their community addressed, and enforcement action taken against one of the known contributors to the widespread contamination taking place in this karst region in Kewaunee County. This contamination has a direct impact upon citizen's accessibility to clean drinking water, and is accompanied by the threats to human health and severe quality of life issues. Rural residents live daily with the threats of contaminated water in their homes, the financial stresses of buying bottled water, and the continued costs of well testing, which is a financial burden to many, while state and federal regulatory agencies do not aid in assistance," said Lynn Utesch, family farmer and member of Kewaunee CARES.

Wisconsin Administrative Law Judge Jeffrey D. Boldt's letter is reproduced below:
---
JEFFREY D. BOLDT
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGE

September 17, 2015

Timothy A. Andryk, Chief Legal Counsel
Department of Natural Resources
Office of Legal Services
PO Box 7921
Madison, WI 53707-7921

In the Matter of the Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit No. WI-0059536-03-0 (WPDES Permit) Issued to Kinnard Farms, Inc., Town of Lincoln, Kewaunee County

Case No. IH-12-071

Dear Mr. Andryk:

I am in receipt of the Department of Natural Resources' (DNR) Order dated September 11, 2015, in the above-captioned matter.

While the DNR accepted the legal basis of the DHA condition relating to onsite groundwater monitoring, the DNR concluded that: "The Off-Site Monitoring Condition is not explicitly required or explicitly permitted by statute or by a rule." This statement appears to conflict with longstanding legal precedent apparently not considered by the Department of Justice. There is no reference to any review of case law in Mr. Lennigton's August 18th , 2015 correspondence.

In Maple LeafFarms v. DNR, 2001 Wis. App. 170, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals held that the Wisconsin legislature has "clearly and unambiguously" given the DNR specific authority to regulate off-site landspreading activities from a CAFO that impacts groundwater. The court held:

Therefore, because a CAFO's overapplication of manure to fields can be a discharge to groundwater under the statute, we determine that the DNR has authority to issue permits regulating Maple Leafs off-site landspreading operations. Under our analysis of WIS. STAT. §§ 283.001 and 283.31, we conclude that the legislature has conferred authority on the DNR to regulate discharges, in the form of over application of manure, by CAFOs regardless of whether the discharge occurs on land owned by the CAFO. Id. 26

Further, the decision specifically holds that a CAFO includes the off-site landspreading areas.

[A] CAFO includes not only the ground where the animals are confined, but also the equipment that distributes and/or applies the animal waste produced at the confinement area to fields outside the confinement area. Any overapplication of manure by Maple Leaf through its landspreading activities would then be a discharge, either because of runoff to surface waters or percolation of pollutants to groundwater. Because the off-site croplands are used by Maple Leaf to dispose of waste produced at its on-site facility, the permit conditions imposed on Maple Leaf to enforce groundwater protection standards are as applicable to Maple Leaf's off-site landspreading operation as they are on-site. Therefore, because a CAFO's overapplication of manure to fields can be a discharge to groundwater under the statute, we determine that the DNR has authority to issue permits regulating Maple Leafs off-site landspreading operations. Id. 26

As the Maple LeafFarms court concluded:

The WPDES statutory prohibition on discharges of pollutants from CAFOs would be of little value if the owners of the CAFOs could avoid responsibility merely by placing those pollutants onto the ground of third parties without regard to rates and quantities so that the pollutants would predictably leach into groundwater or runoff to surface waters. Id. 35 http://www.wicourts.gov/ca/opinions/00/pdf/00-1389 .pdf

The Maple Leaf Farms case was well known to the parties. Maple Leaf Farms is even cited several times in the bound version of the Wisconsin statutes. Further, the underlying DHA decision in that case was even cited by Kinnard Farms in its June 10, 2014, Proposed Conclusions of Law, at p. 16. I regret not including it in my Order as a Conclusion of Law, but no party made the argument now relied upon by the DNR. While Kinnard cited Maple Leaf Farms in its Proposed Conclusions of Law, it did not cite § 227.10(2m). Id.

The more general provisions of Act 21 relating to Chapter 227 cited by the Department of Justice have not specifically addressed the longstanding Wisconsin precedent that "groundwater protection standards are as applicable to... a CAFO's "off-site landspreading operation as they are on-site." There thus appears to be no conflict between Act 21 and the offsite monitoring condition in the DHA Order. Rather, the same legal basis that applies to onsite monitoring, which the Department accepted as not in conflict with Act 21, applies to off-site landspreading areas as well.

While there appears to be no legal basis to distinguish between on-site and off-site monitoring, there may well be some practical differences. The DHA Order therefore anticipated any problems with the consent of off-site landowners by making their participation voluntary and also specifically giving the DNR discretion to determine if such a regimen was practicable.

Because I am aware of no such precedent relating to the other disputed condition, relating to establishing a maximum number of animal units, I will let my decision speak for itself on that issue. That would have been my strong preference on both issues.

I am writing this letter not to advocate for my decision but solely to fulfill any ethical obligation I may have as an adjudicator to make a tribunal aware of precedent necessary for a fair resolution of a case. I also speak only for myself and not for the Division of Hearings and Appeals (DHA).

Sincerely,

Jeffrey D. Boldt

Administrative Law Judge
c: Attorney Daniel P. Lennington, Department of Justice

Secretary Cathy Stepp, Department of Natural Resources
Attorney Sarah Williams, Midwest Environmental advocates
Attorney Jordan Hemaidan, Michael Best & Friedrich
Attorney Jane Landretti, Department of Natural Resources
Administrator Brian Hayes, Division of Hearings and Appeals

Scott Walker—Polluting CAFOs, Full Speed Ahead

As a desperate Scott Walker is running back and forth from Iowa and South Carolina to save a faltering campaign for the presidency, Walker's DNR has a message for polluters: Open for pollution.

"A 5,000-cow dairy has been proposed in Green County’s Sylvester Township by the Tuls family," notes Kara O'Connor of the Wisconsin Farmers Union. (AgriView) Green County is located in southern Wisconsin, just south of Dane County.

Anyone ever hear of the Lower Sugar River and its tributaries? Green County Defending our Farmland has and the people are rightfully concerned about surface and ground water.

In northeastern Wisconsin, in Kewaunee County, more manure vectoring into well water is on the way (Door County Daily News).

In Wood and Bayfield counties, proposed massive CAFOs are "in review," (Wisconsin DNR).

This is French for, hang on, the locals are giving us trouble, we need to string them along for a while.

The CAFO model is to apply for dozens of high capacity water wells, mix the water with cow shit, and send it back in liquidized form by spraying the toxin-filled mess through the air into area waters and land.

Legislation further codifying Big Ag's right to pollute is likely to hit the news soon, authored by polluting CAFO's best friend, State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) from central Wisconsin, who after his con game and fronting for polluters was criticized here threatened this writer a libel suit, before being told truth is an absolute defense against libel actions and backing down.

Krug faced further criticism in Wood County, and still does.

Stay tuned. And enjoy what clean water we have now.

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.

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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.