We The People have the power to change what no longer serves us but we must stand together; unified in our message that we will exercise our collective power to protect our rights to clean water, clean air and a good quality of life. It's time our elected officials in Madison decide to stand with us, the citizens of Wisconsin, and help us push back against a greedy and immoral industry that is poisoning our rural communities.
Vectoring millions of tons of liquid cow manure into aquifers and Wisconsin surface waters, including the two largest Great Lakes is "medieval," notes Gordon Stevenson, Wisconsin's former DNR runoff chief (2001-2011)
A wide coalition of Wisconsin citizens across the political spectrum will rally in Madison Nov. 7 at the state
capitol at 1:00 p.m. this coming Saturday.
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."
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.
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.
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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.
Tourism, recreational and family health advocates are uniting so this
beautiful region of Wisconsin can prosper in Adams, Wood, Juneau and Portage counties.
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.
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'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:
Big Ag Is Willing to Accept Devastation of Wisconsin Waters as Costs of Doing Business
Update: The concept of a 'global economy'" while our local economies and rural America continues to be impoverished and desecrated by the industrial model of agriculture is devastating. The hard core irony that we are to drink more milk and eat more cheese - while this industry pollutes and pillages our communities' natural resources, homes, and health is beyond comprehension. All over the nation the scourge of the factory farm model is being pushed, shamelessly, including by our agencies that were originally designed to protect citizenry and our natural resources [DATCP and DNR].
In disgust, Nancy Utesch, Kewaunee County Wisconsin
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To listen the public relations statements coming from the Dairy Business Association (DBA), all Concentrated Agricultural Feeding Operation (CAFO) owners care about are hiring workers, protecting the water and helping tourism and recreation.
With politicians like Wisconsin State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) in their pocket CAFO owners can say anything and know corrupt politicians have their back and will amplify their message.
Anybody who thinks CAFO owners are going to back down from their business model destroying Wisconsin streams, lakes, rivers, and aquifers are kidding you.
Rob Schultz has the story in this morning's Wisconsin State Journal, "Dairy farms lead state to record ag profits in 2014."
With the CAFO model working so well for massive Dairy operations, the model has been adopted by Swine operations, and an out-of-state operation wants to site a swine CAFO in Bayfield County, some 10 miles from Lake Superior, 10 percent of the world's fresh water.
Far-northern Wisconsin clean water activists won't back down against the CAFO water and air polluters or the proposed GTAC mine water and air polluters: "One anti-mining activist said she isn’t worried 'about getting a ticket
for trespassing and would gladly lay down her life if it would stop the
mine or the [proposed Bayfield] CAFO,' a sentiment shared by a number of other participants." (Mullen, Ashland Daily Press)
Bayfield County, Wisconsin - Proposed
site of new CAFO that would vector millions
of tons of liquid cow manure into Lake Superior
A water-polluting CAFO is planned in Bayfield County in Wisconsin's most northern county that juts out into Lake Superior (Mullen, The Daily Press), the massive Great Lake that will absorb much of the liquid cow manure discharges with predictably tragic consequences
Corporate 'CAFO' entities have largely replaced the small family farm in America's Dairyland with catastrophic consequences.
Pathogens in millions of tons of liquid cow manure annually are being vectored into Wisconsin rivers, lakes and aquifers and the solution by the Scott Walker administration and his Big Ag campaign funders is to accelerate the destruction.
Wisconsin is approaching the point where swimming in rivers and lakes will become an exercise in risking your very health as the carrying capacities of liquid cow manure in major geologic regions in central and eastern Wisconsin have been exceeded with severe contamination of drinking water.
The abandonment of beaches on Lake Michigan in the summer is now common in northeastern Wisconsin as Ecoli and other pathogens make the tourism and recreation industry of Wisconsin imperiled and health concerns from the water in Kewaunee County has become so bad that a full one of three tested water wells are too contaminated to draw safe drinking water and parents have to use bottled water for such simple family concerns as washing out a child's scrape or minor cut.
Meanwhile, with massive Concentrated Agricultural Feeding Operations (CAFOs) proliferating, the northern part of Wisconsin has been spared the siting of CAFOs partially because of protected national forests.
Last month comes news that a CAFO is planned in Bayfield County (Town of Eileen) in Wisconsin's most northern county that juts out into Lake Superior (Mullen, The Daily Press), the massive Great Lake that will absorb much of the liquid cow manure discharge with predictably tragic consequences.
Educational and clean water groups are mobilizing and establishing allies with other clean water activists as the political conspiracy of silence is leading to the great waters of Wisconsin becoming dangerous and polluted as Big Ag pockets the money in exchange for the health of our grandchildren's clean and safe water and the bagging of money via Big Ag by Wisconsin politicians led by Scott Walker as he sounds off about running for president.
Mary Burke had this to say about directing toxins into Wisconsin lakes, rivers, streams and aquifers: Dead silence.
When it comes to the health of Wisconsin waters and the people of Wisconsin, silence is not golden, it's deadly.
A few weeks back a typical dullard politician, State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Wisconsin Rapids), threatened me with a libel suit for pointing how his corrupt policies [Krug doesn't make a move without an okay from the Party] are destroying the lifeblood of the Central Sands by the vectoring of toxins in liquid cow manure into the region's waters.
Krug backed off of course from his ill-advised threat, as every coward from a lightweight like Krug to a heavyweight like Michael Best and Friedrich's, (LLP) David A. Krass (representing Dairy Business Association (DBA) interests) do when confronted with facts.
Special delivery of liquid cow manure to Wisconsin streams and lakes -
Courtesy of Scott Krug, Scott Walker and the Dairy Business Association
[Notwithstanding Krug's public reversal on the proposed Wysocki CAFO in mid-August]
The truth is Scott Walker's transformation of the independent Department of Natural Resources into a pollution-friendly arm of the Walker administration is a betrayal of several protections in the Wisconsin Constitution (emphatically so of the Public Trust Doctrine) of our "more than 15,000 inland lakes, 33,000 miles of rivers and streams, 5.3 million acres of wetlands, 471,329 acres of state forests, and a location alongside the Mississippi River, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior." (Jason J. Czarnezki, Marquette Law Review)
Equally true is that Mary Burke has to this point been silent on Walker's betrayal, despite the widespread belief, likely true, that Ms. Burke is as appalled as the folks in Kewaunee, Wood , Adams and Iron and Ashland counties.
Burke has made a political calculation out of fear of Walker and the DBA, and deceives the Wisconsin people with her silence every bit as Scott Walker does with his convoluted lies.
Other folks in Wisconsin are more candid, and not afraid.
Donald Ystad of Nekoosa and Rome: "A sympathetic county employee, who says we may well win the fight against the proposed Wysocki dairy CAFO, but Adams County should look to the south of Rome, along the Highway 13 corridor, all the way down to Adams-Friendship where a dairy industry gone wild may see their next opportunity. East and south of Dyracuse Mound (Motorcycle Recreation Area) there is nothing but pine forests and scrub, very few people, and the much-sought-after aquifer that underlies the Central Sands. That's something that should scare the heck out of Adams county residents as if they didn't have enough to worry about farther east in Richfield near Highway 51 (I-39). Holy smokes, where does it end? Is he predicting another Kewaunee, with dairy CAFOs stacked up all the way down to the Dells? Think about it next time you drive south through Big Flats on Hwy 13 to Adams-Friendship and beyond to the Dells. Then think about the (Walker)administration's desire to further expand dairy business in Wisconsin. I sure hope he's wrong."
Raiders' Jack Tatum hits Sammy White in Super Bowl XI in Most Vicious Hit
in Super Bowl History in 1977
Think of the Oakland Raiders' Jack Tatum hitting the Vikings' Sammy White in Super Bowl XI. (pictured at right), the scariest hit in Super Bowl history.
That's the political impact Mary Burke needs to inflict on Scott Walker and Walker's DNR to move the folks in Waushara, Portage, Wood, Adams, Juneau, and Kewaunee counties, for example, to vote for her to defend their children's health; their drinking water; and Wisconsin lakes, rivers, and streams.
People care about drinking water (duh), and about Wisconsin tourism and recreation, but Mary Burke, outside of a couple of hits in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin State Journal refuses to sell it: Scott Walker is pathological in destroying Wisconsin's waters. He simply doesn't care about the damage inflicted onto the environment or people of Wisconsin through his policies.
The Wisconsin DNR has this to say about Wisconsin's lakes: "It's easy to fall in love with Wisconsin's 15,000 lakes. Breathtaking scenery and
beautiful wildlife provide the backdrop along thousands of miles of shoreline, where
Wisconsin residents and our visitors can fish, boat, swim or just relax and enjoy
the peaceful atmosphere."
Bullshit, or more precisely dairy cow shit as runoff and other vectoring of wastewater are turning Wisconsin lakes into biohazards to the utter inaction of Wisconsin politicians.
Why would an Illinois tourist (or any tourist) want to come to Wisconsin, when Minnesota is committed to protecting their lakes, and in Wisconsin both candidates for governor are too afraid of the Dairy Business Association to defend the water?
We know that Mary Burke cares about the environment -- so why isn't she acting on these sentiments while running for governor?
If Burke has a problem being motivated by old Super Bowl footage, think of the girl who almost died from ecoli in Kewaunee in northeast Wisconsin. Her family won't forget.
Now, Kewaunee has vast well contamination, dead zones, and poisoned aquifers that resemble third-world countries' drinking water.
'There's no one on the beach anymore.'
Consider Wisconsin lakes and the image at the right: "Do not Swim." It's a hell of new tourism slogan, I'll give that to Mary Burke and Scott Walker.
Myself, I getting more pissed hearing news from wonderful people like Patt Pisellini and Donald Ystad of northern Adams County that they cannot have their grandchildren over for swimming at their lake homes because literally they fear for their grandchildren's lives if the children were to accidentally swallow lake water while swimming.
The M-word Is MOO as Big Ag and Its Political Cover Destroy Wisconsin Waters - May 2014: 556 Water Wells Are Tested; 30 Percent of Wells Are UNDRINKABLE
- Nobody is on the beaches anymore today. Trout streams are dying or gone -
Many in Wisconsin know the story of the families in Kewaunee County in northeast Wisconsin and the ecoli contamination in 2004 from a Concentrated Agricultural Feeding Operation (CAFO) that leaked liquid cow manure, hospitalized many, and nearly killed several children.
Today, water aquifers are contaminated with virus, bacteria, and other pathogens typically found in third-world countries—bad for tourism and recreation; horrible for the environment; and tragic for Wisconsin families who are afraid of their children brushing their teeth or washing out a small cut or scrape with water from a faucet.
The "carrying capacities" of the Green Bay and Fox River Valley watersheds have been exceeded, warns Gordon Stevenson, Chief of Runoff Management for Wisconsin DNR (2001-2011). And that goes for the Golden Sands region in central Wisconsin as well.
'How do you know that? How do we quantify empirically the carrying capacity of a region,' I asked Stevenson over an early August breakfast in Madison.
"Look at the water," replied Stevenson firmly. "Measure for pathogens, oxygen levels; and inspect the topography of the region."
Stevenson, a rigorous empiricist to the point of being turgid, said Wisconsin will eventually see "dead zones" in lakes become dead lakes because of oxygen deprivation and toxic pathogen saturation.
Even as Scott Walker, along with every Republican and way-too many Democrats, acclaim the 30-20-Initiative, market-driven, setting targets for yields and profits for Wisconsin Diary operations, existing 'nutrient management plans' are a disgrace and are a guarantee for turning Wisconsin lakes, streams, ponds, and aquifers into dead zones and potentially deadly zones.
Wood, Adams, Juneau, Portage and Waushara counties in central Wisconsin are on a trajectory that residents and scientists agree can be changed from where Kewaunee is now and the direction in which Kewaunee is racing ahead; as politicians and the DNR do NOTHING with numerous CAFO permits pending and Scott Walker promising swift action on moving the permits forward.
