Don't Look Back, Saying 'We Should Have Done Something'

Big Ag - The Report from the Dairy State

In Wisconsin under Scott Walker's reign, the range of issues applicable to this headline is wide.

Don Ystad of Nekoosa in northern Adams county is referring to the proposed massive Wysocki Golden Sands, industrialized diary, the CAFO factory model.

Writes Ystad:

As many are reporting, the practice of confining many thousands of cows in a CAFO and then spreading the millions of gallons of manure is ruining our ground and surface water.  In Kewaunee County, with its 16 dairy CAFOs, one third of private drinking water wells are unusable because of manure runoff  from the CAFOs. These are not people attacking family farmers, they are citizens reporting on the resulting environmental damage that occurs from these industrial farms. Here in Rome and Saratoga, we are a population-dense recreational/residential area facing the same kind of issues if the Golden Sands Dairy CAFO is approved by the very same DNR under question.  If you are not actively alarmed over this possibility, you ought to be. Don't be one of 'those people' saying afterwards, 'why didn't someone do something?'

See this report for the crisis ignored, and abetted by Scott Walker and his band of polluters: A Report by Socially Responsible Agricultural Project in Partnership with Family Farm Defenders and Kewaunee Citizens Advocating Responsible Environmental Stewardship.

Writes Kimberlee Wright, J.D., Executive Director of the Midwest Environmental Advocates, Inc.:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The industrialization and corporate consolidation of dairy production has exploded nationwide over the last few decades, driving many small family dairy operations out of business. The total number of U.S. farms with dairy cows fell 88 percent between 1970 and 2006, while the number of dairy operations with more than 2,000 cows grew 104.6 percent between 2000 and 2006 (MacDonald, et al., 2007). In Wisconsin alone, the number of farms with dairy operations has fallen from 150,000 to 10,500 since 1944 (Mueller, 2014)

Kewaunee County, Water Advocates Petition EPA for Emergency Action

Clean water advocates are going
to the feds for our children
 and their children and beyond,
as citizens of Kewaunee County, Wisconsin
 risk their health by drinking water
from the faucet

Update: See also Groups ask EPA to investigate pollution causes by cattle farms (Bergquist, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
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"The people of Wisconsin can’t keep fighting our own state government to get the help and protections they need to be sure their drinking water is safe," said Kimberlee Wright, Midwest Environmental Advocates’ Executive Director. "The water pollution problem in Kewaunee County is so serious that we have to ask the federal government to do what our state government can’t or won’t."

Clean water advocates are going to the feds for our children and their children and beyond.

They are petitioning the Environmental Protection Agency for emergency action in a 38-page document detailing the dirty secret in northeast Wisconsin, central and eastern Wisconsin and spreading that may virtually destroy Wisconsin's tourism and recreation industry not to mention poisoning our waters, on the surface and below.
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Petition for Emergency Action Pursuant to the Safe Drinking Water Act, 42 U.S.C. §300i, to Protect the Citizens of Kewaunee County, Wisconsin from Imminent and Substantial Endangerment to Public Health Caused By Nitrate and Bacteria Contamination of an Underground Source of Drinking Water, and Pursuant to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, 42 U.S.C. § 9604, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, 42 U.S.C. § 6973 ________
Submitted on Behalf of Petitioners Midwest Environmental Defense Center, Environmental Integrity Project, Midwest Environmental Advocates, Clean Wisconsin, Clean Water Action Council of Northeastern Wisconsin, and Kewaunee CARES

Scott Walker's Contributors' Gift: Neurotoxins, Carcinogens, MRSA, Ecoli, Listeria, Salmonella ...

It takes a long list to include all the toxins dumped into Wisconsin waters (including drinking-water aquifers) by the special interests of the concentrated agricultural feeding operations (CAFOs), the Dairy Business Association and the Frac Sand Industry (VanEgeren, Capital Times).

Under virtually no regulation (the DNR has to be ordered by judges to do their job after Scott Walker took over), and with $Millions lavished onto mostly (but not all) Republicans by these special interests, Wisconsin has become Number One in CAFOs under the politicized regulatory environment engendered by Walker, and Number One in Frac Sand operations, as communities' health in nearby regions are imperiled.

Writes VanEgeren:

"Special interests have pretty much crippled the ability of DNR staff to do their jobs," Kimberlee Wright of the Midwest Environmental Advocates said. "Sound science is being overruled … leaving citizens very much at risk." ...

It would be nice to hear Wisconsin politicians bellow repeatedly: Special interests will not trump the health and environment of Wisconsin.

But if Scott Walker is to be believed, God wants special interests to operate with the help of government: "I like to say thanks to God and the glaciers" for leaving behind the right kind of sand in Wisconsin, Walker said last year, (Ivey, Capital Times) publically calling for more frac sand production with no mention of the health consequences.

Maybe God feels that a child in Kewaunee County Wisconsin should not able wash out a cut with water drawn from the faucet, washing out a child's scrape or cut, an act that no responsible parent would do in that county where 16 CAFOs have devastated the groundwater of a former tourism destination, where CAFOs put profit over public health, Lake Michigan and children.

I asked Bob Clarke of the Friends of the Central Sands how he felt about an ad law judge ruling last week the DNR has the right and obligation to require groundwater monitoring at the New Chester Dairy LLC, Wisconsin's largest CAFO owned by Milk Source LLC, in Adams County.

Milk Source complained the ruling is "unfair" using reasoning that escapes this writer.

Bob Clarke replied: "It is unfortunate that ensuring safe drinking water would be viewed as unfair'. What is unfair is the fact that ordinary citizens must resort to the courts to force those entrusted with the protection of our health and natural resources to do their job. The neighbors didn't invite them to ruin their water. What is unfair is that we have to deal with this mess at all."

Point taken.