Wisconsin Dairy Polluters Get Green Light to Expand and Pollute, as Milk Is Dumped Across Nation

Wisconsin homeowners, businesses and communities are not counted as stakeholders as the Republican-Party pushes to give factory farm owners the legal power to give themselves pollution permits, (Verburg, Wisconsin State Journal).

The audacious move would help transform already-weak state protections of clean and safe water as the Republican project to disempower the Department of Natural Resources, (DNR), continues, (Bergquist, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), (Verburg, Wisconsin State Journal).

This pollution regime effectively gives decision-making power to industrialized agriculture, CAFOs, and nobody else.

As Donald Ystad of Rome, Wisconsin, in Adams County writes:

The 'social license to operate' is defined by Gunningham, Kagan and Thornton as 'the demands on and expectations for a business enterprise that emerge from neighborhoods, environmental groups, community members, and other elements of the surrounding civil society.' Social license is an element of corporate social responsibility. It is premised on the idea that while regulators grant permits, it is communities that grant permission. It’s that 'handshake' that occurs between an incoming business and the people around it, the agreement that the business proposition is good for everyone (Ystad, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune).

Under Republican initiatives, Neighborhoods, environmental groups and community members are no longer regarded as possessing status worthy of a handshake, much less consultation and approval.

The Republican and polluter push for more CAFOs, that are given the power to pollute with no public input, comes as the mammoth milk glut continues.

As noted here, even as the corporations' dairy CAFOs become ever more brazen and ambitious to transform America into a colonial entity in which land and air exist legally for the use of corporate power, the ideological demand constraint on many Americans persists.

Wisconsin Lake Communties Fight Big Ag Polluters

Our plentiful Wisconsin surface waters include three lakes in northern Adams county, Lakes Arrowhead, Camelot and Sherwood located around the town of Rome in central Wisconsin.

The lakes are beautiful, and many a retired grandparent has their grand-kids over for fun, recreation, the simple joy of watching children playing.

Against this is Big Ag that without conscience pollutes, depletes and poisons the lakes, imperiling a region Wisconsin as a state should be protecting and nourishing.

Residents of Rome have taken issue with this writer's being too harsh in describing what Big Ag is inflicting. I get it, I speak for myself.

It's difficult to market a region as an attraction for tourism and recreation as Wisconsin Republicans are working against you, and water.

If industrialized agriculture polluters and its protectors are not stopped, there is not going to be a Rome, Wisconsin. Ask the folks who live on Long Lake in Waushara County in central Wisconsin, (Bergquist, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Big Ag is politically protected. Gov. Scott Walker (R) and State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) are on the side of the polluters who sell out decent, hard-working families who moved to central Wisconsin the last decades for peace—a small home on a lake, paradise in central Wisconsin.

Here's the latest communication from Rome resident, Don Ystad:

Interesting timing, after a TriLakes annual meeting attended by 100 people agreeing unanimously that we need qualified help in addressing our water issues, this article should appear in the Milwaukee Journal discussing the water level issues in our central sands area. It amplifies the difference in attitudes of an agriculture industry intent on expansion compared with citizens trying to protect their lakes, streams and drinking water wells.  As you reflect on your holiday weekend up here and the condition of our water, please support TriLakes in their efforts to urge our town to co-sponsor a citizen meeting with knowledgeable speakers to understand our water issues and begin determining a course of action to clean up our lakes and protect them.

Ystad references Lee Bergquist's important series appearing in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel this week.

Bergquist's work is a must-read, because clean and safe water in Wisconsin under Republican rule is going to become a memory.

Writes Bergquist:

In a major policy shift, the [Republican-led] Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said on June 10 that it will no longer place restrictions on high-capacity wells, or deny applications for new wells, by first evaluating the cumulative effect they could have on the ecosystem.

A leading Wisconsin water scientist said the new approach is a step backward.

'The frustrating thing for me is that it puts us back on a footing of an unplanned future for water use,' said Ken Bradbury, director of the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. 'In other words, it’s sort of everyone for themselves again.'

The DNR changed its review process after receiving a legal opinion from Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, who concluded the agency did not have the authority to consider the compounding effects of such water use. He was responding to a request from Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and a GOP-dominated legislative committee.

'It was all a predetermined, preordained strategy by the attorney general, the DNR, the governor and Robin Vos and the Legislature,' said Carl Sinderbrand, a Madison attorney who has litigated cases involving high-capacity wells. 'They wanted to prevent the DNR from regulating wells.'

Clean and safe water in Wisconsin, this is one resource that if ignored will go away.

Study: Wisconsin Trout Streams, Lakes, Rivers, Grounwater Being Sucked Dry by Big Ag

Those factory farms you smell on rural Wisconsin highways.

The stench is the best part.

Big agricultural interests are killing Wisconsin surface waters and aquifers with toxins, and the withdrawal of massive amounts of water by high capacity wells drawing over 100,000 gallons of fresh water per day are sucking Wisconsin dry, a new scientific study concludes.

A one-two punch to Wisconsin residents.

Lee Bergquist in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has the story:

The results of the state-funded research may also provide clues on how large-scale groundwater withdrawals are impacting streams, rivers and lakes elsewhere, according to scientists.

Groundwater issues have become increasingly contentious in Wisconsin, especially in the 1.75 million acre Central Sands region — home to a large potato and vegetable growing industry. 

Of course. Bergquist is reporting on major scientific research of water depletion. As the study pertains to Big Ag polluters and its Republican protectors, the political culture in Wisconsin is: Tell it to someone who cares.