May 18, 2016

Anti-CAFO Group Blasts Wood County Board in Central Wisconsin

To many outside of the Midwest, consideration of pathogen-laden cow manure vectored into the environment may appear a topic of pedestrian concern for rural America.

It's not.

The consequences of dumping millions of tons of cow manure—hazardous waste including bacterial, viral, and parasitic fecal pathogens—into the environment are devastating America's great waterways, the Great Lakes, even the oceans beginning at the Gulf of Mexico, as well as poisoning children,(Yelle, Mal Contends), (Devlin, Green Bay Press Gazette; Lundstrom, Door County Pulse; Sustain Rural Wisconsin Network; Duhigg, New York Times; Clean Water Council of Northeast Wisconsin).

A united coalition of groups fighting a massive proposed Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) or factory farm in central Wisconsin is blasting its local government, the Wood County Board for abandoning the health of Wood County, in favor of the wealth of Big Ag.

Unfortunately, the Wood County Board Chair, Lance Priml, is politically beholden to Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin, and manifestly not concerned about the citizens of Wood and surrounding counties.

Reports Karen Madden, (Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune):

For four years, residents from southern Wood County have been speaking up and imploring the County Board members to do something to protect the area's water from a proposed large-scale dairy, said Brian Hamm of Saratoga. The proposed concentrated animal feeding operation, known as a CAFO, is one of the biggest land transformations in Wood County's history, and it sits on one of the areas of the state most susceptible to groundwater contamination, Hamm said.

'Yet, we sit here four years later, and you've done nothing,' Hamm said during Tuesday's Wood County Board meeting. 'You have failed us; you've embarrassed yourselves, and you should know better.'

Across Wisconsin, citizen groups continue the fight against Big Ag's poisoning and pollution costs inflicted onto society.

Big Ag and its protectors,' such as local State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa, Wisconsin), reply is: Tough shit.

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