Mass Rally for Clean Water Planned for Wisconsin State Capitol, Oct 22

Rally and party at the Madison, Wisconsin Capitol on Oct 22,
Saturday from 10 a.m. to Noon, and after

We are people fighting to protect our homes, our water, and quality of life from an industry with a horrid track record of polluting rural communities

Rally and party at the Madison, Wisconsin Capitol on Oct 22, Saturday from 10 a.m. to Noon, and after.

We're fighting for clean and safe water from the biological, chemical, and economic attack from industrialized ag factories.

Our water, air and a healthy environment now savaged by Concentrated (Confined) Agricultural Feeding Operations (CAFOs), an industrialized and massively polluting corporate farming model adopted by big agriculture against popular opposition.

From Farms Not Factories:

We are at a crossroads in Wisconsin. Our water, air and quality of life is threatened by industrial agriculture and its factory farming. You only have to look at Kewaunee County and their polluted wells; the DNR's incorporation of Attorney General Brad Schimel’s opinion on the cumulative impacts of high capacity wells; Midwest Environmental Advocates Petition for Corrective Action; or the Legislative Audit Bureau's report on the DNR's wastewater permitting and enforcement to see that the CAFO way of doing business is causing harm across this state.

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.

Hitting Wisc Communities for Unwanted Products by Polluting CAFOs Is Not Worth It

Why would anyone consider imperiling Wisconsin communities for the profits of corporate ag, while destroying small farmers, depleting our water and polluting municipalities so badly, families are being driven out of their homes?

Politicians do it for the money, and the money.

The same with CAFOs, using corporate ag's anti-community business model, they do it for the money.

The hell with everyone else.

Your children poisoned? Too bad.  Your home uninhabitable? Breaks my heart.

Got a call from an old friend. He told me liquid manure spreading is so bad, he can't open his windows. He lives in Door County.

Big Ag is destroying Wisconsin, and Republican politicians from Joel Kitchens to Scott Krug to Scott Walker are running a con.

Governor Walker and concerned citizens blind copied here

By Don Ystad,
Rome, Wisconsin

With milk prices down 41% since September of 2014, and the recent announcement that the US government is buying 11 million pounds of excess cheese for distribution to food pantries, does it still make sense to continue offering grants to increase dairy farming in Wisconsin? And more importantly for those of us living in the Rome/Saratoga, (Adams, Wood counties), area, how long will your administration continue supporting the proposal for an 8,000 acre, 5,300 cow dairy CAFO in the midst of our established residential/recreational area?

Seriously, how can one justify putting at risk the property, health and lifestyle of a population dense community for a dairy CAFO in a seriously depressed market where producers are hanging on through government insurance programs and subsidies?

Were we under a drastic shortage of necessary food product, one could rationalize the argument that my neighbors and I should sacrifice in order to feed our fellow citizens. But, when the supply far outpaces the demand for dairy, as it has the past two years and is worsening, it makes no sense to allow these communities to spin in the wind, fighting to preserve their property values, health and well being, and their lifestyle, while the proposed Golden Sands Dairy remains an unbelievable possibility for the thousands of us in harms way.

Please explain why this proposed project, or any expansion of dairy for that matter, is still viable in Wisconsin. Facing additional state budget cuts, it makes no sense to offer grants and other incentives to increase dairy. A neighbor asked me who that one decision maker is that considers all the factors where this proposed CAFO is concerned, and makes the determination that the well being of this existing residential/recreational area is more important than the CAFO.  I would hope that person is you, Governor Walker.

Thank you,
---
See, Say cheese to a market glut. (Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune).

Wisconsin Clean Water Activists Post New Video, Enough Is Enough

Clean water advocates from across Wisconsin gathered
at the state capitol in Madison to demand clean and
safe water. Image is from a video filmed in November 2015
(Mal Contends)

Clean water assaults have citizens on edge

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Public Trust Doctrine Article 9, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution states the waters are in trust for public purposes. The Public Trust Doctrine is the foundation of water law in Wisconsin, and it is under full-spectrum attack by Republicans.

To politicians' claims of 'we didn't know,' the cesspool of Republican politics becomes clear as children are rushed to hospitals because mothers bathed infants and toddlers in toxic bath water, (Seely, WisconsinWatch),

A child at a Wisconsin clean water rally holds a
sign reading A CAFO poisoned my water.
Image is from the Video, Enough Is Enough, by Eric Peterson

Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors from central Wisconsin is out this week with a video chronicling the fight for clean water in the Badger State.

People want fresh water and protections for their families from Big Ag operations, CAFOs. CAFOs are massive factories that render tourism and recreational regions economic and environmental moonscapes by poisoning groundwater and surface water.

Clean water advocates face a sophisticated political machine protecting polluters. Two pro-pollution Wisconsin state representatives are betraying

Bill Iwen of Kewaunee County, Wisconsin has his retirement
cut short by corporate polluter

their communities to protect corporations that direct pathogens into families' homes and environments. This is a simple fact that caused one polluters' protector, State Rep. Scott Krug, to threaten a libel suit against this site in 2014. Krug backed down.

The pro-polluters are State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin) and State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa, Wisconsin). They are considered vulnerable Republicans despite representing gerrymandered districts drawn to elect Republicans, and are protected by their areas' corporate media.

From Criste Greening of Protect Wood County in central Wisconsin:

For those of us living in Saratoga and Rome and who have been in our fight from the beginning, it has been a long and emotional four years. Four years of frustration, long hours of travel, thousands of meetings, and complete mental and physical exhaustion.

Clean water drives are a common site in Kewaunee County
in northeastern Wisconsin.

However, there has also been life-long friendships made spanning the miles across our beautiful Wisconsin countryside. Connections that will not diminish and fade when this fight finally comes to an end.

Thank you Eric Peterson for producing such a heart wrenching video that brought me to tears. And thank you to all our brave citizen warriors across Wisconsin who are standing up and fighting back.
---

Lynn Utesch at center is a veteran, small farmer and clean water
activist. Utesch and family live in Kewaunee County
in northeastern Wisconsin. Utesch has launched a state assembly
campaign against a prominent political shill for water polluters,
State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin).

The new video produced by Eric Peterson of Protect Wood County is below. It chronicles the fight for clean water from people in northern Wisconsin, northeastern Wisconsin and central Wisconsin as citizens now see the normalization of water poisoning.

"I watched the people watching the video at the meeting last night and the emotion was strong; frustration with the weakening of our protections, anger at the people supposed to be protecting our environment, and encouragement with the power of our group and like minded citizens successfully making progress around our state," writes Don Ystad of Rome, Wisconsin in an email this morning.

Enough is Enough

Big Ag Going Wild on Toxification of Wisconsin Waters to Pols' Silence

CAFO and liquid manure spraying are
killing Wisconsin waters -
Image from the Wisconsin
Initiative on Climate Change Impact

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."

For more candor, read on the linked pages:

Don Ystad in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune
Lee Luft in the Green Bay Press Gazette
Greg Farnham in the RockRiver Times