Livestock Operations Study Group report ready for Dunn County Board
By LeAnn R. Ralph
MEMOMONIE — The Livestock Operations Study Group report is ready to be presented to the Dunn County Board.
The 50-page report is the culmination of more than seven months of work by a group of participants that included members of the Dunn County Board’s Planning, Resources and Development Committee, the Dunn County Health Department, Dunn County Environmental Services, UW-Extension, farmers in Dunn County, the Tainter Menomin Lake Improvement Association and county residents.
The report will be presented to the Dunn County Board at the July 26 meeting.
The Livestock Operations Study Group was created as a result of an ordinance passed by the Dunn County Board October 16, 2016, imposing a six-month moratorium on all new livestock facilities with 1,000 or more animal units or expanding existing operations to 1,000 or more animal units.
A livestock operation with 1,000 or more animal units is called a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). A dairy cow, for example, is 1.4 animal units.
The six-month moratorium was approved by the county board last fall to give the study group time to evaluate the impact of CAFOs on the health, safety and welfare of Dunn County’s residents and resources, to report on the group’s findings and to make recommendations.
Because of the scope and the complexity of the work, the PR&D Committee recommended at the April 25 meeting that the county board reinstate the six-month moratorium on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations for an additional 45 days.
The Dunn County Board agreed to extend the moratorium at the county board’s May 17 meeting.
The LOSG has been meeting every two weeks, or sometimes once a week, since November.
Presentations have been made to the study group on a variety of topics related to, or that could be impacted by CAFOs, such as manure storage, high nitrate levels in the groundwater, traffic impacts from large farm machinery and hauling manure, the state Department of Natural Resource’s permitting procedure for CAFOs, and existing county regulations.
Dunn County currently has five permitted CAFOs, which are all dairy operations, and several turkey farms in the county which fall under a single Jennie-O Turkey Store CAFO permit.
According to the overview, the report “is intended to serve as a resource for citizens and elected officials engaged in discussions about appropriate next steps in Dunn County around the issue of CAFOs.”
Stats
The LOSG report includes a number of statistics about Dunn County and agriculture in Dunn County.
The county has 22 townships, seven incorporated villages and one city.
Of the 22 townships, 16 have adopted county zoning and six townships are unzoned.
The zoned townships are Colfax, Dunn, Grant, Hay River, Lucas, Menomonie, Otter Creek, Peru, Red Cedar, Sheridan, Sherman, Stanton, Tainter, Tiffany, Weston and Wilson.
The unzoned townships are Eau Galle, Elk Mound, New Haven, Rock Creek, Sand Creek and Spring Brook.
Dunn County has a combined land and water area of 553,252 acres or about 864 square miles. The county is 24 miles wide, east to west, and 36 miles long, north to south.
A little over 35 percent of Dunn County’s land is agriculture; urban accounts for .5 percent of the land; grassland is 17.4 percent; forest is 37.4 percent; water is 1.4 percent; wetland is 7.5 percent; and shrub land is .2 percent.
In 2015, Dunn County had $38.4 million in equalized assessed value of agricultural land, and $83.5 million in assessed agricultural forest.
According to the 2012 U.S. Census, Dunn County had 1,404 farms with an average of 265 acres. The state’s annual statistic in 2015 showed Dunn County with 21,500 dairy cows in 158 herds. The total number of cattle, including calves and beef, were 63,000.
In 1985, there was one permitted CAFO with a Wisconsin Pollution Discharge Elimination System (WPDES) permit. In 2014, there were 261 CAFOs in Wisconsin, and in 2017, there are an estimated 306 CAFOs in the state.
Key findings
The LOSG report includes a number of key findings, including information related to surface water, ground water, manure and nutrient management, transportation, odor and air quality and public health.
Here are some of the general key findings:
• Agriculture is important to the economy and rural fabric of Dunn County. The county has a responsibility to protect and balance the agricultural industry with the health, safety and welfare of Dunn County residents.
• The sizes and types of farms and livestock operations in Dunn County are changing, and the number of CAFOs in Wisconsin is increasing.
• Dunn County farmers have been instrumental in conservation initiatives and adopting innovative conservation practices for both livestock and crop production.
• CAFOs, because of their larger size, pose a unique set of risks due to the large concentration of manure and have a greater potential for negative impacts if something goes wrong. On the other hand, larger farms have more resources to develop management practices to mitigate the risks.
• CAFO permitting can involve the DNR, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, and Dunn County. Continued monitoring is important to determine whether recent DNR staff reorganization of WPDES permitting will sufficiently address the concerns in the Legislative Audit Bureau report released in June of 2016. The report revealed that DNR employees responsible for regulating water quality in Wisconsin failed to enforce regulations more than 94 percent of the time over the last ten years.
• Not all areas of Dunn County are suitable for a CAFO because of environmental risk factors, limitations of local infrastructure or potential land use conflicts.
• Regarding water quality problems from manure management practices, a small operation poorly managed can have a greater negative impact than a well-operated CAFO.
• State permitting is “one size fits all” and does not account for local differences in soil conditions, geology or watershed characteristics. A livestock siting ordinance adopted under county zoning would be enforced only in zoned townships. A livestock licensing ordinance would be enforced county wide.
• The Dunn County Land Use Control and Land and Water Conservation Departments do not have citation authority.
Recommendations
The LOSG report makes a number of recommendations for action.
Here are some of the recommendations:
• Dunn County should inventory and map environmentally sensitive areas in Dunn County. The maps of ESAs and groundwater recharge areas should be incorporated into the Dunn County Comprehensive Land Use Plan, the Land and Water Resource Management Plan and other county policies and ordinances where appropriate.
• Dunn County should develop an evaluation plan to continue monitoring any recommendations from the LOSG report to find out if the implemented recommendations are being effective and working as they were intended. The monitoring plan should also pay attention to any unintended consequences of implementing the recommendations.
• Make sure state and local livestock operation regulations are enforced fairly and promptly.
• Provide citation authority to the applicable county employees regarding compliance with livestock operation policies, including manure storage requirements and nutrient management plans.
• Adopt a Dunn County livestock operations ordinance which would apply county-wide. The report notes the LOSG voted for the county to consider adopting a livestock operations ordinance but also pointed out the vote was not unanimous.
• Adopt a Dunn County facility siting and licensing ordinance that would apply county-wide and would include an odor score, a nutrient management plan, manure storage, run-off, monitoring, and would allow conditions to be set. The report notes the LOSG voted for the county to consider adopting a licensing ordinance but also pointed out the vote was not unanimous.
• Work with organizations and agencies to support innovative agricultural practices that strengthen the economy and protect the environment.
• Educate the public and local elected officials on the importance of agriculture to Dunn County’s economy.
• Create a Dunn County Livestock Operations Partnership to review new policies and agricultural developments, to assist farmers, and to educate all stakeholders on best management practices.
• Investigate rules and regulatory gaps related to draglines crossing surface water and waterways and also develop a county policy on locating draglines in county rights-of-way and culverts.
• Adopt a transportation impact analysis policy that would apply when a significant increase in traffic is anticipated from a livestock operation.
• Develop a policy to deal with agriculture-related spills.
• Convene a study group made up of farmers from the dairy, poultry and swine industries, along with county residents (preferably those living close to each farm type) and public health staff to consider the best management practices to mitigate odor recommended by the 2010 Wisconsin Agricultural Waste Air Emissions Advisory Group.
• Establish a county-wide quality and quantity well testing program to track and evaluate the impacts of land use, policy changes and best management practices.
• Research, identify and map sources of groundwater and surface water contamination to protect public health.
• Develop a database to identify and map abandoned and deficient wells and also develop strategies for their proper closure to reduce potential groundwater contamination. Abandoned wells and wells without sufficient casing can provide a direct conduit for contaminants to enter the groundwater.
• Develop a strategy to increase the number of cropland acres in Dunn County covered by a Nutrient Management Plan. Currently 9 percent of cropland acres are covered by an NMP, but the percentage increases to 25 to 35 percent in towns with Farmland Preservation Zoning.
• Amend the county’s manure storage ordinance to accomplish several goals, including requiring 210 days of manure storage for CAFOs and 90 days of manure storage for livestock operations with less than 1,000 animal units to address winter spreading. The current manure storage requirement for CAFOs is 180 days.
• Require all Dunn County livestock operations over 500 animal unites to have an approved Nutrient Management Plan by 2022.
