Emerald Town Board votes against CAFO moratorium and environmental impact study
By LeAnn R. Ralph
TOWN OF EMERALD — The Emerald Town Board has voted to not enact a moratorium and to not ask for an environmental impact study on Confined Animal Feeding Operations.
At the town board’s July 13 meeting, Henry Hurtgen, town chair, and Tom Wink, town supervisor, voted to not approve a resolution for a moratorium and an environmental impact study pertaining to large animal operations.
Town board supervisor Fran Klatt abstained from voting on the motion.
At the June meeting, town board members had approved hiring an attorney, if necessary, to write a resolution asking for an environmental impact statement concerning the proposed expansion at Emerald Sky Dairy.
The proposed expansion would allow up to 6,289 dairy cows.
About 30 people attended the Emerald Town Board meeting June 8 to express concern about the groundwater.
Emerald Sky Dairy, formerly known as Emerald Dairy and formerly owned by John Vrieze, has been sold to Todd Tuls, who reportedly owns large dairies in Nebraska and in Rock County near Janesville.
The new owner of Emerald Sky Dairy is requesting a conditional use permit to increase the number of animal units to 8,804.
A dairy cow represents 1.4 animal units, so the proposed expansion would translate into 6,289 cows.
Before Emerald Sky Dairy could expand, the facility would need a conditional use permit from St. Croix County.
The facility’s current conditional use permit allows up to 3,400 dairy cows, or 4,760 animal units, and the existing operation has 2,460 animal units, or 1,757 dairy cows.
The Emerald Town Board has no official authority to grant approval of a conditional use permit, but the St. Croix County Zoning Board of Adjustment does take into consideration a town board’s recommendation.
About 50 people attended the July 13 meeting.
Following a question-and-answer session that lasted nearly two hours, and while town residents held a spirited and noisy discussion in the back of the room, the Emerald Town Board took up the discussion of the moratorium and environmental impact study.
Audience members were unable to hear the town board’s discussion on the resolution, and it was not until Hurtgen banged his gavel on the desk, thereby bringing the noisy and spirited discussion to a halt, that members of the audience knew that the town board had even taken action.
Hurtgen announced that the resolution to St. Croix County to enact a moratorium on CAFOs and asking for an environmental impact study had failed.
Hurtgen and Wink did not give any background information about their reasons for voting “no” on the resolution.
Klatt did not say why he had abstained from voting on the motion.
Incomplete
At the Emerald Plan Commission meeting prior to the town board meeting, and during the town board meeting, Ron Williams, an engineer for Emerald Sky Dairy, answered questions about the proposed expansion.
To date, Emerald Sky Dairy has submitted two applications to St. Croix County for a conditional use permit to expand the facility, and both applications have been declared incomplete and sent back to Emerald Sky Dairy for additional information.
St. Croix County currently is waiting for a third application to assess whether it is complete and whether the process can move forward for a conditional use permit.
Williams told the audience at the plan commission meeting that Emerald Sky Dairy was waiting for a wetland delineation to include with the application for a conditional use permit.
An assessment of wetlands could not start until late in May because the state Department of Natural Resources says that growing vegetation is needed to determine what is a wetland, he said.
A wetland delineation relies on vegetation, soil types and components, and rehydration of water, Williams said.
Williams, an agricultural engineer who is registered in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Nebraska, designs waste storage facilities.
The waste storage for an expansion at Emerald Sky Dairy would include two plastic lined manure pits with covers and one concrete pit that uses manure solids as the cover, Williams said.
Manure pits
Town of Emerald resident Dayna Hennessey wondered how manure from the pits would be handled.
All together, there are 17,000 acres available for the manure from Emerald Sky Dairy. The rate of application will depend on nutrient soil tests and the amount of manure that will be applied, Williams said.
Williams emphasized that he is not in charge of nutrient management plans and that his job is to design the manure storage systems and to be responsible for monitoring construction.
The expansion at Emerald Sky Dairy would have 413 days of manure storage, or 81 million gallons, although the manure would be applied to fields two times per year, he said.
The state requires that 180 days of manure storage be in place, Williams said.
The excess capacity will be built in case a repair is needed for the one of the manure pits. The extra pit could be used for backup if one of the pits had to be taken offline for repairs, he said.
The manure pits will be designed with drain tile underneath to facilitate detecting leaks. The manure pits will be monitored and reported to the DNR, Williams said.
When asked about the location of the 17,000 acres for land spreading or injecting manure, Williams said he did not know and again emphasized that he is designs the manure storage system and is not involved with nutrient management plans.
High cap wells
Hennessey also wondered about the number of high capacity wells that would be needed for the expansion.
Emerald Sky Dairy has two high capacity wells, and the expansion would require two more high capacity wells, Williams said.
A high capacity well is defined as a well that will pump 80 gallons per minute, or one or more wells combined to exceed 80 gallons per minute, he said.
Since Williams emphasized that he is an engineer who designs manure storage systems, Hennessey inquired if Emerald Sky Dairy would ask other engineers associated with designing the project to come to Emerald Plan Commission meetings or Emerald Town Board meetings to answer questions.
“I would be the only engineer,” Williams said, adding, “we don’t do that and bring other engineers.”
October
Judy Achterhof, a supervisor on the St. Croix County board who represents the Town of Emerald, reported on the Emerald Sky Dairy application at the beginning of the town board meeting.
According to state law, the DNR cannot consider the cumulative effects of high capacity wells on surface water, groundwater or residential wells when considering a new application for a high capacity well, she noted.
Emerald Sky Dairy has not yet submitted an application to the DNR for a Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit (WPDES), Achterhof said.
Considering the timeframes that would be needed, a conditional use permit for the expansion at Emerald Sky Dairy would come before the St. Croix Board of Adjustment in October at the earliest, she said.
Hennessey said she was concerned about contamination of residential wells, and that if the high capacity wells decrease the groundwater level, there would be nothing that could be done.
A house is not salable if the well is bad or needs to be re-drilled or is out of water, she said.
St. Croix County has already held clinics at the Emerald Town Hall concerning contaminated wells and the testing of well water in the Town of Emerald, Hennessey said.
One audience member said he wanted the health department to give some facts about contaminated wells in Emerald.
Another audience member said some residents in the Town of Emerald are afraid to have their water tested.
Williams said the drain tiles under the manure ponds would drain to a monitoring well with a manhole, and any material in the manhole would be tested.
Recycled water from the manure pit could be fed back to the dairy cows, which would reduce water usage, he said.
Rain storms
Hennessey also asked about runoff during heavy rainstorms.
The runoff from the feed pad would go into the manure storage ponds, Williams said.
Water that accumulates on top of the covers on the ponds would be pumped off later, he said, noting that the covers are designed for a 25-year rain event, defined as 4.5 inches.
Square mile
Williams once again repeated that 17,000 acres would be available for disposal of the manure.
One audience member wondered where the acres were located and how many miles were involved.
A square mile has 640 acres, so any township resident with a calculator should be able to determine how many miles, Williams said.
Dividing 17,000 by 640 equals 26.56.
Or in other words, 26.6 of the 36 sections that make up the Town of Emerald would be included in the land available for spreading or injecting manure from Emerald Sky Dairy.
To put it another way, three-quarters of the Town of Emerald would have to absorb 5,000 gallons of manure per acre to account for the 81 million gallons of manure that could be stored at Emerald Sky Dairy.
According to the Town of Emerald’s Smart Growth Comprehensive Plan, the township has 22,385 acres zoned agricultural residential and zero acres that are zoned exclusive agriculture.
Presumably the acres that would be eligible for land spreading or injecting manure would be zoned agricultural.
Regulations
One audience member wondered if the new owner of Emerald Sky Dairy has a good reputation for obeying the law.
“I do not care what happened in Kewaunee County. That’s not relevant to Emerald,” he said.
A June 3 Legislative Audit Bureau report on the DNR referenced wastewater permitting and enforcement. In Kewaunee County, south of Door County and east of Green Bay, there are 16 large dairies. A random sample of 320 wells revealed that 34 percent of those wells were contaminated with bacteria or unsafe levels of nitrate.
Kewaunee County has karst bedrock, and the Town of Emerald also has karst bedrock.
Karst bedrock, sometimes referred to as “fractured bedrock,” allows contaminants to reach the groundwater more easily.
The expansion at Emerald Sky Dairy would include five new buildings; three new manure storage ponds; and a new feed pad, Williams said.
CAFOs are “highly regulated,” he said.
It is “appropriate to take a breath” and make sure the groundwater is not going to be contaminated, said town resident Kim Dupre.
Problems with groundwater can come from over-application of manure, she said.
One audience member asked why Tuls wanted to buy a large dairy in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is the most difficult state in which to get a permit for a large dairy, Williams said.
John Vrieze, former owner of Emerald Dairy, has the only surface water discharge permit in the state for a dairy, he said.
“CAFOs are the farms to have if you are concerned about clean drinking water (because of the regulations),” Williams said.
The Legislative Audit Bureau report released in June revealed that the 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.
The DNR’s enforcement of regulations to protect surface water and groundwater from large livestock farms, factories and wastewater treatment plants declined from 2005 to 2015, according the Legislative Audit Bureau report.
One Emerald resident in the audience noted that his son had recently spent nearly $20,000 drilling a new water well because of e coli bacteria contamination.
Benefits
One person in the audience asked about the benefits of an expansion at Emerald Sky Dairy.
More hay will be put into rotation because more manure is available, said Williams, who emphasized several times during the meeting that his area of expertise is designing manure storage facilities and that he has nothing to do with writing nutrient management plans.
In addition, the soil will be improved from having more manure applied to it; the township’s tax base also will increase; and farmland will increase in value because it will be more valuable to grow crops, Williams said.
Only a few negatives are associated with CAFOs, Williams said, such as increased truck traffic and odor from land spreading manure.
One person in the audience mentioned that possible manure contamination of the groundwater also could be viewed as a negative.
The Emerald Town Board meets next on August 10, and town board members said they expect that the conditional use permit for Emerald Sky Dairy would continue to be an agenda item.
